A Model Program for Integrating Personal Identity and Group Affiliation for Multiple-Minority Deaf Students
Patrick M. Gleason and April L. Lavong
(Abridged Version for Proceedings)
In the continuing debate over the relative merits of institutional versus mainstream programs for deaf students, little attention has been given to multiple-minority status deaf students for whom neither option proves successful. This group includes students for whom deafness joins with some other label in defining the student’s personal identity and group affiliation. Deaf students with other disabilities, who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups, or who are gay or lesbian, may find themselves isolated or even abused in both institutional and mainstream settings.
While integration into the deaf culture may provide the necessary supportive social context for furthering the growth and development of white, able bodied and minded, heterosexual deaf students, such integration may be denied to students with multiple-minority status. Instead, many find themselves stuck in increasingly small and oppressed groups, such as deaf-black, or deaf-mentally retarded, or deaf-gay, or deaf-Asian-mentally retarded. Others attempt to suppress or deny some part of their identity in order to find acceptance among their peers. Some remain completely isolated. The challenge of integrating a multiple-minority status confronts deaf students in both mainstream and residential schools.
The Philadelphia Davidson School is a small, private, urban, secondary day-school with special programs for multiple-minority deaf students. Most of the students entered the program after repeated failures in either institutional or mainstream programs, or both. Given the emphasis on least restrictive environment, and the cumbersome workings of a large, urban, school district, the transfer to the private school usually followed a protracted and often heated struggle between the parents and the school authorities. Thus, students were frequently admitted to the school suffering with the kinds of suspicious, resistant, provocative, and even violent behaviors characteristic of people who have experienced long-term and severe frustration.
The program emphasizes healing as well as growth. The healing process involves an array of interventions emphasizing extraordinary nurturance and acceptance rooted in the classic therapeutic philosophy of “unconditional positive regard.” The growth process focuses on the identification, integration, and celebration of all the student’s various minority group labels that had in the past been either suppressed or vilified. Both healing and growth oriented interventions include families as well as students, since each depends upon the other for support. Through this mutual support, students and their families begin to regain confidence in themselves as well as the educational system.
The success of the program depends upon the skillful and coordinated application of several theoretical perspectives from the fields of education, psychology, social work, and communication. The combined theoretical framework includes three parts: personal restoration, individual and group growth and development, and community action for social change. The goal is to increase each student’s self-esteem, interpersonal and vocational options, and integration into a social support network through the development of cognitive, communicative, and social skills.
Each of the three dimensions of the theoretical framework is predicated on the movement of the student from less to more personal power and autonomy. Personal restoration involves the movement from abuse to healing. Abuse starts with the stigma associated with being a member of any minority group. It includes the confusing and depressing experience of going through a school system that often hurts individuals even while it purports to help them. In addition, many students have suffered from active physical and/or emotional abuse from parents or other authority figures. The healing process can take months or even years. It may involve various types of traditional cognitive, medical, and behavioral therapies. It often involves various non-traditional interventions including physical nurturing for students who require attention to such basic needs.
Individual and group growth and development require movement from disintegration to integration. Disintegration often results when a student is unable to participate fully in one aspect of a given cultural identity, such as when a mentally retarded student with minimal language skills is unable to integrate into deaf culture; or when two parts of a person’s cultural identity conflict, which may happen to a deaf, black person who experiences racial discrimination within the deaf community. Integration requires that each aspect of the school program identify and actively celebrate every aspect of a person’s identity. Integration requires the recognition of conflicts among and prejudice against variously identified minority groups, and open discussion of opposing perspectives. In addition, integration especially requires the active involvement of families that may be the best source of racial and ethnic pride, even though they themselves may not be members of the deaf community. Finally, integration requires the empowerment of students to make decisions about their own identity, such as introducing gay and lesbian students to support groups for sexual minority youth and educating those groups on how to communicate with people who are deaf.
Community action for social change involves the movement from passive acceptance to assertive advocacy. Many social institutions have been designed by the white, male, hearing heterosexual culture to serve the specific needs of that group. Sometimes, these institutions fail even to recognize, much less support, the integration of diverse cultures into the social structure. The dominant culture may even tend to encourage members of minority groups to accept passively the position of second class citizens. Assertive advocacy not only teaches students how to be savvy consumers of available resources, it also encourages an attitude of confrontation to break through rigid institutional barriers that may stand in the way of their accessing a larger resource pool. Thus, the school program must actually take students into the community and teach them political action and community organization techniques required to change social institutions on their behalf.
The application of techniques of personal restoration, individual and group growth and development, and community action for social change must be persistent as well as consistent. It is not unusual for some students to require years of healing before beginning to experience the growth necessary to satisfy their need for both personal integration and group affiliation. The important thing for educators to realize is that multiple minority deaf students may require special attention beyond the routine of either mainstream or institutional schools, and that the program described here is equally adaptable to either setting.
About the Presenters
Patrick M. Gleason, former director of the Davidson School in Philadelphia, is currently an assistant professor of social work at Gallaudet University. He has an M.S.W. and a Ph.D. in social work from Bryn Mawr College. He has a private practice in psychotherapy in the greater Washington area.
April L. Lavong is currently director of social programs at the Philadelphia Davidson School. She has a B.A. in special education with a master’s in educational psychology from Temple University in progress.