I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the desire to share personal experiences beyond common perceptions of living with a disability.
Marlee Matlin expresses a longing to document her life as a deaf child in Chicago, emphasizing that her experiences were not solely defined by the challenges of hearing aids and speech classes. Instead, she suggests there is a deeper, more nuanced story to tell that goes beyond merely the frustrations often associated with being deaf, reflecting on the richness of her life and experiences.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming obstacles, one might quote this to illustrate the importance of sharing unique life stories.
I'm a proud person who happens to be deaf. I don't want to change it. I don't want to wake up and suddenly say, 'Oh my God, I can hear.' That's not my dream. It's not my dream. I've been raised deaf. I'm used to the way I am. I don't want to change it. Why would I ever want to change? Because I'm used to this, I'm happy.
It was ability that mattered, not disability, which is a word I'm not crazy about using.
The only thing I can't do is hear. I can drive, I have a life with four kids, I work on TV, I do movies, so the deafness question, is it that they want to know because, what? Not sure.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and in spite of what most people might have expected from a young girl growing up deaf, life for me was like one long episode of The Brady Bunch. Despite whatever barriers were in my way, I imagined myself as Marcia Brady skating down the street saying “hi” to everyone, whether they knew me or not.
When I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write a kid's book and tell the world what it was like being deaf.
I like to say that the greatest handicap of deafness does not lie in the ear, it lies in the mind. I hope that through my example, such as my role on 'The West Wing,' I can help change attitudes on deafness and prove we can really do everything... except hear.
Our school systems have to realize that everybody doesn't learn the same way, and no one learns without some emotional support.
Children's games constitute the most admirable social institutions. The game of marbles, for instance, as played by boys, contains an extremely complex system of rules - that is to say, a code of laws, a jurisprudence of its own.
If you can help a child, you don't have to spend years repairing an adult.
People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.
First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and the method will result more or less by common sense.
Our teachers deserve better feedback.
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