Okay Todd, Bring on the Comments
Well, I didn't think I would be posting for awhile. But Todd promised to read this one twice, among various other things... so here it goes.I live with a Deaf girl... sort of. She was Deaf all her life, and still is really... anyway, she has a cochlear implant, so she can hear now, more or less, but she still is Deaf. Her name is Aubrey, and in the past month I have learned a great deal about people from her.
You see, she reacts to what people say and do far differently than I ever would. This may seem normal, and is on some level, after all people are different and therefore react to things differently. Sometimes however, her reaction is so extremely different. She divulges information from her life to people she hardly knows, things I probably wouldn't even tell my mom right away, because its just that personal.
Additionally, she sometimes gets really offended by what someone says or does and when she tells me about it I think, hm, that doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
This has really taught me to pay attention to what I say and do, and how I take what other people say and do. I could sit here and say her differences stem from the differences between the hearing world and the Deaf world. However, she basically lived in the hearing world for all of her Deaf life. I have always tried to be nice to people, but that whole thing about sarcasm etc has really hit home for me lately. There are just certain things about people's upbringing that really, essentially mean they grew up in a differ
ent culture than I did. So, life lesson for the month, watch what you say. I'm sure this isn't as eloquent as Elder Holland's talk and President Faust's talk from the last conference, but I guess what I'm saying is that it has really hit home to me lately. You never know how what you say affects others. I think this goes along with Elder Bednar's 
talk about not being offended too because sometimes people just don't realize that what they say hurts you because they are from a different culture. So, learn the languages of love, and learn how to discover what other people's love languages are so you can express your love for them to them in the best way possible.
talk about not being offended too because sometimes people just don't realize that what they say hurts you because they are from a different culture. So, learn the languages of love, and learn how to discover what other people's love languages are so you can express your love for them to them in the best way possible.
Comments
So, there you go...
When I was student teaching I had about 5-8 deaf students. It was really interesting to see how they viewed the world. Before I was teaching them I thought that I was a "hands on" learner. I was wrong. I am not a hands on learner. I realized that because I met people who actually are hands on learners. They need to use all their senses to learn something. Without hearing learning takes on a new spin, for both the student and the teacher. I had to change the way that I approached the class, but that really benefited everyone. I provided everyone with my lecture notes, the examples that I used to prepare the notes, and I stopped using worlds like "this," "that," and "it."
It was a sweet experience.