Imagine sitting in your economics class, drifting off into thought. You’re thinking about plans for the weekend: when you have to work next, how you better pay your electric bill before it’s late. But all the while, you are listening to the professor’s lecture and half-processing that information.

Now imagine you look over and see the professor’s lips moving, but no sound is coming out. In fact, there are no sounds at all in the room -- no clicking of pens, no rustling of papers, no whispering of the answers to number seven on the quiz -- just silence. This is what Steve Mayers experiences everyday because he was born deaf.

Mayers is an extended learning student at SF State and has been through extensive schooling throughout his life. Much of his education involved learning oralism, a controversial method that teaches a deaf person to speak. He finds that American Sign Language is more effective.

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The reason oralism is so controversial is because the deaf person usually is not allowed to use any other method of communication besides oralism. They are taught strictly to read people’s lips and then speak back to them.

He thinks his speech is awful. “I feel that my speech is not really normal. Many people do not understand my speech problem,” said Mayers.

He attended Mary El Bennett School in LA., Tucker Maxon Oral School in Portland, Org. and The Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, MD that teaches a strict oral method according to Mayers.
Even after all his training, Mayers said oralism makes it difficult to communicate with people. If at all possible, he prefers to communicate through ASL.

Mayers said the SFSU disabled services department has been helpful to him. “If anyone who is deaf asks me about the programs at SFSU, I can refer anyone to disabled services.”

Mayers also said that getting a college education depends on the person and their ability to communicate. “I know that some deaf students are succeeding well in their courses, but others deaf students aren’t. It depends on how their brain works, and their skills in adapting.”

In May 2008, he will complete his teaching credential program at SFSU, "hopefully, I might be teaching basic ASL programs at the local adult schools in San Mateo County, in Oakland and in San Francisco next year," said Mayers.