Let me begin with this passage from the Holy Scriptures, found in Jeremiah 18: “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again into another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.”

In pottery, the potter places a mold of clay on a table and turns it around carefully. Using his hands, he will repeat the process several times until he gets the perfect shape.

Hands are important to a potter as they are to us, Deaf persons. Our main tool of communication is our hands, we talk and express ourselves through them. And just like the potter whose hands make the perfect creation, we also hope to make the best if not the perfect performance for ourselves using our hands. With our hands, we can go places, change lives and make a difference.

I was born Deaf, and when my parents discovered this, like most hearing parents of Deaf children, they felt that the only way for me to survive was to learn to speak. So they enrolled me in different oral schools where I had to wear hearing aids and learn how to lip read. I went to four different oral schools. I tried my best in these schools, but still it wasn’t easy for me to adjust. And then my parents thought of trying it out in a school for the Deaf and they enrolled me at the Philippine School for the Deaf where sign language is used as the medium of communication. I quickly adjusted and started doing well in my academics, and received several awards in grade school. I was also the valedictorian of my batch.

I was an achiever in high school, and even if I transferred to a Deaf private school in my senior year, I still managed to finish with academic honors.

And then came college. During my first year, I was in an institution where Deaf and hearing college students were together in class. I found the experience to be more saddening than exciting. I often cried because my hearing classmates would exclude me from meetings and group projects, maybe because they thought I could not understand them and communicate with them. I struggled to adjust and tried to show them what I could do but they never gave me a chance to prove myself. I don’t want to feel useless and I’m sure neither do any Deaf person for that matter. I tried to think that, maybe, my classmates were doing this because they had big hearts and wanted to make things easier for me; but I ended up frustrated and the one trying to understand them. Before the end of the first semester, I had decided to move to another school, this time, one that offered a program for Deaf students.

Through the efforts of my mother, Vilma, I got into the DLS-CSB’s School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (SDEAS). At SDEAS, not only did I find an academic institution; I also found an environment where teachers and other members of the community welcomed us. I felt loved and cared for; the school was like a family. I learned that I am a Deaf person; the word, Deaf, spelled with a capital D, which means that I am identified, not merely as a person who cannot hear, but as someone who is part of the Deaf community, partaking in its unique culture and natural sign language. And with that, I believe that one of the best fruits of education is our ability to understand and change people’s attitude toward the Deaf and other Persons with Disabilities, and that is what SDEAS’ education gave me.

Our Benildean education developed us, Deaf persons, into persons of dignity, integrity, and with a deep sense of spirituality. We are now being given the chance to become productive members of society.

I’m sure that all students of high schools for the Deaf all wish to go to college. However, very few schools offer quality education and those that do are expensive schools, and most of the Deaf cannot afford to pay the tuition and other fees. Besides, most people—and sad to say even some parents of Deaf students—assume that because we are Deaf we cannot succeed in college so it’d better not to send us to school. For us, going to school is no walk in the park. We often need to rely on kind-hearted teachers and interpreters to understand the lessons. Getting an education is a big challenge for us.

And so I am thankful to DLS-CSB for opening its doors and welcoming us despite our disability. We have learned so much from this school and we can now proudly say that we are complete Deaf persons and we now embody the teachings of Saint Benilde Romançon.
I especially wish to thank Brother Vic for his utmost concern for the Deaf and his big heart by increasing the number of slots for Deaf scholars from 30 to 60 students starting school year 2008-2009. My sincere thanks and appreciation to all the hearing students for their willingness to interact with us and for making us feel that we are not “another” group and that we can be active participants in school activities and a useful bunch of interesting students.

We may be Deaf persons but we can also do anything you can do, except hear. Communicating with our hands should not make a difference. We live in one country, one world. That means we also long for respect and acceptance. We are not a different breed. We want to live in a society that does not stare or frown at us or treat us differently. We are human beings regardless of our disability. Please allow us to show what we can do; please, believe in us too. Let us prove to you that yes, the Deaf can.

I thank my teachers for painstakingly teaching us all the tools we would need to make us productive individuals and for showing us the way toward academic independence. We will forever treasure our years with them in our hearts. I thank my parents, Ramon and Vilma, for their patience and perseverance, for their selfless understanding of our endless needs, and their unconditional love and care and support, thus enabling me to become what I am today.

We the Deaf students also offer our sincerest thanks to all our interpreters who willingly and generously assisted us with our communication needs.

I hope that my Deaf batchmates and I will serve as living testaments to what we can all become despite our limitations. In previous years, only a handful of Deaf students would graduate every year. Today, 25 of us received our diploma, the biggest number so far.

I am probably the first Deaf Filipino magna cum laude graduate, and I am not saying this to brag about my achievement. I am humbly sharing this with you to thank God, my potter, for molding me, His clay, into a wonderful human being. I believe we can reach our maximum potentials no matter what challenges we face in life, because God is our potter and we are his clay.

(Ana Kristina Macasaet Arce, 23, graduated last Oct. 17, 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Deaf Studies from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. The article above is an edited version of her graduation speech.)