Emi's Journal

The ones who've got this whole thing figured out…..
 

Today at work I tagged along again to the deaf/hard of hearing camp to sample macroinvertebrates. I went last Tuesday as well, and had a pretty good time.

It's an interesting group. A combination of deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing kids. The hearing kids have family members that are deaf or hard of hearing. So there's quite a range.

Today we had a couple really good groups. They were interested and really engaged in both the splashing around in the river (and who doesn't like getting in waders and splashing around in the river?) and the identification part. I spent the bug hunting part picking up caddisflies by the handfuls, which impressed the kids. They then wanted to find caddisflies, which meant we got an awful lot of caddisflies….. They're also big and awesome looking, so that helped. The second group was particularly caddis-centric, and we got way more than we needed.

My favorite kid was a completely deaf kid in the first group that did not want to stop bug hunting. I kept having to tap him on the shoulder and attempt to signal that it was time to get out of the water. He just wanted to stay and look for critters. Which I completely understand, and it was fun to see.

I also had a pretty cool experience with the second group. I was hanging out by a bucket that had a ton of caddisflies in it (as most of them did). I like to take one or two out of their encasements, and show the kids what they look like. So I did that, and ended up with several hard of hearing kids hanging out with me, checking out the caddisflies. We were enjoying watching them walk around, and taking them out so they could walk on our hands. This was all done with very little communication, as most of them could not hear very well, and were difficult for me to understand.

It came up at one point that sometimes these kids are hard to read, because you do not get the verbal feedback that you get with other groups. But I don't really think that's true. You can watch them playing in the river, and you can tell. And while they seem to be a pretty quiet group, when they do communicate, you can hear it. I had one girl in the second group that had a laugh that you could practically feel, just because she was enjoying a bucket of aquatic bugs. How cool is that?
 

I've been enjoying working with kids, but this group seems particularly cool to me. Why? Maybe because part of me thinks they should be different, but they're really not. Maybe because it's harder to communicate with them, so there ends up being less structure in what we are doing, and more of just having fun. Isn't that what it's all about? That's why I love my job, after all. Because I get to have FUN! I wonder if I can communicate that better with this group, because we communicate through activity, and not through speech. Here, I can't really tell you why this is fun, but I can SHOW you! I think that's it. Talking doesn't do a lot of good, it's the actions that count.
 

Yep, they've got this figured out. It doesn't take a lot of words, all you need to do is allow them the opportunity to enjoy it themselves. Show them the joy, and they will get it. You don't need to tell them, they understand.