Teaching Helen
Annie starts
teaching
Miss Sullivan began working toward a breakthrough with a doll that
children at the Perkins Institute had made for her to give Helen. By spelling
"d-o-l-l" into the child's hand, she hoped to teach her to connect
objects with letters. Helen quickly learned to make the letters correctly, but
did not know she was spelling a word, or that words existed.
The communication breakthrough came with a trip to the well.
Helen had been learning the finger spell patterns for W-A-T-E-R and M-U-G, but
she still did not relate them to a liquid and its container. Later, when they
were walking by the well house, Annie placed Helen's hand under the water coming
from the pump and spelled W-A-T-E-R. Suddenly Helen had a realization. The cool
liquid coming from the pump had a name. There were names for everything. She stopped and
touched the earth to ask its name. By nightfall, she had learned 30 words in
this matter.
"Helen got up this morning like a radiant fairy. She
has flitted from object to object, asking the name of everything and kissing me
for very gladness. Last night when I got into bed, she stole into my arms of her
own accord and kissed me for the first time, and I thought my heart would burst,
so full was it of joy." Anne
Sullivan.
By the
summer of 1887, four months after Annie arrived, Helen had a vocabulary
numbering hundreds of words, and was forming simple sentences. Much of her
communication was by finger spelling, but she had also learned the shapes of
letters.
Also, she
could print using block letters. To write she used a grooved writing board that
was placed over a sheet of paper. Helen wrote the letters in the grooves,
writing with a pencil and guiding the end of the pencil with the index finger of
her left hand. She began to mail letters to her relatives. That same summer
Helen also learned the Braille alphabet.
Helen Goes to School
In the spring of 1888, as Helen approached 8 years old, she left Alabama
with Annie to go to the Perkins School in Boston. Helen was exposed to a
wonderful array of resources and her abilities increased. She learned quickly
and had an extraordinary memory for details. Her capacity for quick learning and
retention gave her the name of "miracle" child.
Her first
speech teacher was Sarah Fuller of
the Horace Mann School. Helen felt the shape of her mouth as she spoke, feeling
inside the mouth to feel the position of the tongue, then, she shaped the sounds
on her own. First she learned to say letter sounds, then syllables. At first her
speech was difficult to understand. She spent many years trying to perfect her
speaking ability, even into adulthood. As she learned how to speak, she also
learnt reading lips. This was a brand new form of communication that Helen began
to use immediately.
Helen
Keller spent a lot of time in helping others and she never got tired of it. She
was very kind and generous. She had a lot of friends and communicated with
dignitaries around the world, but she always
felt true empathy for the poor and
for the disabled.
Helen Graduates from College In 1900, Helen began to think of college. Many colleges wanted her, but she chose one college in America that did not want her, Radcliffe. They thought she could not compete with "sighted" students, and this was equivalent to a challenge to Helen. She first passed her entry exams, and then with Anne Sullivan as a translator, attended regular classes. She graduated with honours in 1904, becoming the first blind-deaf person in history to graduate from college.
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