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Helen Keller (Education (Not many schools wanted to take Helen because she…
Helen Keller
Education
Not many schools wanted to take Helen because she was deaf and blind. They thought it would be too hard to teach her.
They found Helen a teacher named Mrs. Sullivan. She helped Helen learning what objects were by writing the stuff out in her hands, and then giving her the object.
Mrs. Sullivan helped Helen tremendously with her ability to communicate. She understand somethings easily, while others not so easy. Like water, it took her a long time to get the concept on what water was. Helen ended up going to college because of her tremendous progress.
Helen came up with her own signs to tell people what she wanted. Like shaking her head yes or no, or pushing things away for go. She would try to imitate things to show what she wanted.
Mrs. Sullivan first started to teach Helen with the word doll. She brought Helen a doll to understand the concept that the word she was spelling out in her hand was a doll.
When Helen was 14 she got enrolled into Wright- Humason school for the Deaf. She then finally felt like she belonged there because she knew other kids their were deaf, but she also knew she was the only blind one there as-well.
Sullivan noticed that as Helen's frustration grew, so did her tantrums. Sullivan thought the best choice to control this situation was to isolate Helen from her family, so Helen could only concentrate on Sullivan's instructions.
When Helen and Sullivan were on their own, Sullivan tried to teach Helen the word water. They went out to a water pump and took one of Helen's hand and ran the cold water on it. While on the other hand spelt out "W-A-T-E-R" It took Helen a while to finally repeat it back into Sullivan's hand.
When Helen came back with Sullivan, Helen was excited to show her family all the different ways to communicate. It was hard on Helen because she really missed her family, but it helped her progress on communicating with others.
Childhood
When Helen was not able to see on her own anymore, she had to grip onto her mom wherever they went because she needed guided. Helen was also scared because she didn't know what was going on.
Helen had one biological sister (Mildred Campbell Keller), one biological brother (Phillip Brooks Keller), and two older step brothers which their names were Simpson and James Keller.
Helen was born with all of her senses. She started to speak at just around 6 months, and she started walking at around a year old.
Helen was born on June 27, 1880. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
Helen knew from early on that she was different from the other kids/ adults. She realized that they move their lips to speak. When she tried to imitate them she became very frustrated which lead to a lot of tantrums.
Helen would be standing between two people that were having a conversation where she felt their lips moving. She could not understand what was being said which would cause her to have violent behavior.
Illness
At 19 months old Helen started to lose her hearing where everything started to sound clogged. She also started to lose her eye sight where everything slowly became darker each day.
Helen's fever is called "brain fever" that was caused by high body temperatures. The doctors still don't really know that much about the illness or what really caused it, but they think it could have been from scarlet fever or meningitis.
Helen's mom started noticing that something wasn't right with Helen when she didn't react when her mom rang the dinner bell, or when she waved her hand in front of Helen's face.
Because of this illness, Helen would be unaware of how loud she really was. Helen would kick, scream, and have tantrums when she was angry. When she was happy she would laugh uncontrollably. Because of all her raging, her family thought she should be institutionalized.
All Helen could see was complete darkness and she was surrounded by silence. She was scared because she didn't know what was going on. She never really knew what happened. Each day her ears got more more clogged and her eye sight just darkened.
What makes Helen a Hero
Being able to communicate with others was a big deal to Helen. She had overcome her disabilities of being deaf and blind by never giving up. She always tried her hardest to communicate with others.
As she grew older she wanted to express herself way more than she has been, but she felt like there weren't enough signs for that. So, she tried her best to get her voice out there because she is strong-willed.
Helen never gave up on what she wanted. If she wanted to do something, she would keep on practicing until she had it perfect. She made tons of speeches in her lifetime. She has became an inspiration to a bunch of people by never giving up.
Hardships
Many things for Helen were hard to do. Like simple things to us were hard for her like getting dressed, eating with silverware, or writing. She just had to keep on practicing to get better until she had the task down.
Helen also had trouble realizing that she was different from the others. She noticed that others talked with their mouths instead of signing. That also made her very frustrated, but she had to learn that her teacher, mother, and even her friends talked with their mouths.
Helen ended up coming up with more than 60 signs at the age of 7 years old. She came up with her own language with her siblings.