A long-overdue update

August was a busy month for me as I went to Cue Camp New England and then on to North Carolina and the Middle Ground Lighthouse in Virginia for my vacation. In a matter of two weeks I flew from Chicago to Portland, from Boston to Raleigh, and from Raleigh to Chicago. Five different airports in 13 days. Talk about racking up the frequent flyer miles.

Cue Camp New England took place at the Governor Baxter SchoolFalmouth, just a stone’s throw away from Portland in Maine. Throughout the week I served as the counselor coordinator, sitting in different cue classes during the mornings and taking the kids out for various activities, including a challenge course and science hands on “experiments.” One of the highlights was the fact that Dr. Cornett’s son and family took time out of their month-long vacation to come to camp to learn to cue. Stanley had already gone off to school at the time Dr. Cornett developed Cued Speech, so he never had the chance to learn to cue until now, 6 years after his father’s passing. In a way it was surreal for me to be helping teach Stanley and his family the basics of the system. I know Dr. Cornett would be proud to see his granddaughter already having such a great handle on cueing the first night of camp.

It had been almost a year since I had last been to North Carolina since I moved to Chicago last October. I spent some time with each parent in Wilmington and Raleigh. I managed to surf some small waves so at least that barely whetted my appetite. Only if I had been on the Outer Banks for the hurricane swell the week before. My father’s side of the family threw a picnic and it would be the first time my girlfriend ever met any of my extended family. I think it’s safe to say they approve of her.

While in North Carolina I took time to attend the Annual Middle Ground Lighthouse party in Newport News, VA. The Middle Ground Lighthouse, owned by my friend’s family, stands at the mouth of the James River at the Hampton Crossroads within eyesight of the Norfolk Naval Base. Accessible only by boat, the light house serves as an eccentric vacation home and a great get-away from reality. There I was able to spend time with friends I’ve known since I was little. Many of the party-goers grew up with Cued Speech, whether as a deaf cuer or as a sibling. Some of us hadn’t met each other before, but we all bonded as if we were family.

All good things must come to an end so I headed back to Chicago where I began to prepare for the move to St. Louis. Here it all began to sink in that I would be going to graduate school for two years. I didn’t know what to expect other than that I’d be the only male and deaf adult in the program. Yet I was eager to begin my studies so I could share my experience and knowledge of Cued Speech with others who for the most part know little about it. I remember a saying that one of my professors at NC State had, “undergrad is about learning, but graduate school is learning AND teaching.” That little grain of wisdom would stay with me as I started my career as a graduate student.

The past few weeks I’ve been getting settled here in the dorm on campus and have explored a little bit of the city, including the St. Louis Arch itself. I really haven’t had anything major in terms of assignments other than a lot of reading, yet I know that the second year will be quite a doozy as I’ll have practicum everyday in the mornings and classes in the afternoons, plus an independent study project. The subjects range from clinical audiology to normal language development to basic acoustic measures to anatomy and physiology of hearing. The first semester serves as a scientific foundation for understanding the different aspects of deafness from language to speech to hearing so that teachers of the deaf will be prepared for all the possible scenarios that might occur during their career.

I currently work as a “recreational aide” at lunch in the CID school, so it’s quite a learning experience as I work with these deaf and hard of hearing kids. The job pretty much entails babysitting those kids and making sure they don’t get too rowdy in the lunch room or during recess. I think that most people would be surprised to see what goes on here since there have been a lot of myths perpetrated by the deaf community about the “atrocities” of oral deaf schools. Given that the school has been in existence for 95 years, it’s expected that CID will have a lot of experience with oral education and I’m seeing quite a lot of progress in most of the children. Of course there are those who have issues or came into the program with such a late start so therefore their language will be delayed, but that’s not a reflection on the school itself rather than it is on the importance of early intervention.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the next two years here at Wash U.