Language My Native Language

When I was reading the story "Learning My Native Language, I was thinking she has been through so much! She went through school without an interpreter and relied heavily on lip reading. When she said that she called her teacher Miss Queer and it upped her social level, I laughed because I know she didn’t mean to say that but it made her friends. It was good to see as I was reading she was overcoming her obstacles.

         I felt empathy for her because I grew up in a mainstream school but the last two years of my high school in a deaf school. I don’t know how I became Hard of Hearing. It was either when I was born I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck or I got sick when I was few years old. I only had hearing aids to support me. I had to read everyone’s lips but I could hear a little. I struggle a little in elementary school because I couldn’t understand some things. In middle school I had a teacher that helps me with all my homework and he could sign. He helped me a lot. In high school I was struggling just a tad but I pulled through and then I moved to a deaf school. It felt easy for me and I had good grades. When I got to Gallaudet University I felt awkward because I used mostly home signs and was still learning ASL. My family mostly talks loud around me so I can hear them. All my life people ask me why I talk so funny or why I have an accent. I would then tell them I don’t know or I say I’m from Florida. Others would say I talk good for a deaf person.

         At the end of the reading, I still felt empathy for her. I know what she went through because I have been through some myself. Her native language is English, just like my native language is English. I grew up speaking and sometimes interpreting for my brother because my family knows a little bit of signs. She is an professor at a hearing college I think because she mentions she lets the students know that she will sometimes ask to repeat their questions or comments. I think it is cool because I want to be a teacher at either a public school or a deaf school. She can do anything and so can I.