Korean Job Discussion Forums

[EMKAYES]

My elementary school has decided I should teach grades 1 and 2, which I don't mind but the 1st grade has only 2 students and one is deaf.

I have no experience of teaching children with disabilities and I'm a little stuck. My co-teacher speaks little to no English. Chants and songs are out and I was told "teach just writing."
I feel as though I am going into territory I am untrained for and unsure how to handle.
This obviously calls for a different teaching method, and I feel I may fall short on improving the English of either student, however I will try my best.
If any one has experience or ideas I would be very grateful.

Thanks.

[Mi Yum mi]

You should not be teaching students with special needs. Tell you teachers you refuse to do this.

[mistermasan]

how deaf? can the kid speak korean? observe him in other clases and see what the other teachers do.

assess the situation. i knew deaf guys who grew up in "normal" (?) families who could speak well enough.

[EMKAYES]

I don't think he is completely deaf. He can't speak Korean and the kids he plays with just use a kind of sign language. He has just come up from Kindergarten so I am not sure what other teachers are doing in their classes. I will try and observe a class first.

[pandapanda]

Definitely see how his other teachers handle him. A class of 2 seems remarkably small.

[EMKAYES]

Yeh, its a small school.
Grade:
1st - 2 students
2nd - 3 students
3rd - 4 students
4th - 4 students
5th - 5 students
6th - 2 students

[mrsquirrel]

You could have hours of fun sneaking up behind him and scaring him.

[pandapanda]

[cmr]

With that many students, I'm sure you won't have too much of a hard time learning their names!

[thatwhitegirl]

Wow, tough one. I'd say use a lot of flashcards. Get ones with pictures, and another set with words. They can match them up. Make alphabet cards and show a picture, and have them spell it.
Good luck.

[I-am-me]

[idonojacs]

Wow! That's fantastic!

If the kid was much older, that would be more of a challenge. But first grade, he is just learning language. He could almost learn English as a FIRST language.

If you want to teach back home, this is a golden opportunity to gain experience. Special ed teachers are in great demand in the U.S. and get paid more.

You've got a small school, though there are smaller, believe it or not, so you can give the kid some attention. If you had 600 kids, it would be a frustrating waste of time.

Sit down and think this through. There are tons of things you can do. Some you can think up by yourself. Others you could develop by contacting experts. But if you make progress, you are going to earn yourself a great job recommendation.

There are many schools for the deaf. Contact them. There must be people doing ESL for foreign deaf children in the U.S. There are bound to be resources.

Did you see the wonderful photo of Helen Keller in the news?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/picture-of-helen-keller-as-a-child-revealed-after-120-years-792781.html

Are you old enough to know who Helen Keller is? To remember when she was still alive? Deaf and blind from infancy. Yet inside was an astonishing person of enormous intelligence. There is something on youtube showing her talking. There is a movie about her and her teacher called "The Miracle Worker."

Did you know that the father of the internet, Vint Cerf, is profoundly deaf? So was his wife, but she got a cochlear implant and can now speak like she was never deaf; I had a chance to talk with her about this. She said it was hard courting as teens because they both needed interpreters when using the phone.

Now deaf people are no longer isolated, thanks to the internet and email, both of which use written language.

Show the kid how to play a simple game on the internet in English with someone from another country, or how to communicate by email, and I bet he will become your most enthusiastic student. Maybe he will grow up to become a computer programmer.

Surely, there are ways to teach English to deaf kids using computers.

And think back to how you learned to read in first grade:

See Jane run. See Dick run after Jane. Will Dick catch Jane? Tune in next week.

Maybe you can get paid some overtime for spending extra time with the kid. Ask. Keep in mind that a good public school will be reluctant to ask you to teach beyond your contract hours; they may even be reluctant to let you voluntarily teach more - perhaps a union attitude or something. But you are sitting there half the time, anyhow. I'll bet they can find some extra money. But I'd put in extra time without charge without them asking.

Another idea, encourage the other kids to communicate with the deaf kid in written English. Maybe they can practice e-mailing.

I have noticed some Korean kids teasing kids with disabilities. If you see this, you need to scold them. Encourage them to help the other kid. All they need is a little leadership to realize what is right. But in such a small school, they probably are better about this.

I did volunteer tutoring of blind people a long time ago. I assume there are programs to train tutors for deaf people. At any rate, they say being deaf is worse than being blind because deaf people are cut off from social interaction. Computers have changed this. But keep this problem in mind.

I bet he would be thrilled to get deaf pen pals in foreign countries.

Good luck!

[tomato]

Teach sign language not only to the deaf child, but to the whole class.
It's fun.
As I see it, learnign a foreign language through sign language has certain advantages over TPR.
Read my thread on the subject and learn all about it.

[EMKAYES]

great responses idonojacs and tomato, thanks. I have been doing a lot of research and have some good ideas. There is only 2 students so the individual attention I can give should bring good results.

[jay-shi]

Sounds to me like you have small enough classes to put in the effort to teach this student.

Good on you for bringing it up here, you are a teacher, and obviously care.

For the posters who say say it's not in the contract etc. Come on, are you going to refuse to teach anyone who is not a perfect learning machine? I don't know how long you've been teaching, if teaching is your calling, or who you are for that matter. The greatest achievement in teaching is watching the underdog, the ones nobody thought they'd make it, the slow forgotten, ridiculed ones, actually making it.