
The
Butterfly Cage
Joy, Heartache, and Corruption: Teaching While Deaf in a California Public School
by Rachel Zemach



Rachel Zemach
Author | Teacher | Advocate | Presenter



After ten years of teaching Deaf students in a hearing school district, Rachel decided to write a memoir of this experience, in order to educate others, improve the experiences of Deaf children and try to start a national dialogue about mainstream Deaf education. Readers will meet individual students, watch raucous and often surprising class discussions, and see Rachel’s personal journey as her identity as a Deaf person undergoes a dramatic shift.
Joy, Heartache, and Corruption: Teaching While Deaf in a California Public School
This book is tender, funny, surprising, and disruptive. You’ll be a fly on the wall in a Deaf classroom in a public school, watching a Deaf teacher struggle with staff, administration, and aides who sabotage the teachers at every turn. You’ll also see the children struggle with a principal who removes their textbooks, a vindictive, power-hungry speech therapist, and a system that leaves them all defenseless against it.
You’ll also meet a language-hungry boy who will capture your heart and run away with it and the political, fiercely intelligent elite members of the Deaf community who rally to change legislation after his life takes a shocking turn. Learn from these true stories of individual students and their quirky, fallible teacher, what the deepest feelings and dilemmas of Deaf and hard of hearing people are, and why 90% of our students around the country are being unnecessarily set up for failure.
‘In “The Butterfly Cage,” Rachel Zemach fills that gap, and then some! Writing from the perspective of both a Deaf student, and long-time Deaf teacher of the Deaf, Rachel enabled me to finally gain some real insight into the severe impediments to learning that we educators create for our Deaf students…’




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"The value of her perspective can't be overstated...from working in a hearing school."




“This is a page turner!! I never knew one beautiful bridge could bring together so many different types of people. Rachel Zemach has just become one of my favorite authors!!” — Beth




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Years of Teaching
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Deaf students world wide with access to education in sign language
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Nancy Rourke
Deaf Artist


Book and Website Art Work Courtesy of Nancy Rourke
“My work has a centralized focus that makes a theme using categories that can be resistance, affirmation and liberation art. I create images, colours and construction that show different symbols and motifs.”
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