ipl-logo

How Did Tressa Bower's Life Change

1404 Words6 Pages

Tressa Bowers’ life changed when she gave birth to a deaf daughter. Throughout the process of raising her, she learned about and became a part of a whole other community. Her view of deaf people drastically changed from the beginning of the book to the end. Tressa had first begun to suspect Alandra’s deafness around the time Alandra was five months old. Part of it may have been a mother’s intuition, part of it may have been due to paranoia over losing her other two children or spending time with Linda’s deaf daughter, Joy. She had noticed similarities in Joy and Alandra and differences between other children and Alandra. It must have been very frustrating to repeatedly hear everyone ignore her worries and concerns, especially Dr. Buzan, who had advised her to wait until Alandra was a year old before even talking to a specialist. …show more content…

She saw it as an obstacle that they would be able to overcome with hard work. And so, after a good cry to just let all of her fears, worries, and grievances out, she buckled down and started looking at options for her deaf daughter. First, they tried the oral method at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. Once a week, for two years, they drove thirty miles to attend an hour-long class. This was very difficult and tedious, and certainly not the best communication method, but it was the only resource they had at the time, and at least it gave them a foundation to work off of from there. The summer Alandra turned two years old, Tressa and Alandra, accompanied by Linda and Joy, attended a two-week long seminar for parents of deaf children at the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville. The psychologist there highly recommended American Sign Language as the main form of communication, but Tressa disregarded his advice, wanting to stick to the oral method, which they had been working so hard on,

Show More
Related
1050 Words | 5 Pages

Deborah Lacks was a very intelligent woman, though she struggled in school. Most of the Lacks children had some level of deafness, and Deborah had learned at a young age to “keep quiet with adults, so they never told [anyone] how much they were missing”

Read More
1388 Words | 6 Pages

The school argued that signing would become a “crutch” and limit a child’s ability to speak and interact with the hearing world (31). While Tressa viewed this as a positive program at the time, she later discovered the importance of sign and how it allowed Alandra to communicate to the fullest extent. After the family moved, Alandra began attending a residential school in Jacksonville. At this school, sign and speech were used in a “total communication” method. Here, Alandra was able to spend her entire day with deaf peers and learn how easy it was to communicate with them through sign language.

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

This led to a teaching method being created in 1970 that did not favor sign language or oralism and every child was considered equal and able to get the education that they needed. This is extremely important to me as a future educator that every student, no matter the disability, was treated equally. Every student should be able to have the same opportunity to learn. The method used in education that started in the early 1970s was known as Total Communication. In an article called The History of Communication, written on start ASL’s website, stated that Total Communication gives the opportunity to deaf students in numerous ways such as ASL, fingerspelling, lip reading, pictures, use of computers, writing, gestures, reading, expression and the use of hearing aids that some schools had to provide.

Read More
674 Words | 3 Pages

For a Deaf Son is a documentary about Thomas Thranchin, who was born deaf to hearing family. His father, a filmmaker, produced this documentary to offer an intimate look at how parents of a deaf child make decisions. The documentary is compiled together with interviews from audiologist, families of children with hearing loss, other expert in the field, as well as home videos of Thomas. Thomas was discovered to be profoundly deaf at the age of one and could only hear high frequency sound. This meant that with hearing aids on him, he could acquire speech and language with therapy.

Read More
1042 Words | 5 Pages

Bonnie learned in time that her deafness was a thing that she would have to deal with forever. She understood this but she still wanted nothing more than to be a part of the hearing world. She never truly integrated herself into the deaf world. Matt on the contrary, after going to the deaf school became very in to the deaf scene.

Read More
932 Words | 4 Pages

She helped me realize an ample amount of information on deaf people and even what I can do in the future. If everyone held the same attitude as Matlin about their lives and what they could do, many would not be quite as hard on themselves when they make a mistake. Deaf people can lead successful lives just like hearing people. The only difference is sometimes deaf people may have to work a little harder because of they way they are treated. Deaf people should be treated as equal and nothing less.

Read More
1036 Words | 5 Pages

Inside Deaf Culture Inside deaf culture is a very strong book written by carol Padden and tom Humphries in this book authors have tried to give a tour of the most important moments that has shaped the Deaf culture. Book starts by showing how much power hearing people have had over the deaf population in the past and how they saw death people almost the same as criminals and also how they tried to get rid of them by placing them into asylums and intuitions and how this was a beginning of first schools for the deaf and how much power and control they had over the children under their care also there was a lot of rumors of how children were molested in these schools and because they

Read More
1087 Words | 5 Pages

Growing up in a small-town I was literally in a culture bubble. There were almost no deaf people. I just never had the opportunity to converse with someone who is deaf. As I was reading this book I noticed my internal motivation for learning ASL was changing. I now want to learn as much ASL as I possibly can, so I can chat with those I come in contact with that are deaf or hard of hearing.

Read More
1982 Words | 8 Pages

Mark was born in 1966 to two deaf parents. Although the circumstances and troubles his mother had during the process of his birth he was born healthy and hearing. Mark tells that his parents were forbidden from teaching him sign language. I cant image growing up with deaf parents and have little communication with them. Deaf or not parents should always be encouraging to their children to learn to speak with their children.

Read More
1384 Words | 6 Pages

As well as the challenge of many professionals encouraging put in hearing aids, making their child “hearing impaired”. Hearing parents are usually unsure of what to do, and end up following the path the professionals recommend. The book really helps emphasize the importance of not doing that. Instead, exposing a the child into the Deaf community would be the best option. They’ll be welcomed with wide arms, and it will help them feel most true to themselves.

Read More
690 Words | 3 Pages

Since at birth parents are responsible for the decisions made in their child’s life, the child’s culture and lifestyle is dependent on their parent’s decisions. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, if Total Communication is implemented, the child’s goal is not to learn ASL but to learn English. For high acculturation/Deaf individuals, ASL holds a deep value since it is a central part of their lives and forms part of the Deaf identity. If ASL is not practiced than that excludes the individual from the Deaf community. By learning English trough Total Communication, the child is being deprived from the Deaf culture’s natural language.

Read More
1558 Words | 7 Pages

With this type of therapy, American Sign Language is not needed nor a requirement. This allows parents to have a stronger connection and involvement within the therapy. Along with this rule, many principles for AVT is to “Guide and coach parents…” so parents are taught the skills they need to work with their child (AGBell, 2007). An article written to explain the connection for cochlear implants with AVT, described parents roles as teachers, advocators, members of support groups, and facilitators of social interaction or their children (Neuss, 2006, pg. 197). This goes to show the importance of parents in the therapy process, inside and outside of the sessions.

Read More
863 Words | 4 Pages

Helen Keller "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched- they must be felt with the heart" (Helen Keller). You shouldn't ever stop yourself from achieving what you want. A disability should never stop you from doing anything. Look at Helen Keller for an example, she was both deaf and blind. That didn’t stop her from learning how to communicate different ways and to help others.

Read More
1111 Words | 5 Pages

Teachers are delivering the curriculum through spoken English in the classroom. One teacher states that her signs dropped while speaking English which states that it's impossible to deliver the information in two language at the same time. Participants pointed out the information would get lost for Deaf children in mainstream class and many factors would contributed to it like the speed of teacher's speech and other noises like students chattering amongst themselves. Depending on the hearing loss of the Deaf children, how much the information was received and got lost are unknown. SNAs expressed sometime they translate for the teachers and intervene when they don't understand.

Read More
724 Words | 3 Pages

During my time at Highline I became involved with the Deaf community which I previously had no idea existed. My original interest in learning ASL was sparked by my nephew who relied on the language as his main method of communication due to a processing issue in the Wernicke 's area of his brain. He was completely capable of understanding speech, but signing was easier for him to use for self expression, yet his family simply refused to learn the language. I thought this was nonsense and decided that I would learn in order properly communicate with my nephew, but I wasn 't prepared for how much this would change my life. Learning ASL opened my eyes to this whole world that ran parallel to the hearing world that most people didn 't even know was there.

Read More

More about How Did Tressa Bower's Life Change

Related Topics

Open Document