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Helen Keller (Education (Helen still managed to get very good grades at…
Helen Keller
Education
Helen still managed to get very good grades at Radcliffe. In fact one of the teachers praised her for a composition that she wrote. So despite the fact that she didn't make many friends Helen thought her college life was pretty good.
During her college days she would walk around with other girls in the hallway before her classes, but it was hard for Helen to make new friends because only one of her classmates knew how to finger-spell.
For Helen to get accepted into Radcliffe she had to pass the entering test first. To prepare she went to the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in Boston. Helen was only 16-years old. This was her first time living with girls her age that could see and hear.
Annie would would spend four or five hours finger spelling into Helen's hand which made Annie get bad headaches. It also caused her eyesight to fail. Sometimes Helen would have to leave class to let Annie have a chance to rest.
Some of the students at Radcliffe wanted to show their friendly feeling toward Helen so they bought her a dog. It was a Boston terrier named Phiz. Helen owned many dogs, but Phiz was her favorite.
Helen was not able to go to a regular school. So Helen's father, Captain Keller, went to Alexander Graham Bell for help. He said he had the perfect teacher in mind for Helen. Annie Sullivan.
Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind to ever attend an American college. She first went to Wright-Humason school in New York, but her goal was Radcliffe College which was part of Harvard University.
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Birth/childhood
On a February day in 1882 Helen became very ill with a high fever, a very bad headache, and a stiff neck. They called a doctor and the doctor called it a fever of the brain and stomach. Other doctors believed it was scarlet fever. At night she tossed and turned and could not fall asleep. When someone called her name she wouldn't answer. Helen's mother and father then realized what was really happening. Helen Keller was 2 when she became deaf-blind.
She was the first baby in the family. Not including her half brothers that her father had in a separate marriage. Helen's two half brothers were named William and James. James was in his early twenties when Helen was born, and William was just a teenager when Helen was born.
Helen later wrote that when she woke up everything was dark and still. She thought it was still night. She wondered why day wasn't coming. She had to live in a world of silent darkness.
Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880
Helen started using hand signals or other gestures when she wanted something. A shake of the head meant no, a nod meant yes, a pull meant come, and a push meant go. If she wanted something like break she would act out slicing and buttering bread. If she wanted ice cream for dinner she would make the sign for working the freezer and shivered which meant cold.
Helen had a lot of temper tantrums when she didn't get what she wanted. People started to call her a "wild, destructive little animal." Some relatives thought she was "a monster." They wanted Helen to be sent to a hospital for the mentally ill. Helen's mother would never want that to happen.
Hardships
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Helen then learned that everything had a name and suddenly a new world opened up to her. Annie knew it was time to teach Helen how to read. She borrowed raised books, that is now known as braille, to help her learn to read. Helen learned the entire alphabet in one day. This goes to show that Helen was not like other blind kids.
Helen had to learn things by having the object in one hand and having Anne spell out the object in the other and it was all up to Helen to catch on. For example Anne had Helen put her hand under the water of their well and she spelled out the word water in her other hand and Helen then understood that the wonderful cool thing that was flowing over her hand was water.
It was very hard for Helen to tell people what she wanted, so she later came up with hand signs to show people what she wanted.
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Helen moved away from her family into the little house near the house she previously lived in. She moved in with her teacher Anne Sullivan.