Anna Trupiano teaches in a school where deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing students are mixed together in class. She tells a great story about one of the facets of life that can get overlooked when educating children who are deaf.
Today in 1st grade one of my Deaf students farted loudly in class and other students turned to look at them. The following is a snippet of a 15 minute conversation that happened entirely in American Sign Language among the group of Deaf students and I.
Kid 1: Why are they looking at me?
Me: Because they heard you fart.
Kid 1: Whhhhat do you mean?!?!
Me: Hearing people can hear farts.
Kid 2: Totally horrified Wait, they can hear all farts?!?!
Me: Well no. Not all farts but some of them yes.
Kid 3: How do you know which farts they can hear and which farts they can’t?
There's a lot more to the conversation you can read at Facebook, and it gets funnier as it goes. Trupiano talked to Good magazine about the incident as an example of the isolation kids experience when their families aren't fluent in American Sign Language.
Tupiano hopes her funny story about bodily functions will inspire others to become more involved with the deaf community by learning sign language.
“I would love to see a world where my students can learn about anything from anyone they interact with during their day,” she told GOOD. “Whether that means learning about the solar system, the candy options at a store, or even farts, it would be so great for them to have that language access anywhere they go.”
-via Metafilter
(Image credit: Towsonu2003~commonswiki)