¬Having a Hard Time Differentiating the Phonetic Sounds, the Hearing-Impaired Instructor Was Forced from His Teaching Position in a School

From the Front Page Sections, translated…

After I’d read Professor Chiu’s “Fear being sued, causing the instructors want to retire early”, I’d felt strongly about it.

A teacher with senior teaching experience who is hearing impaired once told me, “Due to their inability, almost ALL the hearing impaired students disliked the language courses, including Chinese.”, and he was shocked to find, that there were, two individuals who are hearing impaired, who could teach the subject of Chinese at the community college level, I am one of them, and, the teacher asked me, how I was able to get past the difficulties? I’d told truthfully, “going to school, getting jobs, teaching, none of it came easy to me!” Let’s put aside the difficulties I’d had at school. I’d kept, hitting walls in trying to get jobs, the interviewing managers are all in doubt, how the hearing impaired instructor can manage to convey the lessons to the students? And finally, my hard work paid off, I’d gotten a chance to interview with an open-minded general studies dean, which gave me that first step into the teaching profession.

In the coming of age of the students, they may not have shared experiences with the hearing impaired, so, the very first class session, I’d introduced myself, and told my class the problem that all hearing impaired persons have: difficulties differentiating the sounds of “ahn and on” (sounded so much alike, those vowel sounds), and some other phonetic alphabets, because we couldn’t hear the sounds clearly, causing us to not annunciate clearly.

There were students who’d dozed off in class, but became lively afterwards, and found me after class to chit-chat, question and answer, laughing and talking together. But, after the mid-terms, my wife received a notice from the office of the dean, and asked me to go to the offices immediately, because there were parents who’d complained, “Can’t this school afford better instructors? How could you guys hire a hearing impaired person to teach Chinese?”

Turns out, that a student did awfully in his Chinese mid-terms and the schools sent the notices to the parents, the parents asked the student why he’d not done well, instead of seeing how he may need to work harder, to pay attention in class, to study harder, he’d made the excuse of, “because the teacher doesn’t annunciate well, I can’t understand what he is saying!”

I’d explained, “if you can’t understand me, then, how come there are, a lot of students who’d made high grades on my mid-terms? I’d been teaching for a year already, and, how come my last year’s students didn’t have such a problem?” gladly, there were teachers from other departments there, “the student doesn’t have a good attitude in learning at all.”

And, although this incident had already been settled, I’d still felt a lot about it: don’t the parents know if their own children are working hard enough? Forcing me out of teaching, would this aforementioned student’s grades in Chinese improve?

And, this, is just how the systems are, spoiling the students here, because nowadays, when the students don’t pass, they can complain about the instructors, and, if a particular instructor get enough grievances, then, the school would be forced to examine the qualifications of that particular teacher, well, what about the students? If they’re NOT working hard enough in class, how the HELL do they expect to make a good enough grade to pass the course? And, this system of complaining about teachers who can’t teach is still, spoiling the students, and, teachers are having it harder than ever before.