El Deafo

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is your familiarity with deafness? How have you seen deafness portrayed in the media, and what do you think people might get wrong about deafness without experiencing it for themselves?

Teaching Suggestion: Understanding student familiarity with deafness and Deaf culture will help tailor the discussion to students’ needs. This prompt can also help you demystify or debunk depictions of deafness that students may have seen before or recalibrate their understanding of deafness as a marker of identity, tying in to the theme of Disability and Alienation.

• Guidelines for Media Portrayal of the Deaf Community – The National Association of the Deaf lays out their key priorities for responsibly portraying their culture in mainstream media and entertainment, which can be a useful point of comparison between what students have seen in their media diets and the reality of being deaf.
• Hearing Loss Factsheet – While this article is meant to help teachers with students who are themselves hard of hearing or deaf, it contains a great deal of information about the kinds of accommodations deaf or hard of hearing students need, which may help prepare students to talk about El Deafo.