Teaching+Experiences

Student Teaching at WPSD

I did my student teaching at Western PA School for the Deaf. It didn't look like this picture taken in 1892, but it was not much more modern when I was there. I lived on the 3rd floor of "Old Main," where the headmaster once lived.

I got my teacher training in the midst of the oral v. manual controversy and did not know any sign language at the time, but my first student teaching assignment was a middle school class with six very wild, non-verbal students and their frightened teacher. (not a good fit from any perspective). I knew almost nothing about behavior management and every night, I would look up and practice all the signs I thought I would need for my lesson the next day (talk about providing a pathetic language model for one's students).

My second assignment was in the preschool building with 2 and 3 year olds, using the auditory-verbal method. I have always been really good with young kids, but in this case, I was slow to make the transition from big, strict, middle school teacher to mellow, nurturing preschool teacher. I guess I was being really mean to these poor little deaf kids and did not even realize it until my cooperating teacher called me on it. I was totally embarrassed by my own behavior.

Two days after graduating from Penn State, I started my first real job in the field. I was hired as the first itinerant teacher of the deaf at Capital Area IU. (I continued to work at CAIU for the next 33 years in various capacities.) I felt so ill-prepared as a classroom teacher, I was ecstatic to be an itinerant, even though I wasn't sure what that role was supposed to look like. It took me two years to build up the confidence to venture into a full time classroom position, and I landed at the IU's middle school class. I spent the next 8 years trying to survive the hormonal changes and "cat" fights of young adolescents and prayed that just once, I could reuse a lesson plan I had created the year before. It never happened.