Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes

It depresses me when I see the sky white with smoke today, yesterday, for the foreseeable future, the imaginable future, it all gets to me I have to admit. I know we talk to our therapists and they say “there’s no point in worrying about what we can’t control”, which makes practical sense. But for me I get affected by the Smokey skies, hurricane seasons, endless wars and bloodshed, the dominance of the American dollar, and the English Language, the lack of global literacy, the missing of our global communities power to save the earth. I watched recently, and I think I may have written about it at the time, but it was a positive thinking speaker and how everything is true, there are Smokey skies here but blue skies somewhere else and the sky will return to blue again. In stead of letting your thoughts be negative the theory was to focus on the opposite of the negative thought, the positive thought. Accept the conditions as they are but live a positive life with in them. I truly want to do that. Believe me, that is my goal in life. But I can’t ignore the oppression and destruction happening in the world either. It’s a flaw I have and it keeps me up nights with insomnia and stresses my body with over exertion, anxiety, remaining in fight or flight for too long.

At the same time as this emotional and psychological turmoil I’m experiencing because of things out of my control, I am fully engaged and LOVING the single subject teaching credential material. The only thing I am disappointed in is the lack of integrated Language acquisition training for mainstreamed teachers of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students. The pre-reqs had very little in the Special Education sections of the readings. My literacy class, which I love, but has four sections of adding literacy skills to art lessons, the four domains are Reading, Writing, LISTENING AND SPEAKING. And that’s it, just those four. New teachers need more training on Language acquisition for Deaf and HOH students who are mainstreamed from the get go. I know we are required to take one special ed class next semester, but I doubt there’s a lot of training on Deaf children and American Sign Language or anything specific for DHH students. I know that the system uses the DHH itinerant teachers to train the mainstream teachers when they have a DHH student, but one time at the beginning of a semester is not enough. My final piece of this argument for now is that the training could be interwoven to the curriculum as Teaching Candidates move through the courses. There should also be training in students with ADHD because many students with ADHD are mainstreamed. It’s the only way I see kids with special needs that are mainstreamed getting a fair and equal education.

acrylic on paper 8/2021