Person First Approach

I'm currently taking a Speech Pathology class. My professor is a passionate, well educated and interesting person - everything that goes into a great teacher.

That's it. What? Were you expecting a big "But..."?

She believes that hands on is a good way to go, so she gave everyone in class a pair of industrial strength earplugs and asked us to be deaf for a day. I just finished my paper on my experience and I'll have to say it was one of the most interesting projects I've done in my college career thus far.

You have no idea how much noise your tongue makes when you speak, or how loud the sound of your feet hitting pavement is as it echoes around inside your head. I was beyond "impaired," I was nearly deaf. I practiced putting the plugs in and got really good at it, apparently, because I could barely hear anything. I heard odd things, like the crinckling of a plastic bag, or the percussion of Christmas music in Kohl's, but not the voices or foot steps of people all around me.

And interestingly enough, I found myself hiding. I avoided people, walked in a large radius around strangers, followed closely behind my mom, who has taught disabled people most of her life, including the blind and deaf. She didn't realize that she was using simple sign language with me, in which I have no training. We were looking through shirts and I quickly picked up on the sign for small, as she flipped through discount racks, holding up a shirt and pinching her fingers together - asking me to find that shirt in a smaller size.

I could write much more about it. It was extremely interesting and disconcerting at the same time. I only spent one fourth of the time I was supposed to with the ear plugs in, but that was more than I could stand. Being able to take them out was so distracting. I spent quite a while thinking about just stopping, pulling them out and being back to normal. I can't imagine not having that option.

The distinct ring of silence would be enough to drive a person mad.