Mishka Zena

Several months ago while I was researching the deaf schools facing budget cuts and planned school closings, an alumnus alerted me of a Deaf school where the deaf kids in an oral program are segregated from the Deaf students using ASL in the same building. These groups reportedly are not allowed to socialize or even speak to each other. 
Two weeks [...]

Some of the Deaf children don’t do well in mainstreamed programs.  Often the regular teachers  don’t have any formal training to educate the Deaf students. An increasing shortage of qualified interpreters impedes with the public education system’s ability to provide accessible education to these students.  For mainstreamed Deaf solitaire, a lack of social opportunities due to communication barriers adds to their sense of [...]

One of the items under the economic stimulus bill was a $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture films.
That is what it comes down to?  Movies are more valuable than the education of the children, including Deaf children?  Two state schools,  South Dakota School for the Deaf and Scranton State School for [...]

So my question is… do the state governments have the power to close the deaf schools (the state-funded schools particullarly) just to trim the spending costs of the state budgets? Doesn’t it violate NCLB laws? What about Public Law 142? I am just trying to understand the sense or wisdom of the states’ actions toward [...]

“Show some courage; speak up and make your voices heard. Teachers,
alumni, students, parents of deaf schools need your help now. Pls do not
wait until our school problems get out of control before you write nice
letters. We do not want your nice coffins when we are dead with
frustrations and sadness. Pls wake up now not later [...]

LSD reopened yesterday, closing a painful chapter that begun over a month ago when an older Deaf student, a 16 years old male, sexually abused a six years old female Deaf student in a bus.  The supervising chaperon was alerted by an alarmed student, but due to her limited familiarity of ASL, she ignored the [...]

CSD-R was plagued with problems for some time, including tensions between hearing and Deaf teachers and staff and poor academic performances of its students.  If I recalled correctly,  a Deaf superintendent was hired, but she was terminated after her push for a bilingual/bicultural approach was rejected by some hearing teachers.  Unfortunately the school personnel wasn’t [...]

I read with amusement about how Jay Leno commited a faux pas when he mocked the headline of an article titled Barbershop Singers Bring Joy to Deaf School (by lip-synching the words of the songs). Apparently his joke outraged some people, demanding an apology from Leno to the oral deaf educational program, which he wisely did.  However, [...]

As we discussed not too long ago, unfortunately sexual abuses do occur in deaf residential schools, just like the hearing boarding schools and day programs, both hearing and deaf. However with better laws and supervisions, these violations are usually caught and referred to the law authorities to handle, unlike the earlier times where these incidents [...]

Being out of town for the last two weeks,  I was away from the computer most of the time, especially in the first week. The break from the Deaf Cyberspace was refreshing while I attended to important family matters. Now that I’m back, I’ve decided to cut down the amount of blogging to some degree from now on to [...]