Teaching a deaf 16 year old

[Gilly]

Hi guys,
I'm going to teach a 16 year old boy who has no hearing, casting and fishing on the river.
He can lip read which will help but I just wondered if anyone has some good teaching ideas/aids that would help me to help him.
Apparently he can be quite stroppy too so I want to get it right with him.
This will be his first time fishing.
Many thanks Gilly

[Marc LaMouche]

hi Gilly !

i recently had a similar experience and i'd have to say it was the most enriching one i've had so far, both for the students (i think) and for me.

i knew that they could lip read but i tried to avoid talking as much as possible and focused more on describing with my hands and body.

here's an article of the experience on my blog.

please let us know how it went, ok ?

cheers,
marc

[Gilly]

Thanks Marc,
that's really encouraging. Interesting about not really using any language as I am a real talker! I think this will be a great learning experience for me too.
I just hope that I can really help him and I will let you know how it goes
Gilly

[sleepy52]

I'm not an instructor and if I were, the outcome would be bad for all involved, but...

Take a look at Mel Krieger's gestures and pantomimes in his DVDs - very clear and helped me easily as much as his verbiage. For a beginner, the move-stop-pause-move-stop is critical and pretty easy to show with only one word - "stop"!

[Marc LaMouche]

Mel sometimes used words too... 'You old f'ers !' :oh:

[hinkraka]

Drawings and videos is a good tool in this case.

[Gilly]

Sorry it's taken me ages to get back to this - too busy on the river!
This was an amazing experience and I had to adapt my teaching.
Mainly it was making sure that he could lip read and that I had good eye contact with him. I used a lot of pantomime castting and demonstrations of body movements.
This is unusual for me because I am a real talker and I tend to teach by exlaining the mechanics. I had to get him to really feel the rod loading and I did a lot of side casting with him so that he could visualize the loops etc.
He was really enthusiastic and had been researching flyfishng onthe internet so he had lots and lots of questions. He has a mild form of autism/aspergers which meant that my usual day of joking around and not taking life too seriously was not going to work. I had to make sure that I responded quickly to his questions and seriously.
One problem that we encountered on the river was that his hearing aids (he's 80% deaf in both ears) nearly exploded with noise and blew his head off when we got to a weir.
I really enjoyed my time with him and we had a great day with 3 browns caught. He was thrilled and I have since heard that he said it was the best day that he had all summer - I am so happy!
One thing that does stand out is that his parents really did not explain the full extent of his difficulties and I had to quickly adapt on the day - Fortunately I had been to a talk on teaching casting/fishing for less abled people covering all sorts of health problems and everything that I learned on that day was put into practise teaching this young man and I am really thankful that I went to the talk.
Gilly

[Marc LaMouche]

that's really great news Gilly

what's obvious from your post is that it was it was an enriching experience for you both

cheers,
marc

[victor]

Nice one Gilly,

I bet he 'listened' to you more than some of my students apparently do

Mike