It's July, 1996. An airplane rumbled onto the runway at Los Angeles International Airport. I embarked on what would be one of the most exciting journeys of my life, and the start of new awareness. This is my high school exchange year in the US.
Questions and doubts were crossing my mind: How would I be accepted in the US as a girl from a formerly "evil empire"? As a hard of hearing person? How tough would it be to get accustomed to a new culture, new language, and new beliefs and values?
<< REWIND
In 1992 an international exchange programme, "Future Leaders Exchange" (FLEX), was launched in the countries of the former Soviet Union by the US Department of State and the American Councils of International Education (ACIE), with an aim to provide youngsters from former communist countries with the first-hand experience of life in a democratic society. One of the goals was to promote democratic values and institutions in Eurasia and reciprocally break stereotypes of the cold war heritage. Since 1993, more than 14,000 students from 12 Eurasian countries have participated and returned to their homes to pursue higher education and move into the job market. At that time, the programme was open to all high school pupils in Eurasia who had a good command of English, good credits at school and a motivation to learn from living abroad. To be selected for a year of life in the US, a candidate had to pass rigorous English language test, fill in numerous applications, write essays, submit grades and recommendations from school teachers and finally, to prove at a face-to-face interview his/her ability to leave abroad and adjust to the foreign culture.
But there were still youngsters whose access to the programme was difficult - both physically and psychologically. The English language tests were not fully accessible to school students with disabilities that undermined their chances to enter the programme.
In 1995, a local organisation in St. Petersburg, Russia (called the Fund of Assistance to Disabled Children and Youth) sensed the need for change and worked to introduce accessible tests for teenagers with disabilities from special and mainstream schools. After a series of negotiations with the ACIE, the first accessible tests were held in St. Petersburg, and proper accommodations were taken care of. Students with various disabilities were invited from special and mainstream schools; blind students were provided Braille texts, for hard of hearing students a listening comprehension test section was replaced by written assignments. Later on, accommodations were introduced by the departments of the ACIE across the former Soviet Union and the issue of accessibility was solved. The beginning of explicit acceptance of students with disabilities and providing accommodations for them was a real breakthrough.
The first hard of hearing "pioneers" to discover the US were three girls from St. Petersburg - Nadezhda Gorynina, Nadezhda Rivkovich and Evelina Sukhovskaya. I was the next delegate and the only hard of hearing delegate from St. Petersburg in the year 1996-1997.
> PLAY
The first month of cultural orientation and my English language enhancement programme took place in California. When my Mexican-American host mom heartily greeted me at her house in San Bernardino, a house that would be my home for a month, I was struck by seeing her use sign language - as fluently as if she were a genuine deaf person. As I learned later, if a kid of a friend of a friend's neighbor was deaf and communicated in sign language, the neighbor would often learn basic ASL and use it with pleasure. This widespread acceptance of sign language and the zest to learn it with Americans who never faced hearing loss themselves, had left me stunned in admiration in the first months of my stay in the US. In Russia a signing deaf person would often be looked upon with suspicion and an unhealthy curiosity, and the general public rarely had the will to learn any signs at all. This is slowly changing today.
Other eye-openers?
- It turned out that it was perfectly normal(!) to tell everyone (!!) in the US that I was deaf/ hard of hearing and needed to look at a person's face to read lips. My requests to repeat a phrase or to keep the face visible were always met with understanding (contrary to mixed reactions or screaming louder such requests caused in my country).
- An American person with disability would, in my experience, always struggled against injustice and would not simply let an incident go or accept violations of his/her rights.
- A student with a disability has a personal counselor at high school who carefully considers that student's special needs. In my Michigan high school - my permanent place of residence for the year - I freely discussed with my counselor all my concerns about study, hearing accessibility, communication with teachers and with the class. I would also tell my counselor about my trips across the US with my host family, show photos, tell about the lives of deaf people in Russia, and the challenges of US stereotypes about my country. We even joked about Miss America contestants, shared Hollywood gossip and discussed my favorite stars. By the end of the school year, my counselor helped me to obtain a new, higher quality hearing aid, and I am still grateful for her support.
I noticed that when I acknowledged my hearing loss in the first minutes of a conversation with stranger, he/she would often try to speak in signs. This proves that Deaf culture is powerful in the US; on the other hand, it is sometimes forgotten that there are deaf people who prefer to communicate orally and/or with the extensive use of technology.
What was it like to study as a Russian with a hearing loss in the US high school, at a time taking active part in school clubs and events? Stay tuned for the next part of the article!
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