Turning the Tide: Making Life Better for Deaf and Hard of Hearing School Children

7: Summer and Weekend Programs:If You Build It, They Will Come

146 7 Summer and Weekend Programs: If You Build It, They Will Come “I wanted to take my camp friends home with me.” (Deaf adult looking back on her days at a Deaf camp) In the preceding chapters, we have shared stories, facts, and ideas we have gleaned from focus groups, an online survey, conversations with various professionals (interpreters, interpreter trainers, teachers, consultants, government officials), and the latest relevant research, articles, books, and Web sites from those same professional groups. At this point, we turn attention to a piece of our vision for a better world for deaf and hard of hearing children. Our vision includes an element that provides respite for the children from any isolation they may feel. We hope people will get moving on this element while simultaneously working for systemic change in K–12 school systems. In our view it will be comparatively easier to add to and improve summer and weekend programs than it will be to revamp K–12 systems or improve interpreting education. We are not saying that the latter does not need revamping—we are simply saying that the children cannot wait for that to happen. Gina spent several summers (2005–2010) investigating summer and weekend programs designed specifically for deaf and hard of hearing children around the United States. She conducted this study as a result of conversations with her Summer and Weekend Programs 147 college students returning from their summer vacations, in which invariably at least half of them would talk about working at summer camps for deaf and hard of hearing children. At the time of her study there were approximately 70–80 such summer camps in operation, according to a list maintained by the Clerc Center (the K–12 program located on the campus of Gallaudet University). From hearing these stories, she became convinced that summer programs hold the promise of alleviating some of the socially detrimental effects of mainstreaming, and thus she embarked on that study, visiting over 15 summer and weekend programs over the course of several years. The various summer and weekend camps and programs were diverse in the kinds of activities offered, the background of the staff hired, the geographic distribution of campers, the language skills of campers, and so on. Yet, all had something of value to offer the campers or participants: an opportunity to meet others like themselves. Children in school today need these programs now. Children in school today cannot wait for nationwide or even statewide change to provide the experiences and social capital that they need to be gaining and developing now. Our focus group participants told us loudly and clearly, “We needed to have friends who were like us.” Our focus group participants, now young adults, told us they needed their “deaf fix.” This is the same phenomenon the now older participants of Gina’s first study echoed again and again: “met deaf wow.” Parents, teachers, other school personnel, scholars, and advocates can do much to provide opportunities for a “deaf fix” in summer and weekend programs. These programs, along with technology for staying in touch with these friends, will do much to alleviate the issues raised by our informants. Let us turn to Gina’s study, a first-person account. Conception of a New Research Project Around the time when Alone in the Mainstream was just hitting the shelves, one of my students sent me an email from her personal address, “IBgirl@______.” I thought, “IBGirl??” “What’s that??” Must be some silly play on words, as in “I be a girl.” I was so curious, I had to ask, and I learned that it stood for “Isola Bella Girl.” The student explained that 148 Turning the Tide when she was growing up “alone in the mainstream,” she would attend a summer camp in northwestern Connecticut, Isola Bella. After her first summer there, she could not wait for the school year to be over so she could go back and be with “kids like me,” as she put it. From then on she went to Isola Bella every summer, and she became a counselor when she was old enough. Her connection to this camp was so strong that she christened herself “IBgirl.” I heard variations of this “my summer vacation” theme during many a fall semester over my years teaching at Gallaudet. Listening to these stories, I became more and more convinced that the 70+ summer...