next semester's classroom.

A little over a month ago,  I got to meet the teacher I'll be working with next semester. I didn't get to meet the kids, but I was able to check out the classroom where I'll be working five days a week from mid-January to mid-May.

I'll be working with a woman who teaches 1st and 2nd graders. I originally wanted to work in a preschool classroom but there was no signing preschool classroom available. I had to make a choice between working in an oral preschool classroom (where the students are encouraged to speak and strengthen their listening skills at all times) or a Total Communication 1st/2nd-grade classroom (where both signing and speaking are used so that the students may access both languages on a level that they are comfortable with). It was a no-brainer to choose the TC classroom - I wanted to practice my signing, really learn how to teach reading and writing skills to children who are deaf and hard of hearing, and I wanted a challenge.

Why is this classroom a challenge? Classrooms for students who are deaf are rarely homogenous across the board. Each child has different needs, different strengths and weaknesses, and different levels of dependence on either sign or spoken word. My classroom will be a perfect example of this.

The class has three 1st-graders and five 2nd-graders. Four of the five 2nd-graders are deaf children of deaf adults. This means they acquired language (sign language) very early on and thus have the resources to learn content at the same rate that their hearing peers would. When I met Jessica, she was teaching these students about the three branches of government.

One of the 2nd-graders and two of the three 1st-graders are deaf children of hearing adults. Most of their parents do not sign, or even if they do, they do not use sign in a way that helps the children grasp language in a capacity that allows them to learn. These students are learning language in the classroom now even though they are already six, seven, or eight years old. While some of their classmates are learning about the three branches of government, they are still learning about the letters of the alphabet. That's how dichotomous the curriculum can be.

Lastly, there is one first-grader who just arrived from Bangladesh only two or three weeks ago. This student has no language. None. She is completely deaf and her parents do not sign. She knows no sign language, no English, no Bangladeshi, nothing. She has also never been in school. I have no idea how Jessica has started teaching her language these past few weeks. I wish I could have witnessed how this student copes with entering school for the first time at age eight and having no sense of language, but I look forward to working with her next semester.

So there you have it. Next semester will be quite different from this past semester and I'm extremely nervous about it, but I also know it will be the experience of a lifetime.