Viewing page 10 of 21

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:21:19]
{SPEAKER name="Jan De Lap/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
and equally split between boys and girls, we had separate dorms. We always marched in lines to a large, to a dining room where they had large tables and ten would be able to sit at each.

[00:21:34]
The ratio of adults and small children, you know at ten tables are supposed to teach them table manners, so forth.

[00:21:44]
We sleep in the dorms, young children would sleep in large rooms with perhaps twenty, twenty-five beds in the room. All lined up.

[00:21:54]
As you got older and older we'd move into rooms maybe for four and then maybe in high school be rooms perhaps for two.

[00:22:05]
Really it was weird to explain all these lifestyles in the school. We had house parents, and it was always add to me growing up. House parents for little deaf children usually were hearing people and usually were not skilled in signing.

[00:22:24]
And I don't know why it's difficult sometimes, you know for the communication and in schools, we had hearing teachers for little children also and I think the emphasis was, that we were to learn to speak first,

[00:22:40]
but ASL really spread throughout and among the kids. And we always used it.

[00:22:47]
I think maybe I should pass it on. Let somebody else add to their experience. Let me say because the thee of us come from residential schools, even though they are different states, I think you'll see it's very similar our discussions a lot of commonality of the school experiences.

[00:23:05]
Nowadays there's a lot of changes, but lets see what we'll be sharing.

[00:23:12]
{SPEAKER name="Libby Hathaway/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
I was in, would stay at school during the weekdays and go home every weekend.

[00:23:18]
The first year we hated to go, I hated to go to school because I'd be separated from my parents and live with these hearing house parents, communication, breakdown the barriers, but it was fun to play with the deaf kids.

[00:23:32]
The big group of kids, at home town most of them would be hearing neighbors, and that would be a difference.

[00:23:38]
After two years I really begin to love my school very much and I'd stay there, and I stayed there til I graduated, I'm very grateful to the house parents for training us in many ways. Like how to dress prop—