It is incredible the processes that occur in our brain when interpreting. It is something  very complex that one does not have the most minute idea—TRUE-BIZ!

The incidence that came up and made me realize how our brains sort of get trained without us noticing is when I took my parents to meet my Deaf professor, he asked me to voice for him. So, he starts signing and I start speaking in ENGLISH, duh!nancy, really? (my mom doesn’t speak English). So it took me seconds to realize I was speaking in English and not Spanish, so I try again and stop my professor letting him know what I just did, second trial—-AGAIN!!-English…ok,  y como dicen en español “la tercera es la vencida”, and it was. It was until the third try that Spanish came out =) 

You can get me discussing my very strong views on many aspects pertaining education of Deaf children for hours, but to save you from that I’ll just make it sweet and short.

For children, who are Deaf, should speech-therapy be included in their IEP?

-I know parents and other professionals decide what is to be ‘best’ for the child, but if one stops and thinks, wouldn’t that child benefit more from more exposure to his/her natural language than from unfamiliar sounds that don’t make sense at all?

-I’ve seen Deaf students having to go to speech therapy every day and not benefiting from it- If a five year old can only speak one word in all those years of speech therapy, why continue spending all that time trying to make her/him use her/his voice instead of enriching their knowledge through their natural language (SL)?

2.5 hrs a week of ASL instruction will most likely have a greater impact than 2.5 hours of speech therapy when the child is profoundly deaf

it has been a while since I hear someone utilizing the term H-I (Hearing Impaired), and even when I knew that person’s intentions was not to make it sound derogatory, I cringed inside.

When appropriate I went unto informing that individual the preferred and correct terminology to use (DHH). 

the point to all this is that we need to educate our people because not matter how sweet and nice people are, the lack of knowledge about Deaf Culture and history leads to incorrect usage of terms that have become oppressive in Deaf community.

so one of my kids whispers “I have something special for you”- goes to his backpack and hides it in his hands, then he goes “It smells, do you know what it is?” I replied “candy”, and then he hands me a piece of gum.

=,)

We, as adults, might think that is ‘(2h) FURNITURE’- not a big deal, but I thought his deed was AWESOME and noble. He gave me something he thought special, which is what matters. 

We should be more like children, appreciate simple things and be less materialistic. they have the potential to teach us more than we can, and remind us of the important things

Do a simple but noble act each day and create change.