Narrative Essay On Deaf Culture

670 Words2 Pages

I grew up as the only deaf person in my family with zero knowledge of deaf culture. I was naïve about the existence of the culture until I transferred to the Newton North High School in 2010 as junior year. The Newton North offered support for deaf students in mainstream classes. Before that, I was the only deaf student in a school. I used FM (Frequency Modulation) system that used to help me hear better with my hearing aid and had a paraprofessional for taking notes in classes. On the first day of being a junior, I was flabbergasted to see other students signing each other. For the first time, I was excited to meet them and realized I was not alone. For being a slow learner, it took a long patience for me to be able to interact and communicate with other students without pauses. After graduating from the Newton North, I went to RIT/NTID. Before I went to college, I visited my grandmother and a few relatives in Beijing, China. During that time, I went to an apartment where I met a Deaf girl. When I introduced to her, there was no communication. She neither had formal education or sign language. When I attempted to sign with her, she would run away to her room or look around wall without making eye contact directly. She lived with her parents who had no desire to support her future, but letting her do …show more content…

I am still learning ASL and implement with facial expressions based on conversations. I still did not know about many prominent deaf people besides Thomas Edison, Robert F. Panara and Marlee Matlin. I have many deaf friends who knew about deaf stories that were unknown to me. For example, I heard about the story of Helen Keller’s accomplishments of being a deaf/blind woman. Their past stories never stop to fascinate me. Their stories also got me curious about how were Deaf people like and their life in the past because there were no accessible technology during their time

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