Teej's Secret Box

Due to policy, all of the classes in the elementary school were taught using Sign Exact English, instead of ASL.  I currently disagree with this policy, pointing out that the key difference between well educated deaf children and poorly educated deaf children can be boiled down to solid mastery of both written and visual/verbal language.  In other words, the ability to read and write in English, along with the ability to sign in ASL (or any other official sign language) usually yield successful deaf people.  Failure in providing mastery in a language on either aspect would harm a child’s ability to further master other subject areas.

Using verbal languages would lead to a much more difficult mastery level for deaf people, especially those who are unable to hear and comprehend the inflection tones required in many languages.  Providing mastery in sign language teaches the same type of inflection in tone.

Depriving of written language education also would harm the child, especially if the sign/verbal language does not follow the same type of grammatical structure.  This is very acute here as ASL (derived from the French Sign Language) uses a “subject-object-verb” structure while written English follows a “subject-verb-object” structure.

Mastery of both at a young age is critical.  Using SEE only make it more difficult for us compared to ASL.  To yield something, it does help those of us who are able to partly hear be able to understand verbal English to a certain degree.  While I have been somewhat successful this way, there are others of my peers who failed in this phonic methodology of learning English rather than the visual methodology of sign language.  It does not help when their parents do not put in an intensive interest on their education to the point of teaching themselves sign language, and encouraging their child to read as early as they could.  No matter what shortcoming there are with our public education, parents that hold the critical key to ensuring that their child is successful in this ultra-competitive world, no matter what “handicap” they may have.

A mention in the comments of this blog on the use of sign language brought up some fond memories of my youth.

I was mainstreamed in the Roanoke City Schools in Virginia.  This school system includes a designated elementary school, middle school (junior high when I was attending), and high school where there are teachers and interpreters for the deaf providing equal education for deaf kids in the region.  Starting at about fourth grade, I was shifted to hearing classrooms with the aid of interpreters/teacher aides for classes that I am strong enough to work in a hearing environment.  Those classes include science, history, and math, while I was undergoing intensive training in English and speech therapy.

In those classes, there were some hearing students who became so fascinated with our sign language that some of them went out and learned fingerspelling.  A program was set for a large group of 5th and 6th graders to sign the words for “We are the World” song that was the rave at that time.  Yes, every single one of them signed that song on the behest of the teachers coordinating this.

I met with a few of my old classmates at a reunion recently, and I can tell you without a doubt that only two people signed to me at the reunion.

Two.

I was not quite an unpopular boy by any means.  I was well known, and I still keep in touch with some of the old classmates.  I am sure some of them read this blog, so please understand — I am not blaming you, or accusing you of anything.  And again, I had a fantastic time catching up with all of the old classmates at the reunion, and look forward toward meeting them again in the near-future.  What I am just simply saying is that the motivation to learn sign language is actually very rare, despite the opportunities present in this environment.

Look at RIT as a perfect example of huge integration of deaf and hearing folks.  A very small percentage of hearing folks know sign beyond the basic words (hello, thank you, and so on forth), much less fingerspelling, that would lead to folks being able to learn new words by spelling them to us deaf folks (to a fault, we love to show them the signs we have for those words, if only to help them minimize the exhausting nature of spelling the words out.)

There were a lot of opportunities to learn in private — there were bookmarks and calendars provided with the alphabets in sign language.  There were presentations, mandated training classes, and more.  But the two people that signed to me learned by being our friends throughout junior high and high school.  Not one from the elementary school that we were at would still remember the signs.

Granted, there were several others who signed to me in high school that did not attend the reunion.  I was sad to not see them then, and really hope that I would be able to meet them soon.

There are many reasons that they do not sign.  I can only wish they would for me, but I can not just simply demand that they do so.

You would think that the Baltimore Airport would have the good sense to send a person or two to wash windows.  There’s a huge amount of fly-by-pooping going on here, and the windows are heavily littered with said results of some bird’s aiming.

It is pretty amusing, especially when you take a walk around the terminal — this one clearly used to be the home of the dominant US Airways’ hub before Southwest came in, and pretty much knocked them on their hinny, and took over the market, and US Airways walked away with the tail in between their legs.  Now this airport only fly to the US Airways hubs, and aside from United, Continental, and AirTran, is quite deserted, yet perfectly colored in the old US Airways gray/blue color.

It is sad how time changes, with nobody having the money to fix it up.  ‘Course, Baltimore got it lucky — Pittsburgh was heavily hit, and can never make up for US Airways’ absence, even with Southwest and jetBlue, simply because the market has never been there to support such huge amount of flights back in the good ol’ days.

As you can see, my mind does wanders all over the place.  Now maybe this will encourage someone to make sure they clean out the fly-by-shooting those darned birds keep doing.

The one thing airliners need to provide — footstools.  If you ever fly, you know that one of the better spots are near the front of the plane — for US Airways its row 4 or 1 (if you get lucky and get bumped up to first class).  That way, you won’t have to deal with the backrest of the seat in front of you — perfect for a laptop.

However, there’s this wall in front, so if you try to sleep, you start to feel that you need to raise your feet against this wall.  Hence, footstools.  Have notched rows all the way up the wall.  Add a platform latching up to those notches, and rest your feet on top.  Presto, perfect sleeping position - somewhat.  Nothing beat the lie-flat seats that are common on the international airlines (yet have not been adopted by domestic airlines just yet).  Why am I thinking about sleeping on a stool?  The passenger, next to me, is struggling with this very problem of sleeping.  She has a blanket, a padded pillow, and all, yet her feet are struggling to find the right spot to rest easy.

Foot stools.

Yeah.

I noticed something when I was walking down the hallways in many hotels that I stay in as part of my travels.  Whenever I encounter a worker for the hotel hauling something - be it trash cans, a cart full of other patrons’ clothes, or what not - they would quickly find the widest part of the hallway, and remain as closely to the wall as they can, yielding me more than just unobstructed access.

They do not even need to do that, considering that the hallway is usually wide enough for 3 people to pass.  Yet, without fail, they would adopt this behavior.  Usually, I would feel good, and be very graceful toward them for taking a moment to yield the space for me, a patron for the hotel.

This is one of the many subtle things that I have noticed as part of the service industry that does an immeasurable amount to make life easier for customers.  At the Ritz Carlton, a very upscale hotel chain, employees are trained to say, “My pleasure” when thanked for anything.  Saying, “no problem” would indicate that it could have been a problem otherwise.

Think back toward the last few times you visit a restaurant.  Remember when you were guided toward your table by the hostess, whether the other employees (waiter, bussers, and other hostesses) interrupted your flow to the table.  If you have experienced that, how did you feel?  Slightly annoyed, I would assume.  Not a very good start to your dinner that night, eh?

I have been to many restaurants where the food was excellent, yet the reviews were lousy.  These restaurants suffer from criticism related to “poor service”.  One recent Vietnamese place I went to was extremely crowded, with the table layout focusing on maximizing space utilization rather than ease of flow.  Thus people being guided to tables had to bump around against other customers, and dodge the waiters and bussers who are not yielding to the customer.

But they are popular, so who cares?  Perhaps, but why allow for the irritation level to be high enough that it would take much fewer things to go wrong before the customer will never visit the place again.  As with all popular places, they can quickly become very unpopular.

Think of it as you go around your job facing customers.  If you think of the small things that could potentially annoy the customer, that they do not have to be annoyed with — why not just do them a favor and not let it annoy them?  Step aside, smile, and wish them all a fantastic day.