Press presentation of a book about a hearing-imparied girl

On June 23rd we went to the school again to attend the press presentation of the children's book ***. This book is written by **** and tells the story of a little girl with hearing impairments. The presentation was in one of the kindergarten classes of the school, where the publisher introduced the book and the author read the story to the class. After this, the children made a painting together with the illustrator of the book.

The press presentation was quite cute, to be honest. Six small children (about 4 years old) sat in a circle and listened to the author when she read the book. All children had a cochlear implant (which we will call CI from now on). I thought these implants (that have both an internal and an external component) were rather big and prominent, as you can see on the photo. What was very remarkable was that all of the children could speak very well and all of them seemed to hear quite well too. They were assertive and not shy at all, despite the fact that their class room was filled with unfamiliar people. After the presentation we had a chance to look around in the class room and at first sight, we did not really see anything out of the ordinary. Later on, the psychologist, showed us around and pointed out some of the visualising teaching methods. One of these methods involves writing down lots of words on the wall (these kids were only 4!) and drawing frames around each word, to emphasize the shape of the word. This apparently helps the children to recognize written words.

After the presentation there was a reception in the garden of the school. Here, we talked a bit more with the psychologist about the project and about deaf children, but we also spoke to three deaf adults, with the help of a sign language translator. This was quite an experiance I have to say! I had actually never spoken to a deaf person before, and I really had to get used to it. I had to force myself to look at the deaf person, and not at the translator. With these three persons, who were active members of Fevlado (Federatie van Vlaamse DovenOrganisaties) and were able to share a lot of information about the culture of the deaf community. An interesting point is that because of the CI's many deaf children learn to understand and speak spoken language very well (as we observed!) and therefore many children do not feel the need to learn sign language. However, at later ages (18-20), many people turn to the deaf community because they miss people who they can really relate to. At that time, many of them also want to use sign language.

All in all a very interesting day with way too much information which we were not able to write down. Fortunately, we will speak with a few employees of the school soon.


Karin