Anne Sullivan is known as one of the best teachers in the world after working with Hellen Keller, a mute, deaf and blind girl, whom he managed to teach to read, write and speak. Helen was a child unable to communicate and no one expected her to have any future. With the help of Anne Sullivan He learned to write, read and speak, he went to university and became a writer and lecturer.
The incredible story of Hellen Keller:
Anne Sullivan was born in 1866 into a very poor family. She went blind at 5 years old, but after a couple of operations she regained her vision.
He lost his family members gradually and He decided to dedicate himself to helping other blind children.graduating with honors and learning the manual alphabet.
It was then that he met Hellen Keller, with whom he worked intensely to ensure that she could understand the environment from which she lived completely isolated. Helen Keller had become deaf and blind for life after suffering an illness at the age of 19 months. The girl was very aggressive since she did not know any other mode of communication and Anne Sullivan had to deal with this first problem through patience and insistence.
After tried to teach him manual language. The procedure was always the same: he would put her in contact with an object and then spell the word on her hand. Little by little Helen Keller began to understand this language and feel motivated to learn new words. Her aggression decreased and she learned manners.
«I’m just a person. But I’m still a person. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. “I am not going to refuse to do the ‘something’ I can do.” – Helen Keller
Once this progress was achieved, Anne Sullivan taught him read in Braille and also to read lips of people by touching them with his fingers, which later helped him learn to speak. The girl had to pay close attention to the vibrations that were produced in her teacher’s throat every time she pronounced a word, so that she could then imitate them and learn to speak.
This story shows that, without the help of this incredible teacher, Hellen Keller could never have learned to read, write or speak and would have spent her entire life as a person without the ability to communicate.
Hellen not only managed to develop her communicative attitudes, but also he studied, went to university and graduated with honors, thanks to the help of Anne, who interpreted in her hands what the teachers said in class. The student wrote a book about her life and, many years later, a film was made about her story, called ‘The Miracle of Ana Sullivan’, which won an Oscar and in which you can see what this learning was like and what techniques the student used. teacher.
If you want to know more about this peculiar case.