Empowerment and Deaf People Teacher’s Guide

The tapes from the 1988 protest that resulted in Gallaudet University getting its first deaf president show how deaf students and the American deaf communities became empowered as they undertook to overturn Gallaudet’s Board of Trustees decision to select a hearing educator as the next Gallaudet president. As your students view these tapes, ask them to consider the concepts of power and empowerment—especially as they apply to deaf people.

Discussion and Understanding

Use the exercises below to help students understand the concept of power. As they explore their feelings, help them to understand the meaning of power and the impact it has on people, groups, and society.

• Have students list three words, in signs or in printed or spoken English, that come to mind when they see the word power. Discuss the meanings of the words they come up with and how they relate to different forms of power.

• Ask students: “Have you ever felt powerful?” How did this feel? Was it at someone else’s expense? Was it with someone else? Did anyone get hurt? Did anyone benefit? What was the positive and negative impact of feeling powerful? Then ask students the converse: “Have you ever felt powerless?” How did this feel was someone powerful at your expense? Did you get hurt?

• Have students evaluate positive and negative impacts of power. Draw a circle and place positive examples in the circle and negative examples outside of the circle. These positive examples will help students understand and define empowerment.

• Suggest students find examples of power in pictures. Bring a collection of magazines to class for students to review. Once students assemble the pictures, several instructional options are possible. Students can:
  • Use many of the pictures to make a power collage.
  • Use individual pictures, frame them, and label or write a sentence about each. Put the pictures and text together to make a mini-book.
  • Use several pictures and write a group story.
  • Ask students to select one picture and write about the power evident in the picture.
  • Have students keep a “power” journal where they daily record their thoughts and examples of power they experience for a week.

Vocabulary: Defining Empowerment

When people are empowered, their relationship with and use of power changes. Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary notes that the verb empower dates back to the 1600s and means "to give official authority or legal power to.” Empowerment involves sharing power, acting on issues one views as important, and gaining control over one’s life. It therefore challenges our ideas about the way things are, should be, and could be.

• With your students, note that empowerment is made up of the following concepts and discuss each by having students provide examples. Have them identify examples of these concepts in the actions they see on the videotapes.
  • power
  • helping
  • achieving
  • succeeding
  • change
• Other terms to explore in defining empowerment as it was experienced by the Gallaudet students and the nation’s deaf people include:
  • mutual respect
  • diverse perspectives
  • developing a vision
  • realistic solutions to an issue
• General terms incorporated in the tapes as background and critical to understanding a democratic society include:
  • rights
  • civil rights
  • protest
  • demonstration
  • rally
  • university
  • deaf community
  • Deaf

Practice and Extension

• Invite deaf adults to class who experienced the Deaf President Now protest—either in person or through watching the events unfold on television. Have students design questions for and interview these individuals.

• Have students explore Web sites related the Deaf President Now protest and empowerment. They can begin by exploring some of the links on our Resources page of the DPN for Teachers and Students Web site.