I'm currently taking a three-year part-time diploma program about Deaf Education through York University, in order to become a qualified "Teacher of the Deaf".  One of my assignments was to observe another Teacher of the Deaf teaching a class, and then write a report about how that teacher used two languages in the lesson, American Sign Language and written English.  I asked Shelley, a grade 6 teacher, if I could watch her teach an English class.  She is Deaf, and I picked her because in my opinion, she is the best teacher in the school, and one of the smartest people I know.  

 

So, last week I sat at a table at the back of her room and began to watch her teach English.  She showed them a little paragraph that they had written together the day before.  The paragraph was: "I ride in the van everyday with my sister and my mother.  I am not allowed to chew gum at home.  But I am allowed to chew gum in the van.  I want to chew gum in the morning and in the afternoon or every time I am in the van."    Shelley explained to her students that they were going to learn about "word choice", and how to use a thesaurus. 

 

She asked the students to read the paragraph and tell her if they noticed any words that were repeated over and over.  One student raised her hand and said that the phrase "chew gum" was too repetitive.  Another student said that "allowed" was used too many times.  Somebody else didn't like the word "want".  The teacher recorded these words on the blackboard and handed out a thesaurus to each student.  She told them to look up these words in the thesaurus, and rewrite their paragraphs on an overhead transparency using words from the thesaurus.

 

When they were finished, they presented their work to the class by placing their transparency on the overhead projector.  One student had changed the paragraph to read "I am not permit to chew gum at home. However I am let to gnaw gum in the van.  I crave to munch gum in the morning and in the afternoon."  Another student wrote "I am not let to chew gum at home.  However I am grant to crunch gum in the van.  I dearth to grind gum in the van."

 

I looked at Shelley and smiled.  She smiled back.  I could see that she also saw the problem.  But then the blue lights flashed (Deaf schools have flashing lights instead of bells to indicate the end of a period), and the students collected their books and left.  She had no time to explain their mistakes.

 

She came back to to sit with me at the back of the class and we laughed.  I said "Their 'editing' job turned a perfectly good paragraph into a mess!"  She agreed.  I said, "For my report, I'm wondering, what are you going to do next?"  She explained that tomorrow she will translate their "improved" English paragraphs back into sign language for them, and the students will laugh as well.  For example, the sign for "gnaw" looks kind of like a dog gnawing on a bone, and when they see her sign the word "gnaw", they will realize that people can't "gnaw" on gum.  I said, "And you also can't grind gum, crunch gum, or munch gum.  It can only be chewed.  And you don't really crave gum either.  You can crave a cigarette, or chocolate, but nobody really craves gum."  She nodded in agreement.  I said, "It's complicated, isn't it?"  She said, "Yes, English is a complicated language to learn." 

 

I told her about how American Sign Language was also a complicated language for me to learn.  I use the wrong sign in ASL fairly often, but lucky for me, my students and other staff don't mind correcting me.  For example, for another assignment in my course on Deaf Education I had to teach a lesson on fractions in front of my principal (who teaches the course), and my classmates.  I was trying to say "whole pizza" and "half of a pizza", but every time I thought I was signing "whole", I was actually signing "full", meaning it was full of toppings.  So my fraction lesson made no sense.  That was very embarassing.  And last year, when we were on our way to South Carolina, I phoned Auntie Jo to tell her that we were leaving Ohio before the big storm (tempete) came, and I actually said that we had to get out of Ohio before the big "mixed vegetable platter" (trempette) arrived.  

 

So, it's not always easy to pick the right word in your second language.

Wow, I see that I haven't written in my journal since October.  Crazy.

 

Anyway, today I'm going to write about my Easter weekend.  Somebody from TimeShare phoned Paul and asked him if he wanted two days and one night at a resort in Collingwood.  It was cheap - only $60, if we agreed to attend a 90 minute sales presentation.  The lady on the phone said that the resort was undergoing milions ofdollars of renovations.  Paul, who had turned down the offer many times in the past, said, "What the heck, why not?"  So, we went.  We had lots of fun, and spent the weekend swimming in the indoor pool and sitting in the hot tub, and shopping in the Collingwood village at the base of Blue Mountain.  It was great.  My parents were a little bit nervous, being of the belief that I had difficulty saying "No" to salespeople.  (This is not true, as you will see.)

 

The "90 minute sales presentation" was kinda funny.  If you haven't been to one yet, I'll tell you what goes on.  I expected it to be a PowerPoint presentation, with one salesperson standing at the front of a room in front of an audience.  But it wasn't.  There were about 20 couples there, and about 20 sales people.  Each couple sat down at a little table with their own personal salesperson.  I thought, "Oh great, now they can really put the pressure on."  But actually, the pressure wasn't bad.  The lady started out by saying that the program isn't for everyone, and at the end of the 90 minutes, all we had to do is say yes or no, and that would be the end of it.  And it was.

 

So, she started out by asking us all kinds of questions about what we do on vacations.  We said that we mostly camp at provincial parks, in a tent.  She asked us what we did for a living, and we told her that Paul is a lab technician and I am a teacher.  She told me that since I was a teacher, and could only travel in "peak vacation times" (Christmas, March Break, and summer), we would have to give them 6 months notice to book a vacation.  Then she explained how TimeShare works.  (This is not the "traditional" TimeShare, she explained.  This is the "New and Improved TimeShare".)  Anyway, she explained that most people "rent" their vacations, while she was offering the opportunity to "own" our vacations.  We could buy a vacation "plan" that could be handed down to our children in our will.  But you only "own" your vacation plan for 50 years.  (When she said that, I thought to myself "That's funny.  The last time I checked, owning something for a limited time is called 'leasing', not 'owning'.")  The plan had various benefits, including the fact that the price of normal vacations  goes up 7% per year with inflation, while TimeShare vacations can only go up a maximum of 4% per year, and historically they have tended to only go up 2% a year.  You could travel anywhere in the world (except Cuba and other countries that Americans don't do business with) and get good deals at thousands of resorts, such as $512 for a week's stay at a resort in some Caribbean island.

 

I asked her, does this $512 include the flight?  She kind of laughed at me, and said no, of course not.  I said, "Well, that's not a very good deal then.  My parents recently went to Cuba for $348, and stayed at a resort for one week, and that included the flight and all their food and alcohol."  She looked at me like I was a little bit silly, and explained that my parents' deal couldn't have included activities like Scuba diving.  (I thought to myself, "So what?  My parents don't scuba dive anyway".)  She also explained that they would have had a tiny little room with nothing but a double bed and two chairs, whereas if my parents had signed up for her vacation "plan", they would have a 1500 square foot suite with kitchen, bedroom, dining room, jacuzzi, etc.  I said, "Well, you don't go to Cuba to sit around in your hotel room, anyway."  She couldn't really argue with that.  Then she said, "Well, at the end of the day, after your parents' vacations, what do they have to pass on down to you other than a shoebox full of receipts?"  I nodded politely and smiled.   (I didn't want to be too argumentative.  This woman was just doing her job, after all.)  But I thought to myself  "That's not true.  My parents didn't give me a shoebox full of receipts.  They gave me a very nice necklace made of watermelon seeds and a hair barrette made of a coconut." 

 

She kept saying, "If I could offer you a cost-effective vacation plan that had all these benefits (and she listed several "benefits" here), would you take it?"  I said, "Well, it depends what you mean by cost-effective.  To me, cost-effective means that it has to beat the $25 bucks a night we currently pay to camp at the Pinery."  She said that wasn't going to be possible.  But she was nice about it, she said again that this TimeShare lifestyle is not for everyone, and she wasn't going to tell us what to do or try to change our life.

 

Then we went on a tour of the newly renovated part of the resort, and it was BEAUTIFUL (unlike the old dumpy little hotel room where we stayed, in a different building).  She took us into a one-bedroom suite and a two bedroom suite.  I can't even tell you how wonderful it was.  The best furniture and appliances you can imagine, the most beautiful carpet and tile you can imagine, a fireplace, a huge plasma tv, a hot tub bath, and two of the walls were completely windows so you had a beautiful view of Blue Mountain and it was all bright and sunny inside.  It was like walking through a dream home.   I loved it.

 

So we went downstairs, and she asked us to guess how much it would cost to sign up for this TimeShare thing.  I didn't even want to guess.  Paul said, "A few thousand."  She pulled out a piece of paper that said $30,000, for the one bedroom suite !!!  I couldn't believe it.  I said, "Let me get this straight.  If I gave you $30,000 today, I would "own" that suite you showed me upstairs for 50 years, but I would still have to pay you $512 a week if I wanted to come stay in it, and I would have to give you 6 months notice that I was coming?"  She said yes.  I said, "That's insane!"  She said, "No, it's not.  The average person pays $3000 a year for a vacation.  That means that in 8.8 years, the vacation plan will pay for itself."  (I was thinking, I don't know how she does her math, but $3000 a year, adds up to 10 years before the $30,000 pays for itself, and that doesn't include the $500 a week for every week of vacation over that 10 years.)

 

I said, "Look, if I had $30,000 lying around, I would redecorate my own bedroom and bathroom to look more like that suite you just showed me."  She said, "Fair enough."  Then she called over her manager, and told them, "Scott, these folks are campers, and I can't beat $25 a night."  He said, "Then let's let them go home."  He signed her paper and we left.

 

So, that's my experience with TimeShare.  In any case, we had a very nice $60 weekend, and I got to show my parents that I actually CAN say no to salespeople.

 

Last Thursday night, a teacher walked into my classrooom and said, "What are you doing here still?  You should be home by now."  (He often gives me a hard time for working too much.)  I told him, "I'm preparing my lessons for tomorrow."  He said, "Ah - forget that.  It's Friday tomorrow.  You don't teach anything new on Fridays.  Fridays are for reviewing what you taught from Monday to Thursday, and catching up on unfinished work.  Go home already, relax, watch some t.v."  We chatted some more, and then he left.  I thought to myself - "Review - now that's a good idea.  But it could be boring.  How could I make it fun?"  I thought back to teacher's college.  One night, before a big educational psychology exam that everyone was stressed about, I hosted a "Jeopardy Night".  I made up questions and answers from the textbook and my lecture notes, organized them into different categories, and a bunch of classmates came over with beer, we ordered pizza and wings, and we had a very good time studying with my Jeopardy game.  And we did well on the exam too.  I thought, "Hey, I'll do the same thing with my students."  Minus the beer and wings and pizza, of course.  But that wouldn't be as much fun.  How could I make the game fun without beer, I wondered.  Prizes, I thought!  So, I spent another hour or so making up questions from topics we studied that week, organized them into 4 categories (Math, Language, Social Studies, and Science), and went to the dollar store to buy prizes. 

 

I had lots of fun at the dollar store.  I found the coolest stuff.  I bought a can of shiny, sparkly "Galaxy Slime", a set of markers, some fuzzy Mickey Mouse pencils, a "cyber pet", a doll, a real digital watch, a package of 6 super-bouncy balls, an etch-a-sketch, play dough, a jewellery-making bead kit, and other stuff. 

 

Friday morning, I explained the game, the rules, and showed the kids the prizes.  They were so excited, they were literally jumping up and down.  Each time I pulled something out of the prize box to show them, they would all say, "Oh, that's MY favourite!  That's the one I'm going to pick!"  And then they would all say the same thing about the next prize.  I thought to myself, this is going well.  A success already! 

 

And it did go well - for a little while.  At first, the kids cheered for each other when they answered a question correctly.  I was impressed.  But as the game went on, the tension got thicker and thicker until I could almost cut it with a knife.  When some of them answered a question incorrectly, they slammed their fists down on their desks in frustration.  If a student took too long to answer a question, the other students watched the clock anxiously, and said, "Hurry up!  Hurry up!"  (They knew that whoever had the most points at 10:15 would win.)  They started to complain that so-and-so had an easy question but they got a hard question.

 

At 10:15, I counted up the points and announced the winner.  The student who won happily came to the front and chose her prize.  I was surprised to see that two of the boys had tears in their eyes.  Another boy noticed this, and took it upon himself to give a little pep talk.  He walked to the front of the classroom, and said to the two boys, "It's just a game, guys, don't worry about it.  You'll have a chance again next Friday.  You might win next Friday."  If looks could kill, this boy would have died instantly.  The two boys that were crying now looked furious, and I was afraid somebody was going to get beat up on the playground at recess. 

 

I was annoyed.  I wanted to yell at them - "This was supposed to be FUN, DAMMIT!  And next Friday you had better all have FUN whether you like it or not!  Or there will be no more fun for you!"

 

This Friday, before the game, I'm going to have to teach them how to be a good sport, and set up rewards and consequences for sportsmanship.  So much for not teaching anything new on Fridays...

 

Yesterday my students were making posters about how people use plants and animals.  They were all quietly colouring when one student jumped right out of her chair in excitement.  "I know!  I know!  I know!",  she said.  "I have an idea! Pigs!"  I told her, "That's a great idea.  How do people use pigs?"  She said, "Meat!"  I said, "That's right."  But I wanted her to be more specific for her poster.  "What kind of meat?  Bacon?  Sausage?  Pork roast?  Hot dogs?"  She gave me a very funny look.  "Hot dogs!", she said.  "Hot dogs come from DOGS!  That's why they're called hot DOGS!"  I tried hard not to laugh.  All of her life she thought she was eating dogs when she ate a hot dog.  "No, really," I said, "hot dog meat comes from pigs.  Not dogs.  It's true."  She looked like she didn't really believe me.  She said, "Well, why aren't they called hot PIGS then?"  I said, "I don't know.  English is pretty weird sometimes."  She said, "Yeah."  

 

My mom told me that people (Merlyn and Lovely) have been checking my journal everyday for new stories about my first week of teaching.  But I haven’t written anything because the first week was very stressful and chaotic and overwhelming and I cried a lot, and I didn’t really want to write about that.  I even had a few scary moments when I thought to myself – “Oh my god, I just spent 9 years of my life in university, and accumulated $30,000 in student loan debt, to prepare myself for a job that I don’t want anymore.”  But I no longer feel that way.  Well, at least not at the moment. 

 

So anyway, a funny thing happened today while I read my students a story called “The Value of Facing A Challenge: The Story of Terry Fox.”  It’s a book that I’ve known and loved since I was a kid, and I was happy to read it in sign language to my four deaf students (all boys).  Their response to the story was not exactly what I expected.

 

I started out by showing them the cover of the book and saying “Who knows who this is?”  A. told me “It’s Terry Fox.  He got his leg chopped off from cancer but he still ran across Canada and then he died.”  I said, “That’s right.  Why did he try run across Canada?”  D. told me “For cancer.”  I said “That’s right, to raise money for cancer research, to help sick people.”  And I began to read the story.

 

I read the first page about Terry as a little boy.  As I was turning the page, A. asked me, “Is he gonna die now?”  I told him, “No, not yet.”  I read the second page, about how Terry wanted to join the basketball team at his high school, but the coach said no, he was too short.  A. said, “’Cause he’s gonna die soon, right?”  I said, “Yes, he will die, but not yet.”  The next page was about Terry practicing and practicing basketball until he’s finally good enough to join the team.  I turned the page, H. asked me, “Does he die now?”  D. answered him, “Yeah, and when he dies they’ll have to bury him in the ground, you know.”  I told them, “Okay, guys, the important thing here is not that Terry died.  The important thing is what he accomplished when he was still alive.”  A. answered, “Yeah, ‘cause he ran across Canada.”  I said, “That’s right.”  I went on with the story.

 

I came to the part where Terry was running through Thunder Bay, and had to go to the hospital, and found out that the cancer had spread into his lungs.  The illustration on this page was of Terry’s lungs with cancer inside them.  The “cancer” was drawn as little green scary monsters.  H. said, “Looks like devils.”  The educational assistant (E.A.) said, “No, those aren’t devils, they’re like germs.  It’s like cancer germs.”  H. nodded and I went on with the story.

 

The kids were getting more and more anxious about the last page of the book.  Two of them started covering their eyes every time I turned the page.  But the last page showed Terry Fox running off into the sunset, and the words were something like, “Even though Terry didn’t accomplish his goal of running all the way across Canada, his dream still lives on and the Marathon of Hope continues.”  D. asked, “Why doesn’t it show the funeral and burying him and everything like that?”  I said, “Well, the author didn’t want people to be sad about that.  He focused on Terry’s life, not his death.”  D. said, “Well, did Terry go up to heaven?”  I said, “Well, I guess he probably did, but you know, everybody has their own beliefs about what happens when you die, and we respect everyone’s beliefs.” 

 

One of the students (H.) is a Jehovah’s Witness, and two of them are Catholic (D. and K.), and I don’t know about the other one, and I didn’t want anyone or anyone’s parents getting upset, so I wasn’t comfortable with this conversation.  I looked at the time – saved by the bell.  It was almost time for the kids to go to sign language class, and I planned to stop them in the hall on the way to show them a huge map of Canada showing Terry’s route. 

 

I was about to tell them to line up, but D. continued.  He said, “You know what?  When you die, you either go up to heaven or you go down to hell.  If you’re good you go up, and if you’re bad you go down.  That’s what a girl told me.  You know that girl in grade six with the brown curly hair?  She told me that.”  I said, “Okay, D. that’s enough.  It’s time to go to – “

 

But H. jumped in.  He said, “You know Terry Fox is going down because I saw the devils inside him.”  I said, “Oh no, H., those aren’t devils, those were germs.”  He said, “No, no, let me show you.”  I opened the book and found the page with the picture of the lungs.  He pointed out that the green monsters not only had horns coming out of their heads, they also each had these little triangles on the ends of their tails.  I hadn’t noticed that before.  I said, “Okay, well, those kinda look like devils but they’re really not.  It’s really cancer.  Well, actually cancer doesn’t really look like that either, it’s just a symbol – “ the kids made a face that said “What?” and half copied my sign for “symbol”.  This means “What’s that word you just signed?”  A Deaf adult would know the sign ‘symbol’, but the kids didn’t know the sign, and perhaps they didn’t know the concept either. 

 

I looked at the clock.  There was no time for the map viewing now.  I said, “Okay, so the guy who drew the pictures for this book, he thought to himself, how can I draw cancer in Terry’s lungs?  Then he had an idea – he thought ‘I’ll pretend that the cancer looks like little green monsters, or germs.  So he drew it like that.  It’s just a symbol.  It’s not real.”  H. wasn’t convinced.  He shook his head and said, “Nope, they’re devils.”  I thought, “Oh my god, this child is going to go home and tell his Jehovah Witness parents that his teacher taught him that Terry Fox was possessed by the devil. 

 

I said, “Well, the illustrator was just trying to show that cancer is a very bad thing, it’s a kind of evil.”  D. said, “Yep, and if you’re bad, you go to hell.  And you know what else she told me?  (The girl in grade six).  She said there’s good ghosts and bad ghosts, and the good ones are white and the bad ones are black.”  I said, “D., stop.  That’s enough.  You can discuss these things with your religion teacher, next time, but now it is time for sign language class.”  (Because there are no Catholic schools for Deaf children, Deaf Catholic children go to religion class once a week.)

 

So, my wonderful, inspiring, heart-warming, Terry Fox “Marathon of Hope” and “Value of Facing a Challenge” story about a Canadian hero somehow turned into a lesson about death, heaven, hell, cancer, and the devil.   What a mess!

 

 

At the camp for deaf kids, I met a woman named Brenda, who was a personal support worker for a severely disabled deaf girl with Down’s Syndrome, named Maggie.  Maggie is very strange looking – she has a very small misshapen head with an unnaturally large tongue that’s often hanging out of her mouth.  The kids often thought she was a boy because she has a bit of a moustache.  She has a large hole in her throat that’s covered with a cloth attached to a band around her neck.  She often stares at her fingers as she wiggles them, and laughs and claps her hands for no apparent reason.  She doesn’t really communicate in the usual way (she just repeats back what people tell her), but every time I looked at her and smiled, Maggie would smile back and tell me the day’s schedule in sign language.  “Swimming, supper, nurse Donna, bed.  Swimming, supper, nurse Donna, bed.”  And then she’d clap her hands happily.

 

Of course, some of the kids were very curious about Maggie, and would come and ask Brenda lots of questions.  Brenda was very friendly and patient, and would sometimes spend 10 minutes talking about Maggie with a kid, only to have another  kid or staff member come and ask all the same questions 5 minutes later.  I learned something from one of these conversations, between Brenda and an 8 year old hearing boy named David.

 

David: What’s wrong with her?

Brenda: She has Down’s Syndrome.

David: Why is there a cloth on her neck?

Brenda: It’s covering up a hole.

David:  Why does she have a hole there?

Brenda: Well, when she was born, the doctors discovered that her throat wasn’t connected to her stomach.  So she had surgery to make that hole there.  Now the food goes down through her mouth, into her throat, and it falls out of her neck into a bag.  Then we throw the bag in the garbage. 

David: If her food falls out, how does she stay alive?

Brenda: At night time, a nurse hooks her up to a machine that pumps food right into her bowels.  It’s kind of like a baby’s formula.

Brenda (to me): When she was born, they put the feeding tube in her stomach, but then they discovered her stomach was perforated, so they had to put it straight into her bowels.

David:  What’s perforated?

Brenda: It means her stomach was full of tiny holes.

David: If she gets her real food at night, why does she eat food in the day?

Brenda: Because it tastes good, and to be with people who are eating.

David: Oh.

Brenda: (to me)  Sometimes the food gets stuck in the hole, and I have to scoop it out.

 

David was quiet for a minute, considering all of this.  I was feeling sorry for the girl, and her parents.  I was thinking about how Maggie can’t be left alone for a minute – Brenda had told me before that somebody even has to stay awake with her all night in case there’s a problem with the feeding machine.  She needs help with absolutely everything – eating, walking, toileting, bathing, sitting down, laying down, playing.  If she wants something, she can’t just go get it herself, somebody has to get it for her.  She has spent much of her life in the hospital, hooked up to machines to keep her alive.

 

Suddenly, David exclaimed, “That would be SOOOO cool!”  Brenda and I looked at each other in surprise.  She said, “What would be so cool?”  David said, “She could just eat chips and ice cream and McDonalds all day long.  She wouldn’t even have to eat vegetables, if she didn’t want to.  And she wouldn’t even get fat or nothing!”  

 

Brenda and I laughed.  I realized that it’s true, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining.  Sometimes it takes a kid to point it out.  That’s one thing I love about kids – they can make you see things in a whole new light.