| A lot of Sharon Wilson's students at Chaffey High School call
her Mama Wilson.
"She keeps teaching until you've got it down," said Veronica Rush,
16, one of Wilson's 11th-grade students at the Ontario school.
| "If I'm having trouble with family (or friends), she's always there to
talk," said Sheila Ballinger, 17.
Sometimes the 51-year-old teacher takes her students to the movies on
weekends. But they have to travel to a special Riverside cinema, where the
movies have captions.
Wilson is deaf.
In class, all eyes are fixed on the teacher as she leads an advanced sign
language class, hands deliberately and gracefully making words.
Wilson also speaks, though the sounds alone are sometimes hard to
decipher. |
Veronica Rush is a student without
any hearing impediment who is
taking the class as a foreign
language requirement.
|
She is leading a vocabulary lesson, listing all the different academic subjects
on the blackboard and showing the class how to say them in American Sign
Language.
The lesson digresses at times into discussion about life -- and about
deafness.
One student asked why some deaf people will wear a Walkman.
"If the music is loud, you can feel the beat," Wilson said.
"But not the words."
She explained there are different degrees and frequencies of deafness, which
is why some of the deaf benefit from hearing aids. She illustrated her point
with a grid on the backboard -- making dots on it to explain the different
pitches of hearing and degrees of hearing loss.
Wilson was hired five years ago by the San Bernardino County Superintendent
of Schools as a teacher for deaf students at Chaffey High, the one site for deaf
high schoolers in western San Bernardino County.
She is the only disabled teacher in San Bernardino County.
Deafness is considered a low-incidence disability, said Sue Andrews, a county
administrator who oversees many of the special education programs in the Inland
Valley, including Wilson's.
"The largest group of people with disabilities have mental
handicaps," Andrews said.
Andrews, who has worked in special education for 14 years, said since the
1990 passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, "basically deaf people
with a college education…can be doctors, lawyers…anything they
want."
Previously, teaching was among fewer options for them.
Wilson does not consider herself disabled.
 Sharon Wilson talks with Sheila Ballinger
after class at Chaffey High School. |
"I'm just a happy person who simply can't hear," she said.
"I'm told many times, 'It's a blessing you can't hear this or that.'
"There are many things I can do without needing to use my hearing. I
drive, see movies, watch TV with captions…read and appreciate what I
see," she said.
Wilson began teaching sign language to hearing students at Chaffey as an
elective class. Three years ago, she persuaded the state Board of Education to
allow students to take her class for their foreign language
requirement. |
She is a demanding teacher.
"We have research papers on deaf culture and history," said Rush, a
second-year sign language student.
Wilson teaches sign language to more than 40 hearing students at the
beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. Some of her advanced students also
help out as teaching assistants and interpreters for the deaf students.
The eight deaf or hard-of-hearing students at Chaffey are mainstreamed for
part of their day with the school's three staff sign language interpreters.
Wilson oversees their education and progress and also teaches some of their
lessons.
"I'm very comfortable teaching English," Wilson said.
"The (hearing teachers) talk through the whole class," Wilson said.
"Some of the teachers are so hard and so fast," rarely stopping to
write on the blackboard, she said.
Wilson also teaches the deaf students history, government and economics and
math.
"When I first met her, I got in a lot of trouble," said Larry
Parker, 18, who spends a portion of his day working with Wilson in various
subjects. "…She has helped a lot with academics."
Born and raised in New York City, Wilson says she's always been deaf,
although her grandparents had some conflicting stories on how and when she lost
her hearing. They once said she had a fever as a baby and became deaf at 18
months.
She said at that time there was some superstition about deafness -- like it
was a curse on the family.
Wilson's father became deaf after suffering from spinal meningitis and her
mother also was deaf.
"I don't know if deafness is hereditary. I don't know and I don't
care," she said
Wilson received her bachelor's degree from Gallaudet University, a liberal
arts school for the deaf in Washington, D.C. She got her master's degree in
education at the University of Maryland and spent 11 years teaching junior high
at the Arizona School for the Deaf and the Blind.
She moved to California in the early '90s to be near her parents, who had
moved here from New York.
As far as her decision to be a teacher, she said she had considered other
careers, "but I always came back to this field.
"The fun part is communicating with students, giving them support and
working with them," she said. "Like anyone, I hate the
paperwork."
Wilson, who is divorced, said she does not regret never having children of
her own.
"I have other people's kids, (but) I go home alone," she
said. |
