THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601200110
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY REBECCA A. MYERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 186 lines
STANDING AT THE FRONT of the classroom with her left palm facing up, Nina Disbro used the tips of her right fingers to ``slice'' into her left hand.
``What's this?'' she asked the class of seventh-graders engrossed in her hand movements.
``Pie,'' the 17 students called out in unison.
``Right,'' she said. ``You pretend your hand is a pie and you cut yourself a slice of it.''
Disbro, a teacher of the hearing-impaired, began a sign language class this year for seventh-graders at Churchland Middle School. It is the only such course offered in the Portsmouth Public School system.
The class, an elective limited to 20 students per semester, proved so popular that Disbro organized an after-school signing club to accommodate those who couldn't get into the class.
The popularity of the class and club shows just how valuable mainstreaming has become to children with and without disabilities. In this particular case, students with normal hearing can learn to appreciate the silent world of the hearing impaired.
``Some of the students wanted to be able to speak to the two (hearing-impaired) girls here who are in their homeroom,'' she said.
``Originally I thought that the kids who were in the signing class would join the sign club, but that's not the way it turned out,'' she said.
``There were other kids in the school who wanted to learn sign, and they have joined the sign club, too.''
Edward Small, 12, decided to take the class because it looked like fun, he said, signing as he spoke, ``and because if I met up with a hearing-impaired person, I would know what to sign.''
Lacy Moser, also 12, signed up for the class to learn a new language that her sister and some of her friends were already familiar with.
``They'll sit down and spell stuff out and start laughing and pointing, so I just wanted to join in,'' she said.
Last month, class and club members signed two Christmas carols - ``Silent Night'' and ``Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer'' - for the school's PTA holiday program.
``They really enjoyed `Silent Night' because it was slower,'' said Disbro.
``When it came to `Rudolph,' we had to throw out some signs because we could not get them in fast enough,'' she said. ``Small words like `to,' `and,' `the,' those kinds of words. They had a difficult time with that, but they did a good job on both of them. It was real impressive.''
Disbro basically teaches what is called pidgin, a mixture of signed English and American Sign Language (ASL).
Signed English is putting signs to every word in a sentence. The structure of the sentence is not changed. The words are left exactly the same, with each word being signed.
American Sign Language is the language of the deaf. It is their own language and includes facial expressions. With ASL, the overall meaning or gist of a sentence can be captured in a single gesture.
``It's like a pendulum,'' the teacher explained. ``You've got conceptually accurate on one side, pidgin in the middle and ASL on the other side.''
Facial expressions play a crucial role in precisely conveying the appropriate message, said Disbro.
``Raising the eyebrows, shaking the head, even leaning toward the person you're talking to means something,'' she said. ``Just a simple change in the eyebrows can change some sentences to a question.''
Though facial expressions are not difficult to learn, her students often shy away from them, she said. When asked to sign ``cry,'' most were not able to do so without a slight grin - if not on their lips, then in their eyes.
``If you're going to sign `cry,' you don't smile,'' Disbro reminded her students. ``You look sad. Sign it as though you are sad.''
After English and Spanish, sign language is the third most frequently used language in the country. To Disbro, mastering sign language can be a little more difficult than picking up a foreign language.
``The sentence structure in ASL is very different,'' she said. ``You can take a whole sentence and sign it in one or two signs. That makes it difficult.
``ASL is more like making a picture in space. If you were signing, `The cup is on the table,' all you'd have to sign is `table,' and there's a sign for `cup,' and you'd put the cup on the table,'' she said. ``It's a visual language.''
In addition to learning hand shapes and movements, Disbro provides her students with a history of sign language and an understanding of the deaf culture.
``We talk about how the deaf community exists in the hearing world,'' she said. ``Things that are OK with the deaf but not necessarily proper in our culture, like pointing. Pointing is perfectly fine in their culture, but it's not in ours.''
Disbro also talks about deafness itself - how it's caused and the reasons for hearing loss.
``We go over a lot of advocacy rights,'' she said. ``We spend a whole unit on communication and safety devices that are available'' to the hearing-impaired.
Using work sheets and videotapes in her daily lesson plans, Disbro has taught her students signs for people, food, money, recreation and household items in the 18 weeks since the first semester began.
``They've learned about 800 words,'' she said. ``Some of them are going to retain more than others, but they've been exposed to that many words.''
According to Disbro, reading sign language is more difficult than actually signing it.
``And I've got a few in here that are very good in reading signs,'' she said.
Disbro, who has been teaching for 20 years, received her undergraduate degree in deaf education from Atlantic Christian College (now called Barton College) in Wilson, N.C. She also has a master's degree from East Carolina University.
``When I went to school, I had no idea what I wanted to be,'' she conceded. ``And the group of friends that I hung around with were all in the deaf education department.
``We would go out to the `Wilson School for the Deaf' in North Carolina, and I just became fascinated with the kids. I knew I wanted to do something with kids, and I really enjoyed working with them, so I decided that was the direction I would go.''
Disbro teaches math, English, social studies and science in a self-contained class for two hearing-impaired students. The two girls share an interpreter for the classes they attend with hearing students in physical education and home economics.
It was about 1982 when hearing-impaired students were first mainstreamed into public schools in Portsmouth, said Sharon P. Warren, principal of the DAC (Diagnostic, Adjustive and Corrective) Center for Learning, a special education school for preschoolers.
Currently, 18 Portsmouth students have hearing impairments that require them to use sign-language services, while another 19 are considered hard-of-hearing.
The hearing-impaired students all attend school within the Churchland zone, where four teachers work with the deaf, two work with the hard-of-hearing and eight serve as sign-language interpreters. There are also two paraprofessionals who work within self-contained classrooms.
According to Disbro, there are many more advantages to mainstreaming hearing-impaired children than disadvantages.
``When they get out of school, they're going to be in a hearing world, so by putting them in classes with the hearing students, you're exposing them to the world that they're going to exist in,'' she said. ``Plus, they're able to learn from the other students.''
One of the biggest challenges of mainstreaming, she said, is faced by the interpreter, who may find it difficult to convey the numerous discussions that often occur simultaneously in a classroom.
``You can also run into some problems with vocabulary, where the interpreter would need extra time to explain to the hearing-impaired student what certain words mean.
``Vocabulary is one of their weaknesses. We learn words by listening to people talk, from TV and overhearing conversations, but deaf kids miss out on that.''
Some of the most difficult concepts to grasp for people who are born deaf are words that have more than one meaning.
``Your multiple-meaning words are hard for the kids to catch on to,'' said Disbro. ``We usually attach one definition to a word, and if it's used in a different situation, then they have trouble figuring out how that word works in that situation.''
The word ``run'' is an example. The hearing-impaired may have trouble differentiating between a ``running child'' or a ``run in your stocking.''
Also challenging are idioms, phrases that mean something different than their literal definition, as in ``she heard it straight from the horse's mouth.''
``I take care of foster kids, and the first kids I took care of were three deaf siblings,'' said Disbro.
``They stayed with me for about two years, and I remember one time saying something like, `We're going to pig out tonight.'
``Well, they actually got up and ran to the window to see where the pig was.''
One of Disbo's primary goals, she said, is to bridge the cultural gap between hearing and deaf worlds.
Her two hearing-impaired students often sit in on her sign language class to provide feedback to her students.
``The girls are real honest about who they can read and who they can't read,'' said Disbro. ``They interact with the kids in the class really well.
``They're curious why the other kids want to learn sign, and they're fascinated that there are so many kids in the class and in the club.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos above and on the cover by MARK MITCHELL
This is the text book used to teach how to communicate with the
hearing impaired.
Joy Small signs the word ``cereal'' during a lesson focusing on
foods at Churchland Middle School. Churchland is the only Portsmouth
school to offer the class.
Students Jennifer Betterton, from left above, and Lynne Virgilio try
their hands at the word ``vegetable.'' Stuart Baiza waits his turn.
Their teacher, Nina Disbro, at right, begins to demonstrate
``pepper.''
by CNB