A Deaf Professor Among Deaf Students: A Liberal Arts University

• In Event: Examining Ourselves in Service of Our Mission: Teaching Leadership for Social Justice

Abstract

As a child attending public school and an oral education program for the deaf, I often wondered if there were any adults like me. During my PK-12 school years I never met a deaf adult, a role model, someone to look up to and say, “I want to be like you.” I learned nothing about the Deaf community. I was the first and only Deaf student admitted to my hearing undergraduate university. Many professors had little understanding of what it was like to be deaf or how to allow me to learn in their classes. Today, I am a professor and in a university that primarily serves Deaf students. As a Deaf person and because of my academic experiences, I always work toward achieving an inclusive classroom when considering pedagogy, equity, and language access. As a Deaf leader I encourage students to develop their leadership skills and to understand the integral role of social justice in leadership.
In our university Deaf students come from the U.S. and approximately 57 other countries. In the U.S. alone, three educational pathways exist for deaf students. The first is through mainstreaming into public schools either through inclusion, in which the deaf student is placed with hearing students, or in self-contained classrooms with other deaf students or students with other disabilities. A second path places student in an oral school in which they learn through lip reading instruction. In the third path students attend a residential or day school with a curriculum designed specifically for Deaf students, including the acquisition of a visual language, American Sign Language (ASL). Deaf students come from a variety of backgrounds including international students. As an instructor I must understand their cultures and educational backgrounds but also reflect on how their socio-cultural identities and languages inform and impact my teaching and students’ learning. It is critical for me as an instructor to practice social justice, as well as to teach it, as I respond to my students. Further, I must communicate with my students about how my teaching affects what they are learning.
Perceptions and experiences of injustice vary with race, ethnicity, hearing or Deaf, and many other descriptors of human kind and produce opinions and sometimes prejudices in us. Our faculty varies in all these critical ways. So, we find that there is a myriad of interpretations of how social justice plays out in our classrooms and our university. Justice demands that we place the learning and preparation of our students above our prejudices.

Author

• Catherine Ann O'Brien, Gallaudet University