Turning the Tide: Making Life Better for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Schoolchildren
At Gina's 60th birthday party, she shared that she had been thinking for some time about writing a second book.   Her first book, Alone in the Mainstream: A Deaf Woman Remembers Public School was published in 2004 and she had been feeling for some time that the story was unfinished. The individuals she had featured in that book were among the first beneficiaries of IDEA.  However, what she actually found was that the majority of them had received no support services during their K - 12 years -- schools were slow to actually enforce IDEA.  Surely all these years later, you would think things had changed. However, Gina strongly doubted the changes were in the right direction.  She wanted to investigate and this time around, she was hoping to not have to do it alone.Linda was at that birthday party and one of Gina's biggest writing fans.  In fact, she later learned she was the first local person to congratulate Gina on Alone in the Mainstream - perhaps one of the first people to read it.  After that book's publication we had invited each other to collaborate on several chapters in edited books, and we discovered we worked well together.   Those brief writing endeavors only somewhat prepared us for our experience over the course of the past two years researching and writing Turning the Tide.  That our combined academic and personal assets would so seamlessly produce a book-length publication that neither of us could have accomplished alone was quite a joy!  We set out with a very general sense of who would do what in sharing the load, but as things proceeded we developed a natural give and take as well as a consideration for each other's constraints.  If Linda was overwhelmed with the work her faculty position required, Gina would pick up the slack.  If Gina was sequestered in her beloved and sacred beach town, Linda would do likewise.  Happily, it just worked.We started out by getting together for coffee a few times to discuss our vision for the book, since we would need to send a proposal to the Gallaudet University Press.  We knew we wanted it to be a follow up to Alone in the Mainstream, so that readers could see what changes have occurred as the result of IDEA being in operation for another decade.  Data from focus groups and a survey of deaf and hard of hearing adults in the 18-34 age group would for sure become the core of the book.   Fortunately Linda was still "working," meaning drawing a salary from Gallaudet, so we were hopeful we could get a little research funding to support the focus groups.We already knew of, but rehashed anyway, our mutual deep sense of responsibility towards the "children of our hearts" - deaf and hard of hearing children.  Linda talked about her 30+ years as a practicing psychologist -- she has seen and heard first hand the challenges faced by these children and their families and also by the adults these children grow to become.  She has worked with many "solitaires," that is, alone in the mainstream survivors.  Gina talked about her father, and her perception that his life was greatly and negatively influenced by his lifelong alone in the mainstream choice.  All she had learned in her many years working at Gallaudet further fueled this passion - she had met many solitaires and recognized herself as one as well.We talked about Gallaudet University and our droves of students -- Gina had been on the faculty for 18 years and Linda for 7 at the time.   Gallaudet enrolls deaf and hard of hearing students of all backgrounds and an ever-increasing number of students are from general education settings.  We both had bright, capable students telling us miserable stories about their K - 12 years.  It really bothered us that prior to coming to Gallaudet, many of them were so alone in their misery.  As we chatted over our lattes, it hit us hard that life in general education classrooms was likely much worse for those who were leaving school with no chance of making it into college or perhaps not even making it to their high school diploma.  All these bright stars, with their lights dimmed because doctors or parents or educators determined that they must be molded to be the same as everyone else -- as much like a "normal person" as one could be.  Someone needed to speak up for all of these individuals.We agreed that our book would highlight the voices of people who had "been there, done that," meaning actual deaf and hard of hearing individuals who had been mainstreamed alone for a good part of their K-12 years.  We were both totally sold on the idea of doing a retrospect, having "young" (meaning younger than the folks who Gina interviewed for the 2004 publication) adults tell us what it was like for them.  We both believe strongly in the value of the retrospect.   Deaf and hard of hearing children currently in school are not able to understand fully what they are missing, or that they in fact would like something different.  We knew that children would often simply convey what they think significant adults want to hear.That our book would include information about summer and weekend programs was another easy decision. Using research grants, Gina had spent several summers (and several weekends) observing at 15+ summer camps and weekend retreats for middle and high school kids.  Every fall semester her returning students would have animated discussions about how they had spent part of their summers working at these Deaf Camps. This gave her an intuitive sense that such camps and programs could surely provide the social support and connections that "solitaires" were missing when they were alone in the mainstream.  We wanted to be sure to have a chapter or two about what she discovered with those grant funds.After ample reading of relevant, recent scholarly articles and books, we decided that everyone involved with deaf and hard of hearing children - parents, teachers, administrators, aunts and uncles, neighbors - everyone would do well to understand the back story and not-so-obvious issues embedded behind the scenes in the everyday lives of deaf and hard of hearing kids in school today.  We aimed to have a chapter or two specifically about the two professions that have emerged along with the burgeoning of the alone in the mainstream phenomena.  In talking with various classroom interpreters and teachers we sensed their distress.  We wanted our readers to understand that it is not individuals who are failing their students -- it is the educational system that is failing deaf and hard of hearing students.Thus we have a chapter that gives our best to help the reader understand the system and all its entrenchments, and we appeal to readers to do something, anything, to "make life better" and this includes ultimately working at state and federal levels.   An additional chapter enlightens the reader into what certain individuals and organizations are already doing towards that end - we want to applaud these individuals.  We want to show that we are not alone in our dismay at the current state of affairs, and that many savvy individuals have been and are being part of the change that is so desperately needed.