CONWAY OVERCOMING: challenges

Hearing-impaired teacher models can-do attitude

By Jeannie Stone

LITTLE ROCK — Danna Crook of Conway has a passion to help her students overcome academic challenges, and as a hearing-impaired teacher, she faces challenges every day.

Crook is a developmental reading teacher at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton and an algebra teacher, spirit team sponsor and cheer coach at Conway Christian High School.

“What you learn in here doesn’t stop at the door,” Crook said to her college students. “Reading, writing, vocabulary and speaking - if you improve one area it improves all others,” she told them. “And these skills are what you need to succeed in anything.” Crook has a progressive hearing loss. She was 12 years old when she was initially diagnosed, and she remembers sitting in her sixth-grade class with her newly fitted hearing aids. “I couldn’t believe all the crinkling noises from the paper and the shuffling and banging,” she said. “My brain was trying to recognize people’s voices, birds singing, even the sound of footsteps. I had to reprocess everything I ever heard. I had to learn everything over again.” Somewhere along the first day she took her hearing aids off. “My teacher asked me what was wrong. I just needed a moment of peace. I was turning my head, nonstop, every time I heard a noise. It was over-stimulation, pure and simple,” she said.

For a junior high history project, Crook’s group decided to research PL 94-142, also known as the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, which was passed in 1975. Crook was assigned the hearing-impaired/deaf portion of the law. “So I went to a class of nonhearing students to observe and interview. At the time I remember wondering if those students were in that class all day.

That’s when I learned sign language and got involved inSpecial Olympics,” she said.

Crook said she realized how fortunate she was. Mainstreaming was all she had known. Her mother stayed home with her and her sister while her father worked as a chief financial officer for a Paragould hospital.

“I feel my parents gave me so many experiences,” she said.

“They never told me I couldn’t do anything. My happiness was their priority. I always had friends over, and my dad even coached my softball team.” Her father and sister are both hearing impaired as is her 9-yearold son, son, Joshua. Daughter Mackenzie, 7, continues to be tested. Crook is married to Curt Crook, the development director at Christian Baptist Church.

Crook’s parents were understanding and patient with her language delays and encouraged her development. “If I misunderstood or mispronounced a word, they would make me stop and correct me.

They took the time. They wanted the best for me.” Still, there were challenges growing up. “For the most part coaches and teachers were understanding,” she said. “I played sports and especially loved basketball, so I tried out for the high school team. The coach had a habit of making everybody run laps if someone didn’t do as he said. He didn’t know me, so I tried to tell him about my hearing impairment. I couldn’t wear my hearing aids because I was afraid they’d get knocked out, so I couldn’t hear anything. What made the situation even worse was that the gym was huge with lots of activities going on and lots of noise. Every time I didn‘t hear him, he would punish the other girls and make everybody run laps. My former coach tried to talk with him, but he wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t stand it, so I quit and signed up for the city league. Later, he apologized, but it was too late.”Her personal experiences have propelled Crook to advocate for her son. “I want to help teachers and coaches understand my son. They can’t accommodate his needs if they don’t understand what he‘s going through,” she said.

She shared another junior high experience. “Because I couldn’t wear my hearing aids in the gym, I left them in my locker. One day somebody stole my hearing aids, and it was four or six weeks before they were replaced. People thought if they exaggerated their lips I could understand them, but it doesn’t work like that. It was almost like people thought my IQ had gone down by 20 points because I couldn‘t hear. Sometimes I think it is almost an invisible disability.”As a student on scholarship at the University at Central Arkansas, Crook was unsure what path of study to pursue. “I was a special-needs student, then became a special-ed teacher and now I am a parent of a specialneeds child.” It is not only the students who have learned from Crook. “A lot of teachers never taught a hearing-impaired student before, so it’s a learning experience for everyone,” she said.

Crook is up-front about her disability. “I tell my students the first time I call roll, ‘I’m hearing impaired. I need to see your face, so that I can read your lips.’” Because of that she doesn’t allow gum in class. “It’s confusing to me because I am watching your lips as if you’re speaking,” she said.

Student Stephanie Porter said, “It helps us learn about her ability to teach, and we learn to relate to people who are different. I believe that will help us in our future professions.”

Crook said, “I tell my students how they can help me. It works both ways. I hope they will tell me what I can do to help them. It’s like I tell the class, ‘You have to know what your weaknesses are. You have to know because you can use your strengths to address your weaknesses.

“I am constantly adapting tothings, and I really do miss a lot of things,” she said. Crook has learned to be an advocate for herself. “The college has been very helpful and cooperative asking what I needed before I could take inventory myself.” Like when she move into her new office, for instance, “I knew I needed this ear to the doorbecause it’s my best ear, and I needed a phone with a volume control.”

As far as the classroom setting, the college approached her needs proactively as well. “I need people close to me. I don’t want people to sit in the very back of the room, that’s why there are no desks there. I tell the studentsif they are sitting next to someone who has a quiet voice and asks me a question, I need them to interpret for me.

“We all came from different backgrounds and experiences,” she said. “Everyone who comes through that door comes with a different burden, so to speak.” Crook said many of her students at the college level were motivated to further their schooling to achieve a better life, to be a role model to their children or grandchildren or to gain a higher-paying job.

“I try to be sensitive to their needs. I know college can be scary, and I might be their first experience in dealing with a hearing-impaired person. I want them to succeed,” she said. “Some of them really need to be built up, and that’s my job. I’m their cheerleader.

I must show them the light at the end of the tunnel.”In addition to teaching, coaching and encouraging students, Crook takes care of her young family and is involved with her church, having traveled to Belize as a missionary on a construction crew and teaching at a summer worship arts camp held at Ouachita Baptist University.

Crook said she loves to travel and spent a semester performing her student teaching in Great Britain and living in the YMCA with other students as part of a UCA program. While there she vacationed in France, Switzerland, Austria and Scotland during a three-week spring break.

“I have to remind my son that he may be the first deaf person they’ve met. We have to teach the world,” she said. “As with my students, I hope I’m giving them the confidence to keep trying.

Yes, there are times when I get upset and frustrated, but how we respond to our diagnoses is our gift to God.”

River Valley Ozark, Pages 59, 66 on 11/20/2008