I Am Glad We Did It!
by Matthew K.
Hi, my name is Matthew. I go to the Lawrence Middle School in
Lawrence, New York, and I am in the sixth grade. I have seven
brothers and
three sisters. My mother and father are Reina and Chris. One of
my brothers
died when he was only six months old. I stutter. Most of the time,
this really
does not bother me, but sometimes I wish I never had the problem.
My speech
teacher is Heather Grossman, and she specializes in stuttering.
She works at
Hofstra University.
On November 16, I put on a presentation in my school about stuttering
so
that my classmates and teachers would better understand what stuttering
was all
about. I worked really hard on this with Ms. Grossman and three
of her
students who are preparing to be speech pathologists. We started
to think of
the
idea in the middle of October. We prepared an outline of what
we wanted to do
in the class session. We were going to do two sessions of about
45 minutes
each. We decided that I would use the Internet to find which famous
people
stuttered. I found out a lot of things I did not know. For example,
the guy
from
Star Wars, Darth Vader (James Earl Jones), stuttered. Bo Jackson,
who played
both professional football and baseball, stuttered also.
The day
of the presentation I was shaking. I was so nervous that my hands
were sweating, but I was feeling happy that this was going to
happen. We
worked
very hard to make it interesting and to give my classmates a better
understanding. But I did not know what the reaction of my classmates
would be.
Maybe
they would say, "That was so stupid and it was a waste of
time," or they would
say something nice, like, "Matt, that was great. I learned
something and
that was a good idea."
These are the things we talked about
in the session. We talked about how the
brain functions while stuttering. We asked questions to see how
much they
knew about stuttering. We talked about how it felt for someone
to stutter and
asked how they reacted when someone stuttered. We wanted to know
if they got
impatient with people who stutter, and we wanted to see if they
knew how to
react. For example, we wanted to know if they kept eye contact
or tried to
"fill in words," or if they were understanding. We gave
them a Chinese "finger
trap" so that they could feel what it was like to be frustrated
when they got
stuck. We also talked about the famous people who stuttered and
many of my
classmates were surprised to learn that. This was a good lesson
in showing
them
that a person who stutters could use different strategies and
techniques to
handle things.
When we finished the class, everyone clapped and
complimented me on the
presentation. Ms. Grossman and each of her students had participated
as well
and
they were complimented too.
My teachers said that it was very helpful
and that they learned quite a bit.
It ended up with people saying great things about the presentation.
I could
tell that they learned something. Even though I was nervous at
the beginning,
it all paid off and was worthwhile. I learned that people are
interested,
and, if you make the session fun and interesting, they will learn
a lot.
I'm glad we did it, and I am very thankful that Ms. Grossman
helped me.
From Reaching Out March 2005
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