Columns

Dreams fulfilled, not frustrated

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published February 27, 2007

The student giving the keynote speech at a recent Pasco County school event talked a little funny. She struggled with her "sh" sounds and her "ed" endings.

But the audience members at River Ridge High school didn't seem to mind. They smiled broadly and gave the thumbs-up as Cayla Hanousek raved about how the Mitchell High School senior gets to spend half her day at Fred K. Marchman Vocational Center doing the stuff she loves.

Without having the option of going to Marchman, Cayla said, she would have been "another student graduating having no idea what I wanted out of life."

"I have found my passion, and Pasco is responsible for allowing me to do that," she said.

Cayla's passion is art. She's visual. She'll pursue her passion at the Savannah College of Art and Design this fall. She's also hearing-impaired.

Handicaps are often about what a person can't do, what they dare not dream.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing students sometimes are relegated to the margins of educational and cultural life.

But 18-year-old Cayla is held up as an example of what happens when parents and educators give those with disabilities a chance to thrive.

That was the approach Kathy and Ray Hanousek took when they realized their 3-year-old wasn't just ignoring the teachers in day care, and since the doctors told them that nerve damage meant the sounds Cayla heard were just noise.

They had Cayla fitted for hearing aids and enrolled her in speech therapy, which has continued right up to high school.

Kathy Hanousek reasoned that in a world where most people can talk and hear, why should her daughter be any different?

That kind of attitude isn't always considered enlightened. In recent years, there's a growing deaf culture in which deafness is embraced, not overcome.

But Cayla has never been part of that world.

Growing up, she had only hearing friends. Other than her hearing aid and the slight speech impediment, she was always a typical kid who played pickup basketball and excelled on the swim team.

She listens to her iPod, but the songs have real meaning only if she learns the lyrics. That's pretty easy for the honor roll student who also reads lips.

But as she prepares for college, there's unfinished business. She must learn sign language even as she lives outside deaf culture.

As a hearing-impaired person in a hearing world, she is fairly isolated from others with similar disabilities.

To survive the rigors of college, she must learn sign language and must get used to getting help from a sign language interpreter in the classroom. She attends an American Sign Language class at Gulf High twice a week.

At least four days a week, interpreter Brian Paille attends Cayla's commercial art class and her advanced placement literature class.

His lips and hands move constantly; she understands what he signs but is unable to sign back fluently. She learns a new word every day; it will stay with her for the rest of her life, a life to be filled with spoken words and signs.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 26, 2007, 23:27:32]