Rachel Zemach
===

Rachel Zemach: [00:00:00] I became a teacher

because I felt I had something to bring to the table for deaf students because I'm deaf myself and I also love teaching. I became a teacher, finally got my credential later in life, and I had already had a lot of experience being a student myself in many different kinds of schools and seeing what worked and what didn't work.

I knew many deaf people and I had worked in many different settings, so I had a lot that I already knew going into the job. But 

What I learned on that job was mind boggling. It stunned me changed me I changed my own personal identity because of what I saw and experienced on the job, and I wrote a [00:01:00] book to try and make a difference because of what I saw.

Tim: Hello friends, this is Think Inclusive. I am Tim Villegas and who you just heard was Rachel Zemak, a deaf author and former teacher. 

her book, the Butterfly Cage, joy, heartache and Corruption Teaching while Deaf In a California Public School was released in 2023. It describes in a lively, personable manner, her career, personal identity shift, and the trajectories of individual students, as well as studying dysfunction in mainstream deaf education.

Her book is an attempt to trigger a national dialogue On the topic 

Rachel lives in Northern California. Thanks so much for being here with us today. We appreciate each and every one of you listening to or watching. Think Inclusive MCIE's podcast that brings you conversations with people doing the work of inclusion in the [00:02:00] real world. And while you're here, make sure to hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you are so you can keep getting think inclusive in your feed.

In today's episode, Rachel and I discuss her book, the Butterfly Cage. She highlights the transformative experience of teaching deaf students in both mainstream, her word and deaf schools. Zemak emphasizes the importance of positive deaf identity, sign language, and the rich cultural and educational benefits of deaf schools over mainstream environments.

She discusses the communication barriers. And the need for proper accommodations such as hiring deaf teachers, providing interpreters, and promoting American sign language within inclusive settings to ensure that deaf students can thrive Before we get into my conversation with Rachel, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this season.

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Plus, each learner receives a personalized learning plan to effectively address any knowledge gaps. Interested in learning more, visit ixl.com/inclusive. That's ixl.com/inclusive. All right, after a short break, we'll get into my conversation with Rachel Zemak, catch you on the other side.

​

Tim Villegas: [00:04:00] Rachel Zemak, welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast. 

Rachel Zemach: Good to be here, 

Tim Villegas: Rachel. Uh, you wrote a book called The Butterfly Cage about your experience, uh, being, uh, a teacher. And I know that we are gonna be talking about your experiences, um, as a deaf person and about teaching, uh, deaf children. But you wanted to say something first before we get it, before we got into the book.

Is that right? 

Rachel Zemach: I want to explain a little bit to people who are listening or watching this. Um, I became deaf when I was 10, [00:05:00] so I still have speech, but when I'm around deaf people, I sign and I don't want to use both languages at the same time in this interview because it, it's impossible to do it well in both languages at the same time.

So I'm just signing for now to show you that that is my preferred mode of communication, um, for this. We are relying on captions for me to understand and I have a separate device here that is also a backup for captions. So occasionally I might look away. Um, [00:06:00] and any deaf person who wants to access this can do so through a transcript.

So I just wanted to let you know and explain all that. 

Tim Villegas: Thanks Rachel. And like Rachel said, when we first got onto Zoom, which is the platform we're using for this interview, there are some captioning issues. So that is why Rachel has the backup. But it just goes to show how difficult it can be sometimes, uh, to.

Communicate. 

Rachel Zemach: Yeah, that's the biggest issue deaf people have is communication. You know, we don't feel disabled, but society being so focused on sound, [00:07:00] um, makes it a disability in the area of communication and understanding things. But once we have access to understand the things that are going on around us and to communicate with people, then the disability disappears.

Tim Villegas: Well, thank you for being here, Rachel. I am wondering if you can share with us what. Brought you to teaching, like what was your journey like to become a teacher?

Rachel Zemach: Um,

I became a teacher

because I felt I had something to bring to the table for deaf [00:08:00] students because I'm deaf myself and I also love teaching. Um, I became a teacher, finally got my credential later in life, and I had already had a lot of experience being a student myself in many different kinds of schools and seeing what worked and what didn't work.

Um, in terms of my being a student and I knew many deaf people and I had worked in many different settings, so I had a lot that I already knew going into the job. But when I was working, teaching in a public [00:09:00] school, I taught a deaf class in a, what's called a mainstream school. So it's just a regular public school where the majority is hearing, and then there's a little contingent of deaf students deaf.

What I learned on that job was mind boggling. It stunned me and changed me and. I changed my own personal identity because of what I saw and experienced on the job, and I wrote a book to try and make a difference because of what I saw. 

Tim Villegas: Could you tell us more about the change that happened inside of you, [00:10:00] uh, because of your teaching experience and working with children?

Rachel Zemach: Yeah. Uh, so in the beginning of the job when I first started, I would tell people I was hard of hearing or I had a hearing problem and.

I, I felt kind of ambivalent. I felt on the fence about whether I was part of the deaf world or part of the hearing world, where I stood and where I had the right, what I had the right to call myself.

So, one way of explaining that is that I was deaf with a lower [00:11:00] KD and 10 years later I left the job and I went to teach at a deaf school. So it's a dramatically different environment. The deaf school is where everybody's deaf, including most of the teachers, the principals, the janitor, everybody. And there's a sense of deaf pride and a strong sense of positive deaf identity and culture, and a celebration of sign language, American sign language.

There. It's a different world, and I left the mainstream school to teach at a dev school after 10 years. By that time, I was a completely different [00:12:00] person. I felt comfortable using a capital D to describe myself, to write the word duh. Throughout my book, I use a capital D for the word duh.

I to, to try to summarize why that happened from the children, the students, I thought that anything to do with deafness to, like if I brought a book, a children's book, and I told them this was written by a deaf author, they, they got super excited. If I told them we have a visitor coming next week, they would look at me like almost untrusting until [00:13:00] I told them the visitor is deaf.

And then they were thrilled like it's a movie star, even though they didn't know anything else about the person.

And I saw that. It was the deaf identity, the positive association with being deaf that gave them joy

and also sign language, celebrating sign language, enjoying it, playing with it, analyzing it, discussing it, seeing more of it. That also was the source of great joy and the environment we were in [00:14:00] was quite a hostile one. It didn't mean to be, the administrator thought that they were doing the best thing for deaf children by.

Telling them not to call themself deaf, but rather to call themself hard of hearing and to put them in regular classes with hearing students and to try to teach them to speak and to use different listening devices and listen. And there's a whole mentality that is completely the opposite from the mentality at the deaf school in the deaf community.

And personally, from what I came to believe in

though, you have two different approaches to the same [00:15:00] thing. You have a deaf child in a hearing world, how do you educate them? And I. The majority of administrators, even many teachers, speech therapists, audiologists, pediatricians believe in helping them fit in with the hearing world. Whereas the majority of deaf, professional and the people at the deaf schools around the country and successful deaf adults and the deaf community believe in the opposite approach.

Tim Villegas: I have a question about,[00:16:00] 

about your personal beliefs and. Because what it sounds like is the, where you ended up with your thinking and philosophy is that

deaf children should, should be educated in, uh, a space that is meant for, uh, the deaf community. Is that correct? 

Rachel Zemach: Yeah, basically, um,

if deaf children, okay, let me back up a moment. 85% of all deaf and ho of hearing children [00:17:00] in the United States are mainstreamed the belief system. Is so strong, the belief system that says that deaf kids should be educated with their hearing period. They should be put in regular schools, they should be put in regular classes.

They should be taught to speak and lip read and fit into the hearing world. That is the philosophy that is in power and that most parents are advised to go along with and they do not knowing any better. So 85% of our children. [00:18:00] Are in regular public schools where they might be the only deaf child in the whole school, or maybe there are two of them.

In my case, there was, there were about 20 when it was at its biggest, often they would be 10 deaf children and the whole school, and they were all different ages from kindergarten to sixth grade.

And the contrast is at deaf schools, there are many, many, many deaf people, there are deaf role models. There is a linguistic fluency. Everybody's signing all the time. So whereas in hearing school, everybody's talking all the time. Maybe the teacher in the deaf class science, [00:19:00] but when the kids go to recess, they can't understand the other teachers who are doing yard duty.

They can't understand the hearing kids. They're missing out. So they feel different and they feel disabled. And often they're made fun of. Most deaf people do not speak and their voices are often made fun of in that kind of environment. They don't have confidence to raise their hand in class and ask questions because they're not gonna understand the feedback they get.

They often are in regular classes where they're missing could be a hundred percent of the material that they're being hot. It could be 40%. It could vary throughout the day, but everything they [00:20:00] miss has a cost to them psychologically and socially. The fact that there's no other deaf kids on campus, it means that they can't develop a positive sense of who they are as a deaf person when they, they don't see any other deaf people around them.

Mm-hmm. 

Rachel Zemach: And communication is though, is a problem. So they're two totally different worlds. And what I saw was that my students, some of them transferred to the dev school and they flourished within a couple of months. They were signing better than they'd ever signed before with me and my class. They had friends, they had a strong self-esteem.

They were able to pursue their [00:21:00] interests in life, and the sense of being different disappeared. They were the norm in that. So, 

Tim Villegas: so I wanted to ask a follow up question about that, because what you're describing

with a learner who is deaf, going to a deaf school and then, and having this community of, of deaf individuals and role models, like you said, that doesn't last, that doesn't last forever, right? Because at some point you le like school is over. So. Help me understand with what happens after school. And [00:22:00] if the goal is, and I, and, and I'm not talking about assimilation, you know, what you're describing with this mindset of a deaf learner in a school that's mostly hearing sounds like we want you to change, to fit what is, what is happening in the hearing world.

So, and I wanna talk about that more too. But my, my main question is, you have a deaf learner who's in a deaf school and has a deaf community, and that school, school time is over. Yet the world is not the deaf community. Like in that school, like, like in that school. So how does that prepare a learner to live in a world that isn't like the deaf school?

Rachel Zemach: [00:23:00] Okay. That's a great question, and I have to give you credit. You are the first person who had ever asked me that, 

Tim Villegas: so, okay. Yeah. All right. 

Rachel Zemach: It's a wonderful question and it's important. Mm-hmm. And I'm very interested in that because right now I'm seeing my students, my former students becoming adults, and I'm keeping in touch with many of them and tracking their lives.

I have to admit, partly out of an academic interest, you know, to see how is this gonna play out? And about half of them. Half of my students transferred to the dev school and half of them stayed at the hearing school district as they grew up, I mean, as they, until they became 18. Mm-hmm. So [00:24:00] I've had a very good opportunity to see the results and

the kids that go to the deaf school, the fact that they get everything directly from their teachers direct communication in an A SL American Sign Language, as compared to going through an interpreter or a listening device, or a faulty ears in a hearing environment. It's a very important. Aspect of what's happening in both places, because in the hearing environment, they're missing out, they're guessing, they're pretending to look okay, to [00:25:00] look like they're understanding to fit in.

I'm not deaf. Mm-hmm. I understood you perfectly when they might've missed a hundred percent. And whereas in the deaf school, they're understanding everything. They have immediate access to everything. And this enables their brains to develop very, um, handly very quickly. And

so the brain development is very different for the two different groups. I can't emphasize this enough. It's, it's astonishing to see the difference and also to see that that difference happens within a few months. The [00:26:00] brains of the kids in the deaf environment just take off. And so, and their sense of themselves, their sense of their power in the world, their sense of their accountability, their critical thinking skills, abstract thinking skills, all of that can grow.

Whereas in the other environment, everything is stunted and kind of faking it. A lot of faking, it goes on, a lot of covering up for embarrassment. Um, so when they get into the real world as adults, the adult world, trying to find job, trying to find partners, et cetera, [00:27:00] if they have been exposed for any decent amount of time, at least a year, but ideally, you know, the longer the better.

They have friends, they have a community, they have knowledge of what the deaf resources are. For example, big organizations that serve deaf people, they know about all these things because that's part of the cultural knowledge that's shared in a deaf environment that, hey, if you need an interpreter, go to this place.

When you're dealing with a hearing person, use a phone app. If you need a job, you can go to this organization. You know, the knowledge is there. So they're way better off in that way. Whereas the kids from a, a hearing school,[00:28:00] 

many of them have no clue. They've never heard of these agencies. They don't know the solutions to deal with hearing people in public. They don't know that there's an up like this. They don't know it because they're on their own

and they're thinking has been stunted for many years. So the tools that the people from the deaf school have are much stronger for surviving in a difficult world.

I'm generalizing. There are always exceptions. Mm-hmm. Many exceptions, but this would be an accurate generalization from what I've seen.

The, I just to add, [00:29:00] um, two things. One is that

many deaf people from deaf schools end up working with deaf people or when they get jobs, they know how to stand up for themselves. They know what their legal rights to communication access are, and they know how to fight for them. So even though they faced discrimination like crazy, I. From the hearing world, from both groups face discrimination and challenges.

And it's tough out there for us often, but these people, they have tools to navigate it and they have support and they have role models who told them, Hey, [00:30:00] it's up to you to make your life a success and work hard and deaf role models, whereas these people never had it. And then one more thing I'll add.

The kids who grew up in mainstream schools, when they become adults, I've noticed very often they have trouble finding a social group. They have trouble finding somebody to marry or you know, a relationship. The relationship they want in life because they don't sign fluently. Because in that environment, usually a SL is not emphasized speaking is, and so they don't learn a SL fluently.

So that means they can't go and mingle with the deaf community, which could give them a lot of [00:31:00] happiness and a lot of new relationships. And they also don't think, they don't understand deaf norms. They don't identify as a proud deaf person again because of that environment. So they can't really access the rich, beautiful, supportive, deaf community that exists.

Yet when they try to mingle with hearing people, that doesn't work either because they cannot understand them, they're just pretending. And that doesn't go very far in making a real relationship. So it's very sad to see sometimes

Tim Villegas: we have a lot of listeners who are [00:32:00] interested in inclusive education. Um, in fact that's the majority of our listeners are, are educators, administrators, uh, and the topic of deafness and the deaf community is one that is not something that I have much experience in. Um. I have asked, I have ha I have been asked by a number of people whether like what you're saying, schools can be inclusive and have deaf learners, um, while also not expecting them to change in order to fit into a hearing world, but to provide accommodations [00:33:00] so that they, uh, can thrive in whatever school or classroom they're in.

Um, and I understand there's a lot of strong feelings about, uh, deaf children going to, to deaf schools, but in your experience and opinion. Is it possible for deaf children to thrive in an inclusive classroom that is set up to support them and not change them? 

Rachel Zemach: Yeah, I, I like that question a lot too, because it is possible.

And how it can be achieved is for the school to hire deaf teachers. [00:34:00] And

in order to hire deaf teachers, they may have to provide interpreters and accommodations for those deaf teachers. So many schools don't do it. They hire only hearing teachers, however. Deaf teachers are where the magic happens. Uh, deaf teachers live the experience of being deaf in their everyday life 24 7.

And many of them the good ones, uh, I shouldn't say that. I do. I mean, there's all kinds of great teachers out there, right? But ideally, a deaf teacher will also be connected to the deaf community and the deaf culture, and so they're bringing that to the classroom. [00:35:00] This idea of it being possible to look at deafness as a positive thing, as a great thing, as a thing to be proud of and enjoy, rather than a problem that we have to try to cover up.

And I. Push under the rug. So a deaf teacher can bring a lot to the table in a hearing environment that a hearing teacher can't. And though they're important things psychologically and also linguistically, if the deaf teacher signs in a native manner, then the brain benefits of learning a first language will be out there maximum from that teacher.

And then their [00:36:00] brain is working well and can, you can apply that to academics. So that's my first strong recommendation in order to create what you're suggesting is take the extra trouble. Take the leap of faith, be respectful enough of the population you're teaching. In other words, deaf children, to hire a deaf teacher for them.

Then

create an environment where they are respected by the rest of the staff, despite them being deaf. That's also very important. The administration sets the tone that, okay, we have a deaf teacher. Is that somebody that we look down on, that we, um, ignore [00:37:00] and devalue because they're deaf? Or do we realize that they are actually an, a very important resource for our deaf students and we can use them, we can learn from them, and.

The second one is the one I recommend. Also, when you mainstream a kid into a regular class, I'm not against mainstreaming. It can work very well for some individuals and it can be a thing of beauty. However, it has to be done carefully. And right now the tendency is to throw deaf kits into hearing classes just to automatically assume that if you have a deaf kit, well, it's a hearing world, so let's put the deaf kid in a hearing [00:38:00] class and they'll get used to living in the hearing world.

And

the fact is that it, it has the opposite effect. You are disempowering them. In reality when you do that. So if you are going to do it, make sure you have an excellent interpreter for them, that means a certified interpreter

and ideally a hearing interpreter and a deaf interpreter teamed up. That's kind of complicated to explain, but that is the ideal situation for a deaf child in a hearing classroom.

So make sure that the quality of the interpreter is excellent, not average or [00:39:00] inadequate. And again, that's the norm, is that they are inadequate. So again, you are pulling the child down rather than. Lifting them up and setting them up for success.

If you focus on hearing devices and lip reading and speech, that's fine. I, you, I'm speaking now. I'm married to a hearing person. I'm not against it at all. I have a hearing aid on, however, don't use that as a reason to, um, eliminate sign language. Give them both. Teach them sign language, teach them with sign language, give them [00:40:00] speech if they want it, and if it's working for them, but also give them the children power to decide what's working for them and what isn't.

Rather than making these decisions for them. 

Hmm. 

Rachel Zemach: I Go 

ahead, lemme 

Rachel Zemach: ask a little bit more. Sorry. But 

No 

Rachel Zemach: problem. Also, um, include the child in everything after school classes. Get them an interpreter for the after school classes. If you have a event, a sporting event that everybody's participating in, get them an interpreter.

If they're going on a field trip, make sure there's an interpreter who will show up to that field trip. In other words, if you're gonna call yourself inclusive, really be inclusive. Don't [00:41:00] be a little bit inclusive when they're in class only, and then they're on their own the rest of the time. Because they may be paying a very high price psychologically for it, and yet because they're kids, they're not able to express it.

Mm-hmm. And it's only when they become adults that they will start talking to each other about the trauma of their childhood in that so-called inclusive environment. And last of all, teach a SL to the general ed students and to the staff. They don't have to become fluent, but teach them a thousand signs, you know, bit by bit.

Five signs a week, teach in assemblies, send home little videos, have a teacher go in and work with each class. It is [00:42:00] nothing but a positive thing. Sign language, it has tremendous benefits for everybody. Also the deaf kid, again, will really be included when they can go out to recess and when they fall and hurt themselves, the teacher on yard duty can come and say, Hey, what's wrong?

You know, are you hurt? What happened? Maybe you should go get a bandaid. But right now, the way things are, the teacher will come and say, what,

you know, the kid feels this environment doesn't really care about me because I can't understand them. 

Tim Villegas: Those were, those are great suggestions and recommendations, so thank you for sharing that. Um, along the same lines of I Inclus Inclusive Schools and Inclusive Classrooms, [00:43:00] um. Again, deafness and deaf culture is not something that we, that I have a lot of experience in, but what I do have a lot of experience in is supporting learners with autism, uh, in an intellectual disability, um, emotional, behavioral, uh, difficulties, uh, challenging behavior.

And so there is a sentiment, um, although not really shared by our listeners, but there's a sentiment out there that those learners should be in special schools or special classrooms, um, because of a lot of the same reasons that you bring up about deafness and the deaf culture, the problem that [00:44:00] we've seen.

Uh, and again, it's not, I'm not talking about deafness, I'm talking about supporting learners with the disabilities I just mentioned. Um, is that those environments separate and segregate learners from, they're typically developing peers, especially those with intellectual disabilities, and they're getting a different kind of curriculum, a maybe watered down or a, a curriculum that matches a low expectation for those learners.

And when you look at, uh, special schools, oftentimes nobody knows what's going on in the special school. I. [00:45:00] Because those learners, um, are not consistently able to tell what is going on and how they're feeling. Um, and so I want to make a distinction between what you're talking about with deaf individuals and a special school for the deaf and learners with autism, an intellectual disability or other behavioral or behavioral challenges.

Because,

because that is a, a lot of people and who, who are listening want to see schools that are inclusive, particularly for those learners. So I, I just wanna get your. Feeling [00:46:00] about this as, are you advocating really for the deaf community? Are you or are you saying it for any disability? 

Rachel Zemach: Wow. Another good question.

Okay, so I have three main points to answer that with the last question I'll answer First, you ask if what I am advocating is only for deaf kids or for kids with disabilities in general of different kinds. What I will say about that is that deaf kids have a very important difference from all the other categories.[00:47:00] 

That is communication is our problem. That is the barrier that we have is people talking and we don't have good hearing. The hearing is not reliable. What we do have is good sight. So, but that's not how the world is run. Everything is tends to be through speech. So

communication is our enemy of deaf children with children of other disabilities. They have other issues, but they do not have a communication issue. Well, I, that's not entirely true for sure. Um, many people do it. 

Mm-hmm. 

Rachel Zemach: Many autistic people have communication issues, et cetera, [00:48:00] but it's not based on physical access to the language around them.

Hmm. Okay. 

Rachel Zemach: So the, um, the IDA, the, there are certain laws that were put in place that enabled people with any disabilities to get, to have the right to accommodations in public school. And what deaf people believe now is that it with well-intentioned with law, it. Is a wonderful thing in many ways, however, it has backfired on deaf children because it means that we're put into places that we can't understand our own teacher.

We can't understand the people we're supposed to be [00:49:00] making friends with the kids, the other kids we're missing out all the time. And how can we get an education under those circumstances as equals? We're always working to lip read, working to communicate, working to hide the fact that we didn't understand or working to hide the stigma from people who will look down on us when they find out we didn't understand.

You know, it's a battle, and the battle is not academic. It's not. Taking the material that we're trying to learn, the math, the reading, the writing, science, whatever, and grappling with it. It's simply understanding what the hell. It's,

you know, it's communication. 

Yeah. So, 

Rachel Zemach: but just people, the laws are not helping us. Hmm. They [00:50:00] have made problems instead. So, um, the LEA least restrict, LLI least restrictive environment, LIE. Mm-hmm. Least restrictive environment in the eyes of most hearing people. It is for a deaf child to be in the hearing school and class in the eyes of most deaf people.

It is the least restrictive environment is a deaf school. Or a large deaf program where they're deaf teachers and we call that a language rich environment. So there's been a play on the, um, on the phrase to make it fit what we believe in. So that's the answer to one of [00:51:00] your questions. You mentioned, um, assimilation and inclusion.

So the idea is for a child to be in a class with their peers, with their non-disabled peers so that they have a similar experience

and they can build their skills. I agree with you that the quality of education should be for everybody, should be high, should be the same, should be as high as it possibly can be for any given child. And I agree that in segregated classes, sometimes it isn't. It depends on if you have a really good teacher and if the administration is [00:52:00] supportive of that teacher and gives them what they need to do their best.

And there should be watch docs. I believe each group should have supervision to make sure that the quality of each program is high. But another version of what you're saying. Reminds me of teachers and administrators of the school where I taught for 10 years, the mainstream school, and they would say, well, let's put this child in a hearing class for part of the day so that they will get used to socializing with hearing kids.

What I would say to them is that kid socializes with [00:53:00] hearing kids all the time. Their neighbors, their cousins, their, the kids who come to their birthday party, almost all of them are hearing, you know, when they take a, when they go for a drive, they're, they're associating with their siblings in the car for hours.

I mean, their whole world outside of school is hearing people. They don't need to have that in school where they're trying to get an education. 

Hmm. 

Rachel Zemach: What they need is education in school, and then once they have education and they can read and write and do math and they're thinking is sharp, then they can function better when they're in the hearing world.

Also, we don't need to[00:54:00] 

interfere with their education by trying to push our values on them in that very limited time environment. You know, they're only in school a certain number of hours a day

that that's.

Yeah, that's, that's basically, um, all three questions. 

Tim Villegas: Okay. 

Rachel Zemach: All three.

Tim Villegas: Um, well again, thank you for, thank you for sharing your, your thoughts about that. Um, this has been a really fascinating conversation, so I really, really appreciate it. Um, as we wrap up, is there anything that you would want to leave with our listeners? [00:55:00] Um, anything that you want to share that's on top of mind for people who, who do want to create inclusive schools and inclusive classrooms?

Rachel Zemach: Yeah. Um.

If you have, or if you come in contact with a deaf child, I would urge you to not be, not to push them in the direction or push their parents in the direction of assimilation and mainstreaming and speech, but to realize that there are, we call it DA, deaf, deaf community and cultural wealth, [00:56:00] DCCW. There's something that you don't know about that is a beautiful thing, and it's empowering and it's.

Interesting. It's funny, it's lively. It's a gift to its members, and that is deaf culture and the deaf community. And by directing a child only to the hearing world, you are actually cutting them off from something that could be a source of strength and happiness to them. And you don't have to worry about them going over to the deaf world and and being isolated.

Because what will really happen is they will go to the deaf [00:57:00] world and get their happiness and get their needs met intellectually and conversationally and then. They still live in a hearing world and they will be grateful for having had that opportunity to, to have both experiences. So there's a fear of deafness that's unwarranted.

It won't take anything away from a child. It will just give them more. And then I also want to tell people about the book, um, if you want to learn more and read stories of individual students and see classroom, um, things, and also the trajectory of one particular student[00:58:00] 

who was, who is a wonderful kid. Who you'll feel very strongly for. And then you'll see how his future played out. And you can learn about deaf politic, deaf history, my personal family dynamics and identity journey. All this is crammed into one book, and I promise you that as heavy as it sounds, it, it has a lot of light moments and humor in it.

I did that on purpose to balance out the nature of the material that's quite serious. So it won't be, um, taking your heart and wring it without giving it a chance to [00:59:00] 

get 

Rachel Zemach: someone. And the book is available on Amazon. Bookshop many places. It's called the Butterfly Cage.

Tim Villegas: Thank you. The Butterfly Cage. Um, Rachel Muck. Uh, Rachel, before I let you go, uh, there's a, there's something we do at the end. I didn't prep you for this because in our communication via email, I was so concerned about being able to get the book and we just, I, we didn't have our typical communication between guest and host.

But if you are willing, I ask something called a mystery question at the end of our interview, and I have a stack of cards. And they're just prompts. And, uh, I pick a [01:00:00] card at random and then we both answer the question and I try to make it light. And if there's something that you are uncomfortable or I'm uncomfortable in, in answering, we can just skip the question.

Um, are you willing to do that with me? 

Rachel Zemach: Yeah, it sounds fun. Okay. I'm a little bit scared, but I'm definitely game for it. 

Tim Villegas: Mo. Yeah, it's okay. Usually, usually it's just fine. So I'm gonna pick the top card here and, um, oh, this is, this is a hard one, but if you were designing your own fragrance to represent yourself, what would you call it?

Rachel Zemach: What would I call it? Oh, 

Tim Villegas: yes. 

Rachel Zemach: Wow. Um, 

Tim Villegas: this is hard.

Um, I can go first if you want, uh, [01:01:00] because I'm trying to think what would I want, would I want a fragrance to be called and to smell like, um, yeah. Okay. So I really enjoy walking in the woods, so hiking. One of our favorite places to go is to national parks all over the country. And so I would want a national park themed fragrance.

And so right now my favorite national park is Glacier National Park in Montana. So I would call my fragrance glacier. There you go. 

Rachel Zemach: Wonderful. And you also helped me with my answer because [01:02:00] I love the smell of redwood trees and forest. I love it. And I was house sitting at one point for somebody in Santa Cruz, California, and right outside of her house was this incredible smell of forest.

And I would go out and slip, slip, and I wanted so badly to take it in a bottle home because I loved it. So as far as the name.

Well, to be poetic. How about Redwood Relief? [01:03:00] Relief? 

Tim Villegas: I like it. 

Rachel Zemach: You, hopefully the smell is so enchanting and the views also that you release the, some of the garbage and stress from the rest of your life for a little while. 

Tim Villegas: I love that. I love that. I, I, to be honest, I was a little nervous about this question, but I think we, I think we nailed it.

Rachel Zemach: Likewise, likewise. Thank you for the opportunity and I loved your question. 

Tim Villegas: Rachel Zema, thank you so much for this fascinating conversation and I look forward to you reading your book, the Butterfly Cage.

Uh, and thank you for being on the podcast. 

Rachel Zemach: Thank you for the opportunity and good to meet or sort of meet all of your viewers and listeners.

Tim: That's all the time we have for this episode [01:04:00] of Think Inclusive. Now, let's roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I handle the writing, editing, design, mixing, and mastering. This podcast is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with additional tunes by Melod.ie.

A big shout out to our sponsor, IXL. Check them out at ixl.com/inclusive. We truly appreciate each and every one of you who tunes in. We'd love to hear how you are using our episodes. Are they part of your teaching toolkit? Are you sharing them with school administrators? Drop me a line at tvillegas@mci.org.

That's T-V-I-L-L-E-G-A-S @ mcie.org and let me know. And hey, if you're still with us this far into the episode, it probably means you love, think inclusive in the work MCIE is doing. Can I ask you a small favor? Help [01:05:00] us keep the momentum going by donating at our website mcie.org. just click the button at the top of the site and chip in $5, $10, $20.

It would mean the world to us and the children in the schools and districts we partner with. Thanks so much for your time and attention and remember, inclusion always works. 

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