I wish I knew more about this lady’s background.  I wonder why she switched at age 7. I wonder if her family, or school, or someone else was the primary influence for the change.  I wonder how she will do learning as an adult.  I hope I find more videos from her.

Just in case you can’t see the video, here’s a direct link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSs4PTV8UPs

I’m always flattered to be asked to “represent” myself—I would never dare speak for others—and discuss my background, my upbringing, my thoughts, philosophies, and maybe even offer a few nuggets of advice. But I always enjoy learning from others and putting them into the hot seat as well.

As a congenitally deaf person, I have never known what it’s like to be something other than deaf—at least, in terms of our audiophilic world.  (Yes, I just coined a new word.) And since my parents learned of my deafness at a rather young age and accepted it pretty early, I can’t remember any attitude other than positivism and neutralism in my home – I was expected to do my best in school, engage in activities and be social with friends… my parents didn’t give a ____ about my being deaf.

So, I’d like to turn things around just a bit, and make this blog about YOU—the readers. Who are you? Why are you reading this? Why do you care about us, our blogs on WeCue, and Cued Speech in general?

Here’s a quick, little “meme” for you.

1. What did you think about deafness prior to having a family member, friend, or colleague who is deaf? (Be honest.)
2. What do you now think about deafness? If your views changed, how have they changed, and why?
3. When you first heard about Cued Speech, what was your initial reaction? (Be honest.)
4. Assuming you’re now encyclopedic about Cued Speech, what do you wish you had been told when you first learned about it?
5. Do you have any funny stories about learning to cue or trying to explain Cued Speech to others?

Okay, those questions might not be so quick and easy to answer. But I’m genuinely curious about what has brought you here. I’m a teacher—I gotta learn from my “students.”

Have a great day/evening, and happy cueing!

I’m a native cuer. I’m also deaf—profoundly deaf. And I don’t exactly have the best auditory processing skills. I can discriminate the difference between high heels clacking down the hallway and a loud bang close by. I’ll hear a weird sound every so often and say, “what’s that?”

Most of the time, it’s usually an air conditioner, heater, fan, or vacuum cleaner whirring. Even in a coffee shop, I still have to take a couple minutes to process that rattling, banging sound that is a cappuccino or Frappucino™/frozen/blended drink mixer.

So, forget speech discrimination. I’ll be very upfront with you—I can barely understand a thing someone says, unless I’m reading lips, or even better, if the other person is cueing or signing. So, then, how does a deaf person like me work with hearing people on their cueing skills?

Well, it’s not easy. After all, there’s always a certain amount of trepidation going into a new teaching situation, especially with brand-new hearing cuers. I never know who’s going to pick it up quickly, who I might have trouble getting through to (and wanting to bash them in the head with the nearest blunt object), or who I might have a hard time understanding. Because, after all, cueing is supposed to help facilitate communication in English, right?

What I’ve found, though, is that most times the people taking the workshop or class become pretty darn motivated to learn and to communicate with me.  There’s no “abstract” component to learning how to cue, especially for college/graduate students in the field of deaf education or speech-language pathology who may or may not use CS at a point later in their life. They gotta learn how to cue because their instructor needs it for optimal communication purposes.

It doesn’t matter that I’m a fluent signer. It doesn’t matter that I’m a proficient lipreader. What matters is encouraging all students of all types to work on their cueing skills and communicate with me as best as they can, in my native (and preferred) mode.

It doesn’t matter whether I have students learning or trying to improve their speed and fluency. What matters is walking into a classroom, and being able to deal with all types of learners and proving that I’m not only as good as a “normal” hearing instructor, but that I provide a benefit to them that hearing instructors can’t provide—realization at the importance of cued communication.  It warms my heart when I see students helping each other out if someone’s not sure how to cue something to me.

But, I will give people a hard time if they try to resort to signing instead of cueing. I may be pretty flexible as an instructor and let people take cueing breaks, but if I see someone start to sign or just voice because it’s easier, they get “the look” from me.

Case in point: Last year I worked with an intermediate-level class at a cue camp, and I had two parents who signed and cued. They had admitted they were signing more with their child because that’s what they started out doing, but wanted to rededicate themselves to cueing. At one point, the father started signing to me, asking me a question. I refused to answer, and just stared at him. He asked the question again, and I still stayed silent. *THE LOOK*

“Oh man! You want me to cue this, don’t you?”

“Yup.”

Works every time!

Besides hot biscuits, I am also without a cued language transliterator. This was mainly by choice. A choice which reminds me everyday of how lucky I was to have transliterators all through public school and college. I even had a CLT for the first field school I completed 3 years ago in Virginia! So, why go without? I thought of it as a field test of sorts, you see, an experiment from which I could learn how working with a team on a long-term project (2 months in this case) sans cued speech might function. Unlike some other deaf cuer peers, I do not use my cochlear implant as much, nor nearly as well, so CLTs (and other accommodations like CART and/or c-print) are still important for me at times. However, I have no illusions I will get regular access to a CLT as an archaeologist due to small budgets, long trips and field situations normal mortals including transliterators, (i.e. non-archaeologists), would not willingly go through, so I thought it prudent to find a somewhat controlled environment (e.g. a field school) and work out my weaknesses while getting more practical experience in my field. 

So far, it’s as I expected, hot, dry, no running water, long working hours, endless strings of blabbity-blab mouths moving. None of the students have heard of cued speech of course, but I still wear my sun-color changing cue-wheel shirt to work at the ranch where our site is. I do miss the clarity of cued speech, oh yeah… Lots of errors flying ’round! The other day while returning to home base from the site, we got stopped by a long procession of emergency vehicles from various county and city departments. When our driver explained that “someone in emergency services died, and this is a funeral procession,” my brain’s “lipreading processing center” sent impulses from the wrong directory, and I read the last two words as ‘federal possession.’ Puzzled, I watched all the ambulances, police cruisers, and fire trucks pass, trying to figure out just how the Liberty Hill city FD and Williamston county PD counted as FBI, and who this one person was who’d died and made it necessary for the Feds to step in! 

Despite being without a CLT for now, I am very thankful I had good luck with access to transliterators for academic settings. I’ve found find them to be far superior to transcriptionists and other accommodations. Without them, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am now- able to contemplate going into archaeology! I am also thankful the transliterators I had were in the main, very, very durable, because I was very ambitious in my class choices. Earlier I mentioned a CLT who worked with me in Virginia at a field school- the lady drove for 2 hours a day from Charlottesville to be there to cue 8 hours, 5 days a week, mostly spent outdoors in western Virginian heat and humidity, next to an excavation site (or what would amount to a ‘dirt pit’ for most people). Hats off to her. Three different transliterators were also subjected to three different language classes, and none knew the languages they were trying to cue, but they pulled through. College classes, especially the labs, must have been a literal pain, because I usually only had one CLT, not the two that are now ideally recommended for long lecture situations. So, here’s a big thank you to all transliterators, not just the ones who cued for me! Here’s hoping many others will have the same good fortune and choices I did with CLT access.

Mom and Dad learned how to cue almost immediately after the diagnosis of my profound bilateral hearing loss. All three sisters learned the system the same way I did which was visually. Mom has told me there is a picture of my younger sister cueing in the playroom when she was 18 months old.

My speech was basically unintelligible for the first few years of my life. Luckily, all family members were able to cue read so they could understand me. While it is a task for most parents to learn the communication mode they choose for their deaf/hoh child, I consider it extremely important for families to make sure the other siblings or family members who live in the same household (if any) learn the modality too.

Inclusion is important for every person in the household whether it be the hearing person trying to understand the deaf/hoh person or vice versa. One way hearing people build their vocabulary and literacy level on a daily basis is by picking up information through what is heard verbally. Some deaf/hoh individuals acquire their language visually; so every word they see is equally important. Now, I grew up with times where I felt frustrated because two people were having a conversation and I didn’t understand everything that was said so I would ask the two parties to repeat. They would respond with “Oh, it was nothing important”, or they would summarize the conversation from 10 sentences into one sentence. I would rather have had them repeat all 10 sentences to me because even the little details matter in building language.

Making an effort to understand every word the deaf/hoh individual communicates will most likely secure the relationships between them and family members. It may be a frustrating process at first while trying to learn how to cue read. In the long run, it should pay off. After all, the deaf/hoh individual wants to fit in with the family and be able to express all of his/her feelings knowing they will be understood to the full extent.

In conclusion, it is beneficial if all immediate family members learn the modality chosen for the deaf/hoh individual. It will bring the family closer together. While it is not easy to cue or lipread every word said, it is important to try to include all family members whether they are hearing or deaf/hoh. Every word counts.

I vividly remember being high strung over meeting the parents. It doesn’t help I have a shy personality when I first meet people. I found it mind boggling when asked about my deafness, my cochlear implant, and how I function on a daily basis. Rather than out of curiosity, those two adults wanted information from me as a deaf person. Thoughts swarmed through my mind as I wondered what I should say and what I shouldn’t say because I knew every answer I give them would most likely affect their future decisions for their deaf first born.

Fast-forward ten years later, I have reached the point in life where I am content with who I am as a deaf adult. Between then and now, I went through a period where I discovered my deaf identity and the pride I carry as a deaf person. Giving back to the Northern Vermont community I was born and raised in for 18 years is something I have yearned to do. I was granted the rare window of opportunity to meet with this family again along with another family who has a deaf son. I had never been more enthusiastic.

My former Teacher of the Deaf who also works with these students emailed a list of questions they wanted to ask me. During the long 16-hour car ride from Chicago to Vermont I discussed these questions with my boyfriend, Aaron, who is also an adult deaf cuer. I continuously learn something new about myself when under pressure to think about growing up as a deaf cuer. For instance, I realized how much time my transliterator dedicated to serving me along with the countless hours my parents put in advocating for my rights and needs.

We spent an hour listening to the kids interview us and we answered by cueing back in brief sentences since time was limited. After that session was finished, we sat down with the parents and let them ask us questions and we responded the best we could. There really isn’t one answer that will satisfy all parents because each individual has different experiences and needs.

The Cued Speech community is indeed a very small one. Each time I am able to share my story and offer some input, I leave knowing I helped at least one person. It is a gratifying feeling and allows me to continue my journey advocating Cued Speech with increased perseverance.

I look forward to the next ten years.