Finally, after a year of hard work and play, the students are standing proud as Life Long Learners! I felt a little like the Mama bird watching her babies learn to fly...it's time to fly alone..they just needed a little nudge! I watch the students, both hearing and deaf, proudly accept their awards and realize this is what co-teachers do when it works! To have both teachers become part of all of these students education is what co-teaching is about. Mrs. Denham knows the hearing impaired students almost as well as I do and I know her students as well. As the year progressed, the hearing students learn a lot of signs. Often they use them even when not talking with the one of the hearing impaired students...cool huh??? This is just part of my emotional end of the year separation anxiety felt by the mother bird in the co-teaching nest of learning!
Love your blog! Look forward to more post in the future.
ReplyDeleteAwwwww! This is what we all work for! When co-teaching began in earnest at our school, we all hoped to see "our kids" - the hard of hearing - interacting with their hearing peers, but I never thought about the hearing students becoming so familiar with sign language that they would use it automatically. Very, very cool and very, very heart-warming.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see how a student with difficulty paying attention will attend better if someone is interpreting...interesting!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like the makings of an interesting Action Research Project...
ReplyDeleteya know..you may be on to something there
ReplyDelete