the letter...

Sally is on the far left.

This is the letter I referred to in my last post. The one from Sally's dance teacher when she was 4 years old. It is VERY splotchy and hard to read, so I am going to do my best to type it out. It is so touching. Anyone who reads it will benefit. I promise.

Sallie has made an excellent adjustment to our school situation. She is in a class with 20 other three and four year olds. At the beginning of the school term each child was given a hook in the coat room. Sallie now removes her own coat and hangs it in her place without assistance. She answers the roll by raising her hand. When we sing she sits very still and watches the movements of my mouth, joining in with gestures.

Her progress in tap, ballet, and acrobatics has been consistent. She can change her own shoes and replaces them in her shoe bag. She responds well to the other children and teachers. I know what these classes have done for Sallie. Not what I nor any of the other teachers have done, but what a group of children her own age have done.

You see, to me Sallie was a handicapped child, but to the children Sallie was just "Another child". As far as adjustment and problems, what three of four year old leaving Mother for the first time doesn't have a hard time adjusting. Sallie's adjustment was better than many of her classmates.

Sallie had been in dancing school for about two months when a child tried to remover her hearing aid. (She wanted to "hear" what Sallie "heard"). I explained that she could not wear it as Sallie had to wear it so that one day it might help her learn to talk; (the same way that other children wear glasses to help them see). That was the only time the hearing aid was ever mentioned.

Sallie needs children, but "normal" children need Sallie, too. At Christmas we have a party for all of our pre-school children. As we do not have room for games to be played, the "entertainment" usually consists of the children performing (singing, poems, dancing) in groups or individually. Sallie raises her hand in response to roll call, but never before had she done so to express a desire to "perform" or "take her turn". She sat for a long time watching the children when she suddenly raised her hand. I called her and she walked to the center of the room. She stood there for a moment and began to look frightened. Just then three little classmates began to clap. I walked over to take her hand and when I did she placed her other little hand against her cheek and said "Ball" and then "bye-bye". (Sallie's spoken vocabulary was limited to those 2 words at that time). She returned to her seat seeing the pride in the faces of her classmates. Sallie had been given the best gift a child can receive...acceptance...and she gave back in exchange all that she knew to give...her 2 words...words that had been labored for a long time...words that most parents and children take for granted...but not the children in Sallie's class. They love her and are proud of her every accomplishment.

We have many handicapped children in our school; the shy, the aggressive, the love-starved, the undisciplined, and the "protected" child. These handicaps are usually harder to cope with than the physically handicapped.

I hope that Sallie will be given a chance to prove herself in other "normal" groups before entering the deaf school in 1970. After that she will have little contact with the hearing world until she finishes school. Maybe when she returns to our hearing society she will feel less frightened and more a part of it, because of a memory...a memory of a hearing world ready to accept a deaf adult just as they had a small deaf child on the basis of what she had rather than what she did not have.

Marybell Hennock