\My ears are broken.""
This is the way UW-Madison senior Chris Klusman explains that he is profoundly deaf. At least in 3-year-old terms.
""They don't understand what being deaf means, but after a while they just realize that my ears don't work,"" Chris says of his students at UW-Madison's Laboratory Pre-School on Linden Drive. ""It's pretty simple.""
But simple it is not.
It's 9:15 a.m. The gauzy yellow walls give the illusion of sunshine despite the gray October morning. The room is filled with the fuss and chatter of a dozen 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children clambering, climbing and crying. Wooden blocks have somehow exploded from their rightful place in the corner. Books, toys and puzzle pieces are strewn on the floor.
""Five minutes to clean-up time. Five minutes,"" Chris warns, attempting to be stern, the sole thing friends and co-workers say he's wholly unsuccessful at doing.
He is trying to get the children's attention, to divert them to ""circle time,"" better known as quiet time. But Chris has to compete for their attention.
A peanut of a girl with bright orange hair dances in the center of the room while lifting her dress above her head, exposing her bellybutton and sagging pink tights. Two boys are in a heated dispute over who had the wooden block first, hollering and hitting one another. A pixie with brown ringlets and an innocent face bounces around in her new shoes'red sparkly ones even Dorothy would be jealous of. There is so much commotion, so much noise.
Chris doesn't hear a thing.
A quick fluorescent lightning storm flashes through the classroom as Chris flickers the light on and off to signal clean-up time has officially arrived. He assembles the tiny herd in a messy half-circle around him. No more than six feet tall, he towers over the children, but oddly fits in sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading stories and singing songs about silly camels. For a moment he has captured their attention.
""Sally the camel has five humps, so ride Sally ride, ba boom boom boom.""
He belts out the song using motions to accompany it. He doesn't sing beautifully, but he carries the tune. His voice rises and falls with tonal changes in the song'a seemingly simple feat. But imagine singing a song and not knowing what you sound like. It would be like singing too loudly when you have headphones on or shouting at your neighbor on an airplane when your ears pop from the changing altitudes.
""I don't know what I sound like, so I have to memorize the patterns. If I am learning a new song, it may say 'to the tune of London Bridge,' but since I don't know what that means I have to have it explained,"" Chris says. ""I will have someone tell me when my pitch should be high, when it should drop low and where my volume should be. Then I just memorize it.""
""One time when we were driving to school, this new Janet Jackson song came on the radio so we turned it up really loud. Chris goes from the backseat, 'Oh, I love this song!' I always wondered how he knew what was playing. I was so surprised,"" says classmate and future teacher, Sarah Pfaller.
Chris must have felt the vibrations of the song, and recognized the pattern.
Sharing music with children is something Chris relishes because he missed out. In elementary school he wasn't even allowed to take music with his classmates.
""They pulled me out the first day,"" Chris says.
After all, it would be pointless to teach a deaf student about music. He can't hear.
""I love to sing, I love it!"" Chris says, giving an enthusiastic thumbs up.
It's too bad they can't hear him now.
""Sally the camel has no humps, cuz Sally is a horse.""
Squeals of laughter accompany the triumphant punch line of the song. The interpreter signs, ""laughter."" Chris is smiling; he already knows.
Circle time is over and the children are up and running. The girl with the orange hair has her dress back up in the air. The boys have resumed their feud over the block. Chris can sense the tummies beginning to grumble'snack time is approaching. As he sets napkins and child-sized juice pitchers on the tables, his eyes dart back and forth, scanning the room. He keeps his back to the wall so he can see as much as possible, but his interpreter is there to catch what he misses.
""Having an interpreter is 95 percent wonderful and 5 percent difficult,"" Chris says.
Never having the assistance of an interpreter before enrolling at UW-Madison, Chris sees it as a bonus.
""He can read lips so well he hardly even needs an interpreter,"" says David Moyer, a kindergarten teacher at Falk Elementary School where Chris was a student teacher last fall. ""He has the keen ability to figure out how the children are doing emotionally. He's so gentle and makes positive emotional connections with the kids, they feel very loved.""
The inclusion of an interpreter in the classroom is advantageous to both Chris and the students.
The interpreter, though primarily a facilitator of information, is also an adult fixture in the room, a human TelePrompter'one that zips coats, ties shoes and gives hugs.
""Two big people, it makes the kids feel special,"" Chris says.
Moyer, who is fluent in American Sign Language, incorporated it into his classroom long before he ever met Chris. He says using it with hearing children can help teach both vocabulary and phonics.
When Chris taught in his classroom, Moyer said he loved having the interpreter, too. It introduced his young students to diversity and taught them that deaf isn't disabled'just different.
Chris also uses an interpreter when he's in class with the big kids. They learn a lot from it too.
""I sometimes watch the interpreter when I get bored,"" says classmate and friend Kelly Froemming.
""Sometimes a random word will be used in class and someone will just say, 'Hey, I wonder how you sign that?' and we'll ask Chris. He thinks it's so great when you want to learn.""
Chris' education cohort is made up of 25 students. He has assigned most of them a special sign, something that is done within the deaf community as a mark of friendship.
""My sign is the letter 'K,' a laughing 'K,' because apparently I laugh a lot,"" Froemming says, grinning. ""Another boy in our class, Ryan, has really big dimples, so his sign is an 'R' making a big dimple. He always gets really embarrassed when we do it to him.""
Chris' sign is a 'C' that goes around your mouth, curving in a smile.
Realizing a dream Chris always knew he wanted to be a teacher. When he was growing up in Milwaukee, his mom bought him a chalkboard that he couldn't be torn away from. He would play teacher; his dad would play student.
""I would teach him math and reading. I would say, 'Dad, what's five plus five?' He would always get it wrong on purpose so I could teach him the right answer,"" Chris says.
The youngest of four children, Chris is also an uncle. He'll tell you soon enough. ""He talks about them all the time,"" Froemming says.
""I have four nephews and three nieces,"" he says, beaming. ""Being an uncle is so important to me, I just love them so much, everything about them, and I want to be with them all the time.""
He can't pick a favorite. It's this love of children that compels Chris to work so hard. He's captive to his dream and is willing to jump overboard to get it.
""When I came to Madison I still wanted to be a teacher, but I heard that the program was really difficult and competitive, only 25 students were accepted. I talked about doing it, but I was too intimidated.""
He reverted to a more feasible plan B. ""I decided I would be a pediatrician instead because I just wanted to make children feel better. I took chemistry and things like that, and I hated them. They were so hard.""
At the time, medical school was less daunting than education.
""Duh, what was I thinking?"" he asks now.
""I talked to a friend about it, too. He asked me what I would do if a child came into the emergency room bleeding, or bruised or hurt. I realized that I could never be a doctor. I couldn't stand to see a child hurting. That would be too hard.""
So, with encouragement from a close friend, Chris mustered up the nerve to apply to the School of Education. He was promptly accepted.
Skepticism and misunderstanding are things Chris deals with everyday. But the doubt of others would have been debilitating, if he had known.
""After I graduated, my parents told me something. I am so glad they didn't tell me before because I would have felt revengeful,"" he says. ""An administrator at my high school told my parents that they didn't think I would make it through the first year. They didn't care that I was on the honor roll in middle school, they just knew that I was deaf.""
They couldn't get past it. They couldn't see because Chris couldn't hear.
""I was a lab rat; they just accepted me to see what would happen,"" he says. ""I proved to them that I could do it.""
Chris was inducted into the National Honor Society and made the honor roll every semester for four years at Thomas Moore, a private high school in South Milwaukee. Yet Chris harbors no anger toward those who doubted him. He says he enjoyed his high school experience and appreciates the opportunities the high school afforded him.
""He's so persistent. He never gives up and he always goes the extra mile,"" Moyer says. ""He's positive and he's brilliant.""
The classroom isn't the only place Chris suffered adversity. While growing up, his hearing aids allowed him to sense only very loud noises and were not as small and inconspicuous as they are today. He wore big, clunky battery packs strapped to his chest with cords leading up to each ear. They fit over his clothing'making even little trips to the grocery store cause for embarrassment. He rode a yellow bus to school and endured jeers and snickers from peers, being the first one picked up and the last one dropped off. Even today first encounters are sometimes awkward.
""Meeting people for the first time can be a struggle and I try not to tell people because it makes them feel nervous or petrified and they can't be themselves,"" Chris says. ""Parties and bars are hard too, because they are dark and crowded and people always try to talk into my ears. I have to turn around and make sure they are looking right at me and sometimes that makes them uncomfortable.""
Though he avoids parties, he is far from anti-social. The Harry Potter fanatic loves hanging out with friends from church and school, cheering for the Badgers and watching Veggie Tales. He also loves to talk. He talks and talks and talks'but with overriding sincerity.
""He is the most kind-hearted person I know. He always has a smile and is so excited to talk to you, even if he just saw you five minutes ago,"" Froemming says.
He talks with friends and with strangers. He relies heavily on e-mail and AOL Instant Messenger to keep in touch, and in recent years has even been able to use the phone. Using a Teletype Writer Machine (TTY) and the Wisconsin Relay System, he can type messages and an operator communicates them to the hearing person on the other end of the line.
But even talking on the phone can be a challenge.
""I've talked to Chris on TTY before,"" Froemming says. ""It's really nice that it's around, but it's not that convenient. A normal conversation takes twice as long, you have to talk really slow and there is this third party on the line.""
""I always tell people just to talk to me,"" Chris says. ""A lot of people will ask the operator to tell me something and I just want to tell them, 'Don't talk to the operator, talk to me.'""
Chris will graduate in May with a degree in elementary education'certified to teach preschool through third grade, but his heart belongs in only one place.
""No ifs, ands or buts. He wants to teach kindergarten,"" Froemming says.
""Kindergartners are so great. They have an appreciation of life; they have kindness and respect for one another. They make me laugh and they are so compassionate,"" Chris says. ""This one time two little girls were playing in the sandbox and there were bees buzzing around them. They were talking seriously to the bees, saying, 'Please go away, we are not daffodils, we are not flowers, we are people.'""
These moments of compassion make the hard work seem worthwhile. The compassion he sees in children feeds his passion for teaching and for life.
""He works so hard,"" Moyer says, ""but he
always has a smile at the end of the day.""
A smile so big you can almost hear it.
