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Chapter 5 Peer Interaction and Communication in the Least Restrictive Environment The adults' ideals about mainstreaming and their dilemmas realizing them were always present at Aspen School although they were not always in the forefront. Everyone had a point of view, but teachers did not generally discuss mainstreaming. Not wishing to be more closely involved, most assumed that the deaf and hard of hearing program and the mainstreaming arrangements were taking care of themselves. Like Mrs. Rogers , many believed that the deaf and hearing children were friendly and kind to each other and played together at recess. Reality indicated otherwise , however, and suggested that features of communication between deaf and hearing peers in the mainstreaming classroom merited a closer look. If the deaf and hearing children truly did play together and get along, how did they accomplish it, especially when the hearing children were not signers and the deaf students were not speakers of English? In addition, it is often claimed that deaf children benefit from the presence of normal models, who are especially helpful for increasing deaf children's communication abilities (especially their English competence) and strengthening their social skills (especially their potential assimilation with hearing people). Mrs. Rogers organized instructional discourse in her classroom very traditionally. Although children sat in clusters of desks, instructional activities were not carried out in groups but by individual children who worked alone, in concert with Mrs. Rogers' spoken instruction. Other than Mrs. Rogers' lectures and exchanges with the children, very little talk occurred during math, science, and social studies instruction in her classroom. The students had one discourse obligation to fulfill: They were responders to teacher instructions, directives, and questions. Sometimes they responded by raising their hands and taking a turn. More often, they listened to a brief explanation and responded by doing a worksheet or a page of arithmetic problems. During seatwork, Mrs. Rogers circulated and presented questions, directives, and evaluations to individual students . As a class, then, second-graders in her room did not have abundant opportunities for using language face-to-face as part of their learning. In her very teacher-centered classroom, as Mrs. Rogers herself noted, any talk during instructional periods that was not directed by her was "underground " and against her rules. Accordingly, none of the students, hearing or deaf, were offered rich opportunities to engage in conversation with her. Despite Mrs. Rogers' best intention, conversations between her and individual deaf students using Mrs. Hart to interpret were rare. Naturally, these strict classroom talking rules were frequently violated among peers, a fact that Mrs. Rogers recognized and selectively corrected. As a result, in the mainstreaming classroom, the richest source of spontaneous interaction for the deaf children was talk among peers. In addition to unofficial peer conversations, children were allowed to converse quietly with the others at their table during art-"rainy day (i.e., indoor) recess "-and during transitions between instructional activities, when routine teacher-directed classroom order was momentarily suspended. Every afternoon Tom, Robbie, and Paul walked over to Mrs. Rogers' room and spent the rest of the school day with the hearing secondgraders . This period usually included afternoon recess. The deaf boys filtered into the room, sometimes in a group and sometimes one by one, and went to their seats. Sometimes Mrs. Hart walked over with them; at other times, if she was interpreting somewhere else, she had to meet them there. If the math lesson had already begun, the boys had to get their bearings by looking around at their classmates, wait for Mrs. Rogers' help locating the correct page, or attend to Mrs. Hart as she interpreted for Mrs. Rogers and helped them catch up. Orienting themselves was not an easy task. For example, one day Robbie raised his hand and kept it up for over four minutes. When he was finally recognized, his question was "Where are we?" He had missed a large section of the worksheet they were going through because he had never figured out what Mrs. Rogers was talking about. Very little interaction occurred in the second-grade classroom. When the deaf children were there, it was for instruction. Mrs. Rogers' pattern (one that seemed common in Aspen School and is conventional in American education in general) was to talk, call on children, write on the board or use other props (e.g., a large clock face), and refer often to the children 's workbooks or worksheets. She also made use of films and objects PeerInteraction and Communication...

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