Town Hall Meeting November 2, 2006
TOWN MEETING HELD
in the RSD Auditorium from 6 to 8PM
Thursday, November 2, 2006
Thursday, November 2, 2006
You can find more information about
Town Hall Meetings section on RSD's website, www.rsdeaf.org.
Any comment about this meeting?
14 Comments:
Wow! No comments here. It looks like we are giving up and let Dr. Mowl do what he wants for RSD. When the parents are not happy with RSD, they can easily pull their kid(s) out and mainstream them. Dr. Mowl is winning the battle and kept losing his students.
I wonder about the parents. Are they giving up? Don’t want to keep fighting for RSD anymore? So the parents don’t think Dr. Mowl is taking their concerns seriously. Maybe they don’t want to waste their time and energy to work with RSD while Dr. Mowl sticks to his guns.
I must congratulate Dr. Mowl and watch him destroying RSD. The members of Board must be very proud to support Dr. Mowl.
Actually, a long post by Pam was here for a short while but since this is her blog, and she controls it, she pulled her down comments away after posting them.
According to the RSD survey Parents are satisfied on average at least 60-70% on all of the areas of the survey.
To follow up on Pam’s post which she took down…
Harlan Lane is a true Charlatan; an Audist of the highest order – far above IKJ and JKF. He has profited immensely from deaf people and returned mere pennies to the Deaf community. And his signing skills STINK. Plus, his books about deaf people are written so way over the language level of most people, deaf or hearing, that it’s a blessing only for him perhaps that no one will ever get to know how much of a true fake he really is.
On Pam’s comments about Parent’s Night event, RSD should have the good sense to leave no doubt and provide interpreters for hearing parents AND prepare all teachers in proper etiquette when in mixed communication preference groups. They are Teachers after all. Any one who does not understand what’s going on around them should express themselves – Deaf people included. Right, we shouldn’t have to remind but if we don’t then misunderstandings evolve into confusion and hurt feelings. If we do raise concern – nicely – then change happens on the spot, and every one is better for it.
Back to the recent Town Meeting…the survey results clearly shows that RSD faculty morale is low. I hope that RSD administrators AND faculty leaders address this issue and bring faculty morale up.
About the lessons Pam learned from the protests…Gallaudet has a TWICE-dysfunctional administration and Board. That place is very screwed up.
Perhaps Teachers who are (or were) Parents also of children at RSD are having the most difficulty…micromanaging their children’s education based on their own experiences as educators and former students at that level?
Oh, sorry to be very honest on that last point, but it's Deaf culture way, eh?
You guys kept saying Pam is controlling this website. Sorry. She is not. This is my blog and allow anyone to post his/her comment. This is not the first comment I deleted. I will continue and delete any comment if someone requests in the next comment.
Howdy... this is Karen Mayes, from Indianapolis. I smiled at whoever fingered Pam as the creator of this website, since she herself told me it was not her. I have a high regard for Pam; she is VERY involved in her son Theo's education... Theo will grow up to be a fine, well-rounded man because of his parents... Tim and Pam.
Now, may I point something out? I am sorry to be sounding like a broken clock, but the key to the students' successes is the involvment of parents, their willingness to work with the teachers, etc. When I first met the principal at ISD's elementary school, she made it very clear that she expected a lot of involvment of the parents and that she expected ALL of the parents' support for ISD.
ISD DOES NOT have a perfect administration... no schools--hearing, deaf, blind, Spanish, art, etc... have perfect administration, due to many different ideas of how the schools should be run. ISD is a good school because of many workers AND many parents are willing to put their hearts into ISD.
We keep forgetting that at least 86% of deaf children is mainstreamed in the public/private schools. From my understanding, a good number of mainstreamed deaf children do go on to hearing colleges and doing very well there. We have to remember that we live in the hearing world, so we need the tools to live in the world. There will always be isolated groups... black groups, Jewish groups, Hispanic groups, etc., for the reason of the comfort of culture and communication.
Now something interesting happened... my son gets teased for wearing hearing aids... especially by the deaf children OF the DEAF parents. Of course he stands up for himself, saying he likes hearing things. But.... that is where the prejudice (I am sorry to have to say this) starts... at home. Life is full of judgements, labelling, etc.... that is reality.
The rigor of the ISD classes is similar to the rigor of the RSD classes... the main differences are the number of the students (higher at ISD than at RSD) and the main language in ISD classes is heavily ASL which is a key factor for the average deaf child to succeed, no arguement here.
Anyway, my point is... to advocate for your child, to be willing to work closely with your child's teacher, to be open-minded in front of your child, etc. You child will go far with your advocacy. The world is not easy to live in, especially for a deaf child.
:-) Karen
I understand Dr. Mowl is fighting so hard to protect his job and his excessive salary. His young brother who is also an educator, used to be a superintendent at a school for the deaf a long time ago. He was fired.
Dr. Mowl does not want this happen to him. Therefore, he has been working so hard to do whatever such as control freak and supression. I do not blame him.
This blog seems to be started by people who have a bone to pick with the RSD administration and especially Dr. Mowl.
Now, as a parent, I have concerns for my kid and what he is getting out of his education. Always have.
However, this has less to do with RSD than dissatisfaction with the lot of education of the deaf today. There is so much we do not know about what makes success and failure for each individual student. I think maybe some people are targeting Dr. Mowl to blame for a larger problem...education of the deaf is not as well developed as it might be.
Nonetheless, as parents we have the right to decide what our kids need and to pressure RSD so that they get it. We need to spell it out, describe it, put it in writing, and ASK FOR IT. And if we don't get it, ASK WHY and ASK WHAT CAN BE DONE. Follow-up is key.
Parents can be involved a lot more than we are now. We all have different capabilities; we can offer what we can do and let RSD use them to meet our demands.
We are the experts on our children. More so than RSD and their staff. They know what to do by training, we know what to ask for because we KNOW our children.
Let's stop this nonsense about putting Dr. Mowl on a target and throwing darts.
DPG
DPG is exactly right!
The problems with education in general and education of deaf and hard-of-hearing children specifically are complex and challenging. And don’t think for a minute that the mainstreaming classrooms are a perfect world either.
It's easy to point a finger at Dr. Mowl. He’s like the only tangible symbol in an otherwise highly-specialized system trying to address a variety of complex needs.
Folks point to the sign out front which says, “…For The Deaf.” Please don’t ever make assumptions on those three words and sit idly by waiting for your exact needs to be met without ever expressing what they are.
DPG is right on. This is a brilliant statement,”…parents…have the right to decide what our kids need and… pressure RSD. We need to spell it out, describe it, put it in writing, and ASK FOR IT. And if we don't get it, ASK WHY and ASK WHAT CAN BE DONE. Follow-up is key.”
Think about 160 students at RSD each with two parents actively involved. Even better, think about all those RSD students, with their parents AND the rest of their siblings and relatives involved as well. That equals a learning community which is the core of Rochester’s great Deaf community. Pre-K through college we breed success for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals right here in this community and a whole lot better than the Deafies ripping themselves apart in Washington, DC, right now.
"Nonetheless, as parents we have the right to decide what our kids need and to pressure RSD so that they get it. We need to spell it out, describe it, put it in writing, and ASK FOR IT. And if we don't get it, ASK WHY and ASK WHAT CAN BE DONE. Follow-up is key."
Been there, done that. Attitudes of some RSD administrators are the real disability.
DPG et. al--
I know some people who are truly frustrated about some of the persistent issues at RSD and do not feel that they are being supported by Dr. Mowl.
RSD is not keeping up with some of the current trends in Deaf Education. The message from Washington, DC is LOUD and CLEAR: ASL is the natural language of Deaf people. RSD parents who wish for ASL in the classroom should be supported. They aren't.
Here are some of the questions I have as a parent for RSD:
Will there be any workshops to bridge the cultural gaps between the deaf and the hearing?
Will there be any workshops and/or presentations on ASL and Deaf culture for RSD parents & faculty/staff?
Will there be any workshops on communication strategies for RSD parents to deal with their deaf children at home?
I would recommend that RSD parents having issues with RSD to bring their other family members and/or friends to meetings for advocacy.
PRC
Pls. disregard "that" in the last sentence in my last commentary.
PRC
Hmmm... RSD has its own Outreach program (I have no idea if anyone replaced Mrs. Huritz yet) and it would be a good place to start with... having parents ask the Outreach program to take a more proactive role in the RSD community and the communities outside of RSD, to increase the knowledge of advocacy, so forth...
Karen Mayes
The cost of speech therapy
What I find interesting is when I think back on the speech therapy lessons I used to get, and when I listen to other peoples' stories with speech therapy. It becomes clear to me that hearing people consider verbal speech of such high importance that they fail to consider a cost to benefit ratio for each child in speech therapy. Much of the time, either the speech therapy is applied so intensively that the child's other education is short changed. Or else it is applied even when the deaf child does not need it or cannot use it.
As an example, I would say I did not need speech therapy much past third grade or so. Yet, they kept me in such classes until high school and then only because I refused to take any more and my parents were willing to back me up. Other examples include deaf children with no residual hearing who undergo hours of speech therapy which is essentially a waste of time.
I question the single minded focus on teaching children to do something they can't use or don't need, simply because they are deaf and mainstreamed.
I can make a similar case for lipreading. I simply do not comprehend why lipreading is considered of such importance. At best, without my hearing aids, without being able to hear a voice at all, I will catch maybe 30-40% of what is being said, and that is if I know the person pretty well, the person speaks pretty clearly, I have a good idea of the subject matter and it doesn't change around, and there are no other people in the conversation.
That's pretty damn limited. And yet, given the amount of sheer freaking time I spent on it, there's very little return on it. Most people actually make use of lipreading (and body language, really) with little to no "training", as witness the classic example of someone being able to understand a play or theater from a distant seat better with a pair of binoculars than without.
But, these abilities are considered so important by the hearing world, that they will waste enormous amounts of time on these tricks with deaf children. Wouldn't the time be better spent making sure the quality of education was on par with hearing students? As long as there is open communication -- whatever the deaf student needs -- then the focus can be on learning. Not on parroting, not on being able to mimic a hearing person. A deaf person cannot mimic a hearing person.
But there is no reason the deaf child cannot learn as much as a hearing child in essential subjects: math, reading, history, arts, you name it. Don't waste the child's time on things that may not benefit him. Evaluate each one on a case by case basis and consider whether the time spent on speech therapy and lipreading wouldn't be better served by giving the child an actual education.
Tossing us all in the speech therapy bin is due to this insistence on being able to perfect these tricks -- regardless of the extent of individual's ability to perform these tricks. It's not that we can't speak. It's not that we can't communicate. It's that some of us need hearing aids. Some of us need pen and paper. Some of us need signs or ASL. That is the way to look at it.
http://browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com/232565.html
Please note some of the remarkable similarities between Deaf bloggers and Saudi bloggers!
Pamela R. Conley
==================================
Copied and Pasted From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6055382.stm
Saudi Arabia's bold young bloggers
By Roger Hardy
BBC Middle East analyst
Ahmed al-Omran, writer of Saudi Jeans
Ahmed al-Omran's site Saudi Jeans was blocked earlier in 2006
There's not just an oil boom in Saudi Arabia - there's a blogging boom too.
"It really took off last year," says Saudi journalist Rasheed Abou-Alsamh.
There are now between 500 and 600 Saudi blogs - in English as well as Arabic - and the bloggers are women as well as men.
"I think young people see the internet as a way of expressing themselves easily and in an uncensored fashion," says Mr Abou-Alsamh.
The Saudi kingdom is still in many ways a closed society.
"The media here are controlled," says blogger Fouad al-Farhan, who is 31 and runs an IT company in Jeddah. "We can't express our thoughts on TV or in newspapers or magazines."
Unusually, he includes his mobile phone number, as well as his full name, on his Arabic blog (www.smartinfo.com.sa/fouad/).
He uses the blog to comment on political and religious issues. Others call him a conservative - a term he dislikes. His views are certainly very different from those of liberal young bloggers who attack the religious police - or discuss their love lives.
Fictional love story
One young woman blogs under the name Mystique.
MYSTIQUE'S BLOG
I am born - a man chooses my name,
I am taught - to appreciate that he did not bury me alive,
I learn - what he wants me to know,
I marry - who he wants me to marry,
I eat - what he wants me to eat,
If he dies - another man controls my life
A father, a brother, a husband, a son, a man
Extract from poem: Rantings of an Arabian Woman
"I want to remain anonymous," she says, adding that only a small group of friends know her real identity.
Her English blog (www.mystiquesa.blogspot.com) is, by Saudi standards, outspoken.
"I have this fictional series, a love story between a man and a woman. And I get into the most intimate details of the relationship - like sexual details."
Not surprisingly in such a conservative society, she gets hate mail - as well as support from like-minded young Saudis.
Another anonymous woman blogger, Saudi Eve, had her site blocked after she had written freely about sex and religion.
Global discussion
There is a cyber-battle under way, says journalist Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, between liberals and conservatives.
Ahmed al-Omran found his site (www.saudijeans.blogspot.com) blocked earlier this year.
He is a student in Riyadh who blogs in English.
"Most of the other bloggers supported me - even those who normally disagree with me," he says.
His blog was soon back on-line.
"I started blogging over two years ago," Ahmed says. "It has become an integral part of my life."
Outsiders, he says, tend to have a one-dimensional view of Saudi Arabia.
"I can have a discussion with the rest of the world, and we can show them how we live."
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