Thank you so much. I honestly I feel like I'm at home with all of you and first of all, I'd really like to thank Mary Hartnett for getting this event. Even though we started with a collaborative concept and that was a few years ago and all of a sudden we were meeting one day and honestly well are going to have to do it and so from Mary Hartnett and her idea of collaboration among agencies and across the state to being able to pull it off. Thank you so much and we're really grateful to the tube. This is real and it's just like running a and being at the teacher training program. You really never do anything alone and everybody you work with, you work as a team and you really... it wouldn't be anything without you.
So at this moment, I just like to ask how many of you, if you raise your hand, how many of you graduated from the University of Minnesota? All right, very good. Now how many of you did not graduate from the University of Minnesota? OK, we are going to make you honorary U of M alumni today so enjoy. We love to have more Gophers, just come on in Gophers, and so we love to have you onboard
The other person I would like to thank is Mark for coming today. It's really unusual that we can get a hold of him and we hope, we are looking forward to his presentation tomorrow. He's just a wonderful and very very in-demand person so thank you, Mark, for coming and joining us today.
Great. I'm going to keep my remarks fairly simple. I've been in the field of deaf education for 50 years and my first job was at St. John's School for the Deaf. I walked in there as a speech-language pathologist. I didn't, there wasn't a sign language book to be found at that time, the Joy of Signing by Lahti Rykov was just coming out. There was no Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf and there wasn't a sign language class to be had so the kids taught me how to sign. Of course, all of the education at that time was oral, was auditory oral, and the kids signed on the playground and in the dormitories. And some of the high school kids signed so we started communicating. The kids taught me how to sign and I had very very homemade signs very much of the homemade signs but I was at St. John's for several years and went to Gallaudet in between.
I wound up in a classroom because one of the teachers lost her vision from detached retinas overnight and they said gosh we can't afford to have you teach speech you'll have to go into the classroom right now and I instantly wound up in a classroom there weren't teachers of the Deaf available I had no training I was a speech-language pathologist kids were teaching me how to sign I think I had to give them my paycheck the first couple years I was there and had an absolutely marvelous experience the last thing in the world I thought I would do in my life was be a teacher and that first year was like go get them guys and I've never stopped loving every minute of teaching since then so instead of talking to you tonight about as you see that little thing about reflections of the past I'd really like to talk to you about reflections for the future and really talk to you about the top 10 things on the list in the field of deaf education
Wow let's see if I can make this go forward whoops right here we go in the field of deaf education we have really been in five field of special education rather deaf education has been a leader in the past it was one of the first feels to be developed in special education special education was not even thought of and deaf education was there we were the first specialized field ever to be identified in special end and it has been continuous the Journal of the American annals for the Deaf and the convention of American instructors for the Deaf now called Conference of American Instructors for the Deaf CA ID is the oldest professional organization in the United States which is amazing you're part of that you're part of the past and you're very much a part of the future
we have come a long way actually Joyce and I were having lunch one day and and we were talking about events that were happening in the field and joy said gosh I wonder if things ever change we keep saying the same thing over and over and then I started we started reflecting both of us started reflecting of the days gone by and all I could think of it was this photograph that's up on the screen of the early days this was an anniversary of 1917 from Clark School for the Deaf that was the tribute to the census and how we have to train the census and that's a 1917 that was a 50 year anniversary of Clark School for the Deaf
I mean we've been here a long time and we've changed considerably I hope anyway and so some of those changes have come through my top 10 number one innovations we have been extremely active in innovative practices we've had the art of teaching and we've had the science of teaching we haven't always communicated it effectively but all of us have been working with both the art and the science of teaching and that's terribly important we can't forget either one we have to include both the science and the art you can't forget one side in lieu of the other the second piece is the issue of disability versus a culture
we've argued we've walked the thin line but somehow we survive in respecting both disability always give us gives us an advantage in the legislature right we don't want to be called disabled but by god it gifts is a couple extra bucks to work in you know there's a lot more funding for deaf education than there is for second language learners
there's a lot more funding in special education than if we talk about cultural differences so we walk that very thin line between having a respect for the culture of deafness and also the disability of deafness from other perspectives with the recognition that we're working with a lot of children who have disabilities significant disabilities learning disabilities autism as teachers we have our in our increase of deaf plus in the last few years has been incredible so in the future we have to prepare ourselves to work with those children who have additional disabilities and not forget the deaf plus who are gifted and talented
we can't forget those who are really above the average the margins so we have to be all inclusive in our preparation in our thought process and in our teaching the third item is adaptations we're constantly required to provide adaptations in our teaching because of legal issues because of our supervisors and the adaptations that are needed for our students accommodations are critically important and a cure everybody's looking for the Cure the Cure has come around as cochlear implants now we have been brain stem implants I mean that future is coming at us at a very very rapid rate the cures that I'm most grateful for our German measles that we don't have German measles facing us on a daily basis scarlet fever spinal meningitis when I started in the classroom my classroom was filled with kids from German that were deafened by German measles multiple disabilities and we don't face that anymore we have other challenges but there has been a and I'll put that in very big quotes because nothing is ever cured it keeps coming back but we have to think of that cure not as curing deafness but curing some of some of the things that have caused deafness and additional disabilities number nine on the top 10 list are our medical and technical advances
we are learning much more about the brain the visual learning center at Gallaudet VL2 center has been doing some very impressive work not all of their studies are out but we need to look at a lot of the studies that are coming out on visual learning and the integration of visual and auditory learning some of the work that's being done at NTID I'm on multiple attention pieces split attention having to watch an interpreter and a visual information slants and be able to watch everybody moving around the room what's important in the future we're going to have to have to watch those items and that research with much greater care the other day I thought this was very humorous I picked up a magazine from one of my niece's who's really into the health thing you know she's intelligent, good foods and exercise obviously I'm not but she is into all the exercise and good foods and they're at the top of the page was the foods that are best for your hearing yeah now that's something for the future I'd never knew there was food that were best for my hearing but there it is so there's some things that are available number 8 professional preparedness we can never be ready enough and we never stop learning the University of Minnesota has had a very very proud history of graduates and we're you know I've been most fortunate to be able to work in a department in an environment that has been so fortunate and to be able to work with students who are so gifted and talented these are just a few of the talented individuals that we've that we've been working with and this class particular class you'll see one PhD student graduating that Sean Virnig and a few others in there that's that class had fifty percent deaf students in that particular graduating class you will find many of our graduates of our current students wandering around their volunteers today and you'll see them at right at the end of this session and also when you get on to your cell phones and flip grid which I'll talk about a little bit in a little bit you'll see their faces and meet them so we have an up-and-coming graduate student body that promises to be stellar in the future and we're looking forward to seeing them take over the reins as our population of teachers moves towards retirement with me we see that number seven technology technology has hit us at such a rapid right but it's always been that way in the field of deaf education deaf education were among the first to use overhead projectors my second year of teaching every teacher in the United States was issued an overhead projector you know we kind of carried him down the hall with us it's amazing and and that you know the the film that you used was so expensive that we used to go over to the hospitals and get the old x-ray films clean them up in the sink with bleach and then use them on our overhead projectors so all the silver from that x-ray thing went down the drain I didn't know it was that valuable until years later I don't know what we did to the fish population at the time we had no idea that it was that bad you have to remember that this is when you could still smoke in school you know we could put teachers lounge was really proud it was a long time ago yeah so technology has come a long way and I've always been very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time I am the least tech person in the world and so techie people would search me out because if I could do it anybody can do it you know so I was fortunate enough to be identified plus I was the only lay teacher in an all none school you know I knew I was never a nun believe me but I worked with all the nuns around me and so the University of Illinois came in with their with a language system on a mainframe computer and I wound up with that huge computer in my classroom and kids were were typing on these gigantic computers to do some programmed instruction we had project life programmed learning which later became a very very popular teaching tool in the in the in the actually was the 3M writing to read program there prior to the 3m writing to read program it was a film strip in the classrooms with deaf kids called project life it was programmed instruction as we moved into computerized and and portable more desktop computers I was fortunate enough enough enough to work with Manjula Waldron who is a biomedical engineer in at Ohio State Manjula Waldron who had a deaf son who was very very gifted and Manjula really wanted to facilitate communication so she developed a real-time communication device where we use the old laptop mac computers the first mac computers and you could communicate in real time and the teacher could communicate with a student or a student to a student that I brought that up here my first year in 1983 when I came to the University of Minnesota and we used it with the teachers in Wisconsin communicating with our graduate students at the University of Minnesota and we use little rebuses to be able to facilitate language instruction now it's you know unheard of so we've had a great time and it only promises to be more challenging more interesting and more facilitating but it's going to take innovation it's going to take recognizing the accommodations that work it's going to take you thinking about the possibilities the google glasses who knows what we can do with those it reminds me of cornet when he was working on cued speech he really wasn't working on cued speech he was working on glasses that had little light ups for phonons around and is the phonemes they he was trying to teach deaf people to to code though decode those light at little lights so they could understand spoken language just by wearing glasses well Google glasses are somewhat the same Alex Ziebot who will be here teaching ASL came to me the other day and he said wouldn't it be something if you could take Google glasses and it would provide real-time captioning right at the top wouldn't that be amazing and there's no limits to what we can do but it's going to take you to let the tech people know what you need it needs to come from you you need to be the innovators you need to be the ones who make things happen number six is communication access that you've heard me talk about this and I don't need to talk about this we need to look for innovative ways of making communication work for us not spend our time arguing about it is it or at an auditory oral is it signing my god we've been doing that for a hundred years you know and it's time that we move beyond that when I came here there were people who would stand up in meetings I used to hear about the arguments that would go on between st. Paul and Minneapolis Minneapolis Lazaro St. Paul with signing and there were these huge arguments across the river to the detriment of the students we spent more time talking about our beliefs than focusing on students we have to refocus our efforts in the future keep our eye on the ball and think of the students what are their needs individually there isn't one right answer there's only one right way to go with each student effective instruction it's not going to happen talking about it it only happens if you do it we can talk about models we can talk about strategies but they have to be implemented effective instruction includes being very explicit about what you're doing I know that there are nights and days when I walked into that classroom and I was hungover I was tired as anything I was totally unprepared for class I had a darn good time and by god it was the worst day in the classroom you know that was it was a day for me not for the kids that was a day lost it was a day lost and our kids can't afford a day lost I didn't realize that until I got a lot older our kids some of our kids come to school and we're the only people who can communicate with them we're the only ones who can really explain things we're the only ones giving them time and we're the only ones who can support them so every day that I had a bad day teaching was a day lost for the students in the future we have to plan ahead if you're going out the night before make up your plans the night before so you're ready to go and have something good to do intensive instruction is important plenty of positive reinforcement if you don't know how to do it come back to school and get some classroom management strategies classroom and management strategies that include positive reinforcement for various cultures in your room for various segments of the population for kids who have disabilities and those kids who are gifted we also need positive reinforcement for our supervisors because but they don't understand us you know most of the time our special ed directors don't know us unless they are special led directors who are come from the field of deafness most of them don't know what we do we look like everybody else it's they really don't know that we have a role that we teach something that's very very important and that's children and that our content is the most important thing that every child faces language the heart of our teaching is language very different than any other student in special education the fourth top 10 list is of the top 10 list is data data data I know you've heard me say this a thousand times especially if you're in my class to the point where you're sick of it but pick up your cell phone by got every app you have has data in it all of a sudden this little thing came up on my new cell phone that says health I click it on and it's how many steps I took how many flights of stairs I want graphs all over the place it's data its data about me you go to Weight Watchers and you've heard me say this 100 times and its data they map out your weight its calories data is what makes our profession accountable it makes us exist without data we will not be here we will be folded into the new abs license there will be a BS teachers providing services to our hard of hearing students if we don't provide the data that shows that we make a difference that what's special about our field is different than the ABS teacher so we're making a difference but we have to show them it's important important to classes and reflect use your assessment strategies with your students make them functional we have to go beyond the academic assessments we have to look at that daily functioning of the students assess where the students are at when they graduate from high school what are they going to do that starts in preschool we have to assess where the students are at and reflect about their future and work with the students as we go along and I say this more often than that and I can't say aloud more more distinctively than language we're not talking about language arts we're not talking about capitalization and punctuation and simply a structure but we're talking about language that has meaning language that communicates language that gives people power language gives us the right to reject to accept to control and that's what we need to teach that's what our curriculum needs to look at language that is functional that gives students power over their own lives that's what deaf education is all about it's taken me 50 years to figure that out and we're getting better at it but you're the future you're the people who need to carry it on you're the ones who are going to take it to the next step and the last is love what you do expand your horizons include other things in your life so you learn and bring those back to the classroom never stop expanding your horizons there's always something else out there
Collaborate, work with others, and I can't thank our collaborators here. Joyce and my collaborator, my best friend, and I won't cry, Pat McAnally. who isn't here but all our other collaborators who taught at the University of Minnesota. We've had such a great group and I have to thank every one of you who have served as a cooperating teacher. All of you have contributed to the University of Minnesota in very significant ways and thanks to all of you graduates. You're just super. You make us proud and the most important thing is that it impacts kids what you're doing. There's a future in every child that you work with. Our U of M alumni never had a chance to do the loss of the census dances but we've grown above and beyond and we found new ways the future is in you I had a whole bunch of pictures that were actually at the bar in Faribault and another one at the bar in at 421 cafe and I couldn't I wouldn't didn't want to bring out the family album you know and start showing but most of you are in it in those so you'll see you'll see yourselves at some point in time this is a great group of people I've worked with I've had the opportunity to really enjoy and we'll see you in the future I'm sure the most important thing is that our teachers do a lot of things beyond just teach but every one of us have brought a lot of our information back we don't get paid a lot some of the teachers have wandered away and they keep coming back if you don't know on it actually got a certain certificate to do the notary Republic notary public so she was she was getting a whole new career as a no degree yeah so here's here's Joyce at kind of taking advantage of that notary system and working with Anna and building her her pieces Elizabeth clarity is in the middle is a volunteer in Africa she was she's been in several different countries as a teacher of the deaf and has gone over probably about four or five for four or five years Laura Lauren Schultz Mac of Lauren McCoy Shull scoops that tells me I have to stop and I'm almost there and Lauren Schultz or McCoy shells if some of you remember her she started she was teaching deaf and hard of hearing kids in Milwaukee 47 years she started a the purple purple door ice cream shop in Milwaukee with her husband it's a great business it's going great guns and she has a whole factory of deaf students who are working with her as part-time students some are full-time the person who's managing her store is deaf and that's on the east side of Milwaukee so she's carried her deaf education into a transition program and then we have winners we have gold medal winners this was the Gopher Goldy gopher run this last Saturday and here's our for teachers of the Deaf our goalie gopher alum who bleed maroon and gold by the way so we want to thank all of them and what I'd like to have you do at this time
I'm going to ask our graduate students our current graduate students to go and grab a pack of cards from the back and give each one of you or you can grab them from the table as we go but there is an announcement that's coming that will be made about housekeeping but what I'd like you to do when you have an opportunity is get on your computer or your cell phone or your iPad you have to download the flip grid app if you're using your cell phone or it's free or the cell phone or the iPad and put your photo on and introduce yourself it's a video app where you can sign your name and/or set and say your name introduce yourself there's a question there that says hi and that would tell us about yourself so you get to know everybody at the conference trying to build some collaboration you'll see some people who are on there already all of our students on there now are on there now introduce themselves you'll get to know them so it can do this anytime on the other side of the card is our Avenue p.m. that's going to be for our presentation tomorrow
So don't worry about this, you can take this with you and I do want to mention a very special person in the audience and that's Doobie. We all just, Doobie has been our mainstay at these deaf and hard-of-hearing conferences. How many of you have never been to a DHH state conference? How many? Raise your hand. How many of you have never been to a DHH state deaf conference? It's been five years. I know everybody who raised their hand are young and the really young. Welcome and I hope we can do this again in the future. Thank you very much.
