My Greeting

Hello!

Welcome to my website!

        "When someone calls me deaf, I feel like I don't belong there and that hurts.  It shows that they don't know a lot about me. With my hearing aid and cochlear implant, I can hear almost like a hearing person and I can understand what people are saying without lip-reading. I don't talk like I'm deaf. I can go up to anyone, anywhere and have them understand me and I can understand them, unless they speak Spanish or something like that. I can even whisper and understand when someone whispers to me.

        When I was little, I had to do a lot of catch-up on my school work because the teachers let me slide.  They viewed me as deaf and didn't expect me to do as well as the other kids. They would give tests which I would almost always fail and then send home and give my mother one or two weeks to teach me the material. My biggest fear was that if I didn't do well on those second tests, they would use that as a reason to send me to the special school for the deaf where they use sign language to talk, although Mom assured me that wasn't going to happen. My mother didn't always like to do this for me because she felt I was missing out too much on being a kid, but I would beg her to help me because there was NO WAY I was going to give them a reason to send me to that other school. I always 'A'ced the second test and my grades didn't reflect all the failed ones. One year the school had me go in before school each day to see a special teacher who was supposed to help me with tests: wording, vocabulary and stuff like that. Mom found out all she was doing was teaching me the answers and not the concepts behind the answers and that was that. Then we moved to an area where my mainstream teachers had training with kids like me. I no longer have to spend hours at home each day after school trying to learn what I should have learned in school. I hardly ever need to even bring home any homework because I get it done during study time in school. I graduated my mainstream middle school on the honor roll, and that's even with taking an advanced math class for high school credit. I passed all areas of the state wide end of year assessment this year: reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. I even won a first place medal and a third place medal in my school's science fairs.

        When I'm not wearing my amplification I am deaf, but I don't even want to talk about that."

    I felt sad when I heard about the September 11th attack.  I found a song that might help you feel a little better.  It is called, "We're Back Where We Belong".

    The students of PS 234 attend the school closest to the World Trade Center site, and were forced to relocate to another school after the events of September 11.  It was a difficult time, but they were helped through it by an incredible outpouring of love from around the world. The students of PS 234 have now returned to their original school, and have written a song, "We're Back Where We Belong" as a gift of thanks for all the messages of hope and love.

Hear the song

Lyric

10/03/2003 05:20:19 PM

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Enjoy your visit!