Essay Example on Even though Helen Keller was blind and Deaf

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Thesis Statement Even though Helen Keller was blind and deaf she never let her own obstacles stop her from what she wanted She accomplished great feats and has been a woman inspiring thousands of women still today Helen Adams Keller was the first child born to Arthur H Keller and Katherine Adams Keller She had a younger sister and two older step brothers Helen s father Arthur was an officer in the Confederate Army during the civil war Her family did not have a hefty sum of wealth but received income from their cotton plantation Later on in life Helen s father proceeded to become the editor of a local newspaper The North Alabamian Even though Helen Keller was blind and deaf she never let her own obstacles stop her from what she wanted She accomplished great feats and has been a woman inspiring thousands of women still today Even though Helen was blind and deaf she was born with her sights and hearing She began to speak when she reached six months old and began walking when she turned a year old In 1882 Helen fell ill to a sickness that their family doctor identified and brain fever That caused a high body temperature Doctors today still do not know what this illness is but believe it could have been scarlet fever or meningitis 



When Helen s Fever finally went down her mother noticed some changes to her daughter Helen would not respond to noises such as the dinner bell and she wouldn t react when a hand was waved in front of her face At just 19 months old Helen Keller had lost both her sight and hearing biography com As Helen grew closer to becoming a toddler she established a small amount of communication with the daughter of the family cook Martha Washington The two companions had created a special type of sign language so that Helen could communicate By the time Helen was seven years old the girls had come up with sixty different signs But around this time of age Helen had become spontaneous and ill behaved She would kick and scream when angry and would giggle uncontrollably when happy biography com She would traumatize Martha and would force dramatic meltdowns upon her parents Many family members believed that she should be admitted into a special psychiatric care unit Concerned for her daughter s sanity in 1886 Katherine A Keller read an article written by Charles Dickens called American notes There she read about a girl named Laura Bridgman with the same medical conditions as Helen The girl had been able to successfully learn how to communicate even with her disabilities The family traveled to Baltimore Maryland There they meet with specialist Dr J Julian Chisolm After evaluating Helen s permanent state she referred them over to Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone The kellers met with Bell and her suggested they go to Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston Massachusetts 



There they met with the school s director Michael Anagnos He recommended they work with one of the school s most recent graduates Anne Sullivan biography com And that is when a relationship between teacher and pupil began Anne Sullivan arrived at the Keller s plantation on March 3 1887 and got right to work She began by showing Helen Keller who was 6 years old at the time fingerspelling She started off with the word doll and brought a doll along with her to help Helen out Helen was curious at first but she broke out in defiance not wanting to participate in Anne s activities Helen s frustrations began to rise and boil over and during one of Helen s numerous tantrums Anne demanded that she and Helen be secluded from the family so that Helen s main focus would be on Anne s practices on helping her The two moved to a cottage on the plantation biography com In the midst of one of their many sessions Sullivan taught Helen the sign for water She pulled Helen out to water pump and pumped the water into Helen s hand and then proceeded to spell the word upon her palm They had reached a breakthrough and Helen was finally understanding She pounded the Earth's surface eager to know it's signed name By the end of the day helen had learned nearly thirty words Helen started speech courses at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston in 1890 with Anne Sullivan by her side Then in 1894 she moved on to the Wright Humason School for the Deaf in New York City all the way to 1896 There she worked on making her communication skills more understandable and began taking normal academic classes


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