A thread of things I hated about going to mainstream school as a deaf individual:

Looking back on it, I really do resent my experience in mainstream school. So many factors contributed to my social anxiety and left me unable to advocate for myself. Deaf children belong in Deaf schools. Thankfully I now go to one, but these experiences were so avoidable.

I feel like this is important to share.I was alone.Many deaf children are, especially those who are born to hearing families. Most are not educated about Deaf culture and force their to children assimilate to hearing culture. We cant be expected to depend on hearing we dont have.

Tbh I just had no idea what was going on most of the time cuz so much be relying on hearing

My teacher playing a PODCAST as the warm up and expecting me to answer questions about it

Someone asked me for a piece of paper and I couldn't hear them. I asked them to repeat it over and over and they got frustrated. Five minutes of that, and the person next to me heard them and gave them the paper. I felt so bad

This happened all the time tho. I'd try to understand people, ask them to repeat what they said, and they would get so annoyed and usually end up saying "nevermind." Made me feel like such a burden lol

Having to memorize roll call so I could be prepared for substitutes. My regular teachers thankfully would skip calling my name if they saw me. But w substitutes most of the time I couldn't hear them anyways, shout out to the people who would say "here" for me

My IEP sucked. I had extra time for testing that I never asked for & I usually finish tests fast. I begged to have it taken off my accommodations. They never listened and I had to suffer waiting 2+ hrs after I finished tests for no reason. Y does being deaf=needing extra time??

Bc of this, I literally asked them to take away all of my accommodations... even the ones that helped me. It pissed me off so much

In middle school, my intirient teacher told me I couldn't do any of the jobs I wanted because I'm deaf

All of my intirient teachers (who specialize in D/HOH students) sucked except for my last one who was the only one who had ever mentioned Deaf culture to me. Shout out to Mr. Turner

Being expected to hear the lyrics to a song in dance class (for the first time) and follow along to them. -- I will never get over the fact that I didn't start dancing earlier bc I was scared of stuff like that.

Popcorn reading. Literally the worst! One time my teacher called on me and I had no idea where we were in the book and she lashed out on me. Great! Get mad at me cuz I can't hear!

My teachers would play videos/movies without captions, completely excluding me from the content. like yea they would put them on if they were available but unfortunately they usually weren't. Also had to do work based on those said videos/movies

The announcements had no captions either

Teachers making us close our eyes to vote or play 7-up. Tbh alot of the activities were not deaf friendly at all

Class discussions... oh my god what a horrible experience. I literally couldn't understand anyone in the class but the teacher. I NEVER spoke either and missed out on so much

One time in the middle of class my teacher announced to everyone that I'm deaf.. for no reason.. my social anxiety was really bad at the time so that was traumatizing