New Book Release: “The Butterfly Cage” by Rachel Zemach

If a fellow teacher had asked me what was new in my classroom, how could I explain to them my war against the word who? Hearing kids incorporate the question words effortlessly into their vocabulary by preschool age. I’d seen the vocabulary lists that hearing first graders at my school were studying; words like “feast” and “ordinary”. Second graders were mastering “scholar” and “peak,” while third graders labored over words like “agreeable” and “tentacle”. My students were just as intelligent as theirs, and in the same grades. However, we were studying “why?” and “who?”.

This, then, is the challenge of Deaf education. It is the crux of the problem, the heart of the who. An educational system that, not understanding the basic tenets of Deaf student’s language acquisition issues, doesn’t hire ASL-fluent teachers, doesn’t encourage parents to learn ASL, and expects academic success from students who don’t yet have a language.