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Defining the problem

I’ve written previously about my many questions about what can be done here to improve the education.  One of the first questions I asked was, “When is it too late?”  More specifically, when does a child effectively lose the possibility for improvement relative to his peers?  When is he locked forever into being either the “struggling kid” or the “bright kid?”

Third grade.

Curiously enough, I’m teaching art in grades two and three, so it will be interesting to see how my computer-lab time with those students goes after school, and if my experience here lines up with the research.

Another statistic I stumbled upon had nothing to do with Kenya.  It was this: the average 17-18-year old deaf student in America reads at which grade level?

Fourth grade.

And the definition of forth grade is this: middle-of-the-pack performance expected from a third grader entering fourth grade.  Wow.  I was surprised by this.  And disappointed.  Is this the ceiling?  If America, with all it money and teachers and computers, can only pull off a forth grade average for Deaf high school seniors, what can I possibly do here with limited resources?

Well, first of all, if I’m looking for a breakthrough, I shouldn’t simply apply American methods here, because even in a best-case scenario, that has a known result that’s still lacking, apparently.

Here is an opinion on why grades 3/4 seem to be where kids’ reading levels get stuck: it’s the “learn to read/read to learn” distinction that we push on the students, even if they’re not ready.

So what does America plan on doing about its own problem?  I see two related issues and movements.

Think about this: there are 44 phonemes in the English language, which more-or-less have a predictable relationship with the 26 letters of the English alphabet.  If you know how to talk, learning to read is simply a mapping between the phonemes and the letters.  Learn that mapping, learn the patterns, and you’ve basically taken two languages (speaking and writing) and turned them into one language (English).  It’s easy to take for granted that when you see a new word, you can usually figure out how to pronounce it, and vice versa: if you hear a word, you can reasonably guess its spelling.  A Deaf individual who reads a new word can’t extrapolate that into sign language, and vice versa: they remain two different languages, regardless of whether you use ASL, KSL, or Signed English.  They all have this problem.

The recent study done in the US had pushed phonics to the educational forefront for all students, and much thought has been put into how to teach the concepts to the deaf, even if it remains conceptual, because even if a student still can’t transfer a written word into a sign, at least he can use phonics to better understand word variations (phone, phonics, phonetic, etc), and can therefore do more independent learning.  This can be done in a totally abstract way, or it can be done in conjunction with lip reading, or even with microphones that show waveforms to demonstrate which sounds make which kinds of visuals on the screen.  Anyone who has done computer recording can vouch for the fact that plosives like “b” and “p” look different from other sounds on the screen.

A more dramatic, and it seems, proven technique, is to use Cued Speech in schools.  Cued Speech is the name for a kind of alternate sign language.  It works in conjunction with lip reading, and the goal is to clarify ambiguous phonemes.  “P” and “b” look the same on the lips, but if you make a small hand gesture near your mouth, you can convey to the “listener” which you intended.  Research seems pretty conclusive: children who learn this technique can better understand phonics, and end up being better readers and writers.  I haven’t yet seen these results debated.  It’s still not widespread, possibly because ASL is finally winning the battle against “Signed English,” which was designed to improve grammar but didn’t really work, and the people who fought for ASL are probably not happy to see yet another contender.  At least Cued Speech is sufficiently different (technically it’s not a sign language at all) so it would there is less room for confusion.

So those are some options on the table.  This is a computer program that shows real examples of a lot of these ideas (but not the waveforms) but it has possibly the worst user interface I’ve seen in a long time.

So I definitely need to implement a phonics solution of some kind.  Introducing Cued Speech would probably be too political, but there are still the other options.  My gut still tells me that chat programs may be an unexplored frontier worth trying.  Imagine class communication handled entirely via text chat.  The point of the class is to teach the students be better readers and writers.  There is no interaction via sign… just writing, and vocab is introduced slowly via pictures and videos to enable the students to chat with each other and the teacher.  Phonics or no phonics, I would imagine this doing a lot of good.  This is an idea I’m still mulling.

Well, congrats, you made it though another rambling post.  Here’s your reward: a photo of a student who visited the library yesterday.. one of the first using my new DOS Educational Boot Disk!

P1020731

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My formal responsibilities so far

  1. Be at the school assembly from 7:45-8:00AM, Monday through Friday.
  2. Teach three hours of art class a week to children in grades 2 and 3.
  3. Do a head count in woodshop once a day, at any time.

It’s no wonder I’m so exhausted!

All joking aside, I do spend a lot of time thinking about what do do with the art classes.  How can I use that time to re-teach simple English vocab?  How can I use that time to break down the children’s “copy from the board” habit?  Without planning it just turns into coloring time, which is fun, but not a lot of learning actually happens.

So that accounts for some time, but really you ask, what do you DO all day?

Fair question.  Between assembly and class, if there is class that day, I will often nap.  This is because it’s a pretty safe bet that I stayed up late, and I’m tired.  I might also shave.

Before I go to class I usually do the woodshop head count, which consists of carrying a thin pink book of puzzling dimensions (maybe 10×14 inches with 4 sheets of paper inside) into the woodshop, asking “is everyone here?” then leaving and writing little X’s in the book.

(The idea is for me to eventually teach and English and Math in woodshop.  Hopefully I’ll hear back on that soon.)

Each class is half an hour, and usually I start with a little review, which consists of writing the wrong thing on the board (related to the previous class), asking if it’s correct, acting dramatic when it’s not, then changing it until it’s right.  I then segue into the day’s topic by drawing something new but related on the board, getting help from the students until the drawing is complete, then letting the kids free-draw while I walk around and encourage them.  I try to change the board contents every time I do a lap—this maddens some of the kids who just want to copy, but it seems like it’s starting to sink in that they don’t need to simply copy—they can do their own thing.  I hope this will sink in more as the year goes on.

After class I go out to lunch, either at a restaurant or sometimes I pick something up at the nearby Al-Habeeb’s supermarket, then I return and have Internet Research Time until I pass out, usually far too late.  My ratio of research-to-action is very low on the action side right now.  This will improve soon, now that I’ve finished the floppy disk that I want to use in the third library computer… this finally gives the kids good things to do on all 3 monitors!  (The 4th computer doesn’t have a screen.)  I want to show myself that I can make good use of what’s here before we go and turn it into a real lab!

Sometimes in the evening I’ll go out and have some shawarma and any number of competing restaurants near Old Town, book in hand.  I’ve started reading the novels left by the previous volunteer, starting with Ray Bradbury’s  I sing the body electric!  I’ve seen Mr. Bradbury on two occasions: once in San Diego and once in Santa Monica, and I love his books that much more for it.  I haven’t finished this one yet but I highly recommend it.  The very first short story is entitled, The Kilimanjaro Device, which I found curious, this being the first book I’ve started since leaving Kilimanjaro’s shadow in Loitokitok.  Coincidence, or fate?

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I’m Mr. Blair.

“Write your name on the board,” the Class Two teacher instructs me.  She speaks pretty well, probably because she lost her hearing relatively late.  I turn around and grab a piece of chalk and am about to write “Paul” for the children to see, but I hesitate, and I write something different— “Mr. Blair.”  Somehow this formal acknowledgement of my adulthood feels uncomfortable.  I turn around again and begin my first-ever teaching job: Class Two Creative Arts.  I begin the way I’ve seen others do it— I say “Hello” multiple times, dramatically, until I have all eyes on me.  Thanks to my accidental teaching experience in Class One, I knew not to expect too much, so I start easy.  According to the text book, the children are already familiar with squares, circles, rectangles, and ovals, so I should pick it up there.  My gut told me to expect otherwise, so I thought I would use the first class to better understand the students: what are their names, and can they follow basic instructions?

I ask for a volunteer who comes to the front of the class.  I draw his face on the board with chalk, intentionally leaving out the nose and ears, and I ask the students for help.  They tell me what’s missing, I finish, and then I have a few students work together to draw my face on the board.  Having set the example, I ask the children to pair off and do the same, except in their notebooks instead of on the board.

The desk the children share is large and horseshoe-shaped, which helps ensure that all children have an unobstructed view of the teacher (sign language is inherently visual, after all).  I do laps around the giant desk and provide feedback on the drawings, and I also guide the children who clearly don’t understand.  The workbooks are new, and they have blank spaces where the children should fill out ”Name” and “Subject.”  Not all children were capable of filling both of these out.  As some children begin to complete their drawings, I have them write the name of their subject, which, as it turns out, is incredibly difficult for one pair, neither of which know their names.

So by the end, everyone basically followed the instructions, although some students also copied random text from the board, some of which was written by another teacher earlier in the day.

The pictures are, of course, amazing, as all second graders’ are, so here’s a nice photo of them for you to click on:

P1020729

That was today.  Yesterday I was given the textbook for this class and for the same subject in Class Three, which I start teaching tomorrow.  Since the textboooks took all of ten minutes to read, I spent the day yesterday completely rearranging the library.  I wish I had taken a “before” photo so you can see the improvement, but oh well, here’s the “after:”

P1020727

The photo is a bit misleading because it’s so serene— what usually happens is that kids come in and use the computers while I’m trying to install things on them, and they manage to, among other things, delete files and switch to Safe Mode.  And then they kick each other until they cry.

To combat this anarchy, I have begun a system in which children sign up on the whiteboard and only six can be in the room at a time.  This works better than the free-for-all that proceeded it, but it has a few problems:

  • The younger kids don’t understand the process.
  • Also, many of them don’t know their names, which makes it difficult to put them on the list.
  • The older kids can physically push the younger ones out of the way to ensure that they get to be on the top of the list.

Those are the problems I’m working on.

The nice thing, though, is that after the children finish their turns on the computer, they actually look at books!  More specifically, they look at pictures in books, but it’s a start.  It seems that joining in the “computer user alumni” club, all aggression disappears.  Hopefully after all 150 get a turn, it will calm down.