...Summary of Helen Keller: The Story of My Life For my personal choice book I have chosen Helen Keller: The Story of My Life, by James Berger. I chose this book because it was very interesting to read about how her education developed throughout her life. It was also fascinating to know how she learned to understand what people were saying because she wrote how sometimes she would place her fingers on their lips and would discover what they were saying from the movements of their lips. At other times people would spell into her hand what they were saying. This book was about the first 22 years of her life. When she was 18 months old she suffered from Scarlet Fever, which left her blind and deaf. Her articulate speech was gone as well. With these disabilities she also had problems with relationships. She never had children or got married. Her greatest confidant was her teacher, Anne Sullivan. She learned to talk passably and dance. Once she opened her mind she became a happy participant of the world. She graduated from Radcliffe University. She became an artful writer and a crusading humanitarian. She also revolutionized the educational techniques and methods of teaching for the blind and deaf. The Main Characters Main Problem and How She Goes about Solving it. The main character in the book Helen Keller: The Story of My Life is Helen Keller. Helen Keller’s main problem was that she was battling with two disabilities in life. She was both deaf and blind from an illness she...
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...Summary of Helen Keller: The Story of My Life For my personal choice book I have chosen Helen Keller: The Story of My Life, by James Berger. I chose this book because it was very interesting to read about how her education developed throughout her life. It was also fascinating to know how she learned to understand what people were saying because she wrote how sometimes she would place her fingers on their lips and would discover what they were saying from the movements of their lips. At other times people would spell into her hand what they were saying. This book was about the first 22 years of her life. When she was 18 months old she suffered from Scarlet Fever, which left her blind and deaf. Her articulate speech was gone as well. With these disabilities she also had problems with relationships. She never had children or got married. Her greatest confidant was her teacher, Anne Sullivan. She learned to talk passably and dance. Once she opened her mind she became a happy participant of the world. She graduated from Radcliffe University. She became an artful writer and a crusading humanitarian. She also revolutionized the educational techniques and methods of teaching for the blind and deaf. The Main Characters Main Problem and How She Goes about Solving it. The main character in the book Helen Keller: The Story of My Life is Helen Keller. Helen Keller’s main problem was that she was battling with two disabilities in life. She was both deaf and blind from an illness she...
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...Story of my Life by Helen Keller The Story of My Life by Helen Keller is an autobiography of Helen, a girl who was born without any abnormalities until the age of 19 months that she came down with a fever. Leading to an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain, the doctor said she might not recover, although she did survive it lead to her being blind and deaf as a result. Helen’s autobiography talks about her childhood when she met Anne Sullivan, to learning to use sign language, to being able to learn to read on her own, which led her to write her first short story titled "The Frost King,” to Mr. Anagnos, but was sad at the fact it was plagiarized and was found similar to, "The Frost Fairies" by Miss Margaret T. Canby, in a book called "Birdie and His Friends,” and how it affected her friendship with Mr. Anagnos had ended because no one believed that she did not intend to plagiarize the story. She also talks about her visit to Boston, to the Perkins Institute, and seeing other children who are blind and chat with them, "what joy to talk with other children in my own language" (Ch9). Helen also talks about going to Radcliffe College for the first time and overcoming obstacles with her teacher, Anne Sullivan; for example, when she could not get her books published in Braille in time and it was a difficult learning process but Anne had some difficulty signing into Helen’s hand. She talks about Anne and her new acquired friendships such as with Mr. Anagnos, Alexander Graham...
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...Ladies. In 1900, she gained entrance to Radcliffe College. She graduated Radcliffe at age 24 in 1904 and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree. She was the first blind, deaf, and mute person to get that degree.http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100124132526AAe3nwd Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880, in a small town in Alabama. What makes her extra ordinary is the fact that at the age of 19th months she suffered from something that may have been scarlet fever. The illness left her blind and deaf. Keller did not let this make her give up on opportunities that most children and women have had. She was the first blind-deaf women to graduate from college. She attended Radcliffe College and graduated in 1904. Upon her college graduation Keller devoted her life to writing and public speaking. She wanted to serve as an inspiration to women. She fought for those with disabilities, she supported birth control, and she supported women’s suffrage. President Lyndon B. Johnson even awarded her the President Medal of Freedom for all achievements and for making a difference in the lives of others. At the age of 87, on June 1st, 1968 Helen Keller. In her long life of 87 years, I truly believe Helen Keller touched the lives of many people and I think her legacy still does today. Although she wrote and was an activist for many causes. Her own life story and her persistent struggle, and the fact that she refused to give up, and overcame all obstacles are what make her so accomplished...
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...Helen Keller I chose to write my paper on Helen Keller. Helen overcame disabilities to become an author, a college graduate, a political activist, as well as co-founding different organizations making her an inspiration to many people.. At 19 months old Helen Keller contracted a disease that is still mysterious today, that greatly elevated her body temperature to a point that caused her to go blind as well as deaf. On top of these disabilities, other than simple hand gestures to communicate; nobody knew how to teach Helen to read or correspond with other people. Having only really one companion to communicate the mere sixty plus hand gestures, Helen became very wild and uncontrollable having many temper tantrums and being mean to her companion Martha Washington. Education was very important to Helen, she strived to learn as much as possible starting with her first educator Anne Sullivan. “Beginning almost the minute she arrived, Anne spelled words into Helen’s hand, starting with D-O-L-L for the doll she gave as a welcoming gift. (Eldred, 1997)” As Helen began to learn the correlation between the spelling on her hand and what the object was, she became excited about learning and strived to learn as much as possible, also encouraging her to go to college. “Someday I shall go to college but I shall go to Harvard…which impelled me to enter into competition for a degree with seeing and hearing girls. (Keller, 1996)” A tip I seen that I could use toward towards...
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...Helen Keller: A True American Hero What makes a hero? A hero represents the values of a society and is seen as a savior figure who conquers evil and helps people. Helen Keller, a woman who worked hard for the benefit of others and inspired people all around the world despite being blind and deaf since nineteen months old, fits this exact definition. Helen Keller is an example of a hero because she overcame numerous challenges and made great contributions that impacted the lives of many people. Helen Keller showed qualities of a hero as she overcame numerous obstacles and achieved great success. In her early years, communication seemed impossible for young Helen. She would often throw tantrums in a struggle to make people understand her. But her teacher Anne Sullivan did not give up. With her help, Helen made great progress in communication, including grasping the concept of “finger spelling” and mastering the alphabet. She began to express her thoughts to people, like her parents and teacher, which changed her into a more independent human being (“Helen Keller Biography” 2). Being blind and deaf did not shatter Helen’s determination to attend college. In 1900, Helen entered Radcliffe College, where she became proficient in Braille and even learned to speak. She graduated with honors at age 24, which made her the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree. Although Helen experienced prevailing prejudice the society had against the disabled, she did not let...
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...Helen Keller: An Extraordinary Woman The name Helen Keller is known around the world as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds, yet she was much more than a symbol. She was a woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition, and great accomplishment. She was a woman to stand up for her believes in and would challenge anyone who would stand in her way. She had an ability to demand and captivate her audience. She was outspoken in her principles, and she inspired change in the way people with visual impairment were treated. She pushed revolutionary changes in the law that would allow people with disabilities to have jobs and an education. I am inspired by Helen Keller because she was a person with so many challenges at such a young age. Yet she was able to overcome them and change some many things in our country, but she didn’t stop just in our country. She went overseas where some people also had no way to speak their opinions and needs. Even with her disabilities she never wanted pity. She asked for sympathy and understanding. Helen was an extraordinary woman. When Helen was nineteen months old, she contacted a virus with a high fever and that was what caused her to deaf and blind. Unfortunately, being that young, what memory traces were left became impossible to say. In 1887, unknowing to Helen, someone was going to change her unruly behavior, that’s when Anne Sullivan became her teacher (Keller 15). One day when Helen and Ms. Sullivan were getting...
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...HELEN KELLER She was a great woman that overcame great obstacles in a time period where women, especially those considered disabled, were put into mental hospitals. When she was 18 months old she suffered from Scarlet Fever, which left her blind and deaf. Her articulate speech was gone as well. With these disabilities she also had problems with relationships. She never had children or got married. Her greatest confidant was her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Ms. Keller commented on her relationship on Peter Fagan. He had proposed marriage, But left after he thought of his life with someone who was totally dependent on him. (Keller: A Life) She needed to become triumphant her adversities. She learned to talk passably and dance. Once she opened her mind she became a happy participant of the world. She graduated from Radcliffe University. She became an artful writer and a crusading humanitarian. She also revolutionized the educational techniques and methods of teaching for the blind and deaf. Of course, Helen needed a driving force, and someone to help her find her full potential. This is where Anne Sullivan came into her life. Helens parents went through a lot of networking and doctors to find Anne. Anne herself was partially blind and learned at the Perkins Institute how to communicate with children that were deaf and blind. She used sign language while touching the hand of the student. But their start was not an easy one. “The Miracle Worker” is a movie that...
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...Helen Keller's Family Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. On her father's side she was descended from Colonel Alexander Spottswood, a colonial governor of Virginia, and on her mother's side, she was related to a number of prominent New England families. Helen's father, Arthur Keller, was a captain in the Confederate army. The family lost most of its wealth during the Civil War and lived modestly. After the war, Captain Keller edited a local newspaper, the North Alabamian, and in 1885, under the Cleveland administration, he was appointed Marshal of North Alabama. When Helen Keller Met Anne Sullivan At the age of 19 months, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness, perhaps rubella or scarlet fever. As Helen grew from infancy into childhood, she became wild and unruly. As she so often remarked as an adult, her life changed on March 3, 1887. On that day, Anne Mansfield Sullivan came to Tuscumbia to be her teacher. Anne was a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind. Compared with Helen, Anne couldn't have had a more different childhood and upbringing. The daughter of poor Irish immigrants, she entered Perkins at 14 years of age after four horrific years as a ward of the state at the Tewksbury Almshouse in Massachusetts. She was just 14 years older than her pupil Helen, and she too suffered from serious vision problems. Anne underwent many botched operations at a young age before...
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...I chose Helen Keller as my person for the individual project. The reason I chose Helen Keller is that I think she was an extraordinary person. She overcame some very difficult and personal battles. I have been intrigued, fascinated, and curious about her and her disabilities since I was around 12 or 13. I even learned to sign the alphabet, partly so I could talk to my friends in class, the teacher would not know what we were doing, and I wanted to know what it was like to use my hands to communicate. Helen Keller was born in Alabama in the late 1800’s. When she was almost two, she had an illness that caused her to lose her ability to see, hear, and speak. This was a time when people did not know how to deal with people or children with disabilities. Most of the time they were sent to special hospitals or institutions to live. Helen parents could not do that and did not know how to teach her so she became a wild child, doing whatever she wanted. When she was six or seven her parents had a young teacher named Anne Sullivan come live with them and work with Helen. She did not let Helen get away with whatever she wanted to do, so there was a lot of conflict with her parents to start with. After a few months, Anne was able to get through to Helen and she learned quickly after that. In 1888, Anne and Helen went to Boston; Helen wanted to help other blind and deaf people. She was...
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...Helen Keller Questions Thinking Critically: I think that the "light" that Helen was hoping and looking for was just a chance to communicate and interact with other people. For her whole life there was almost nothing. She couldn't hear or see. That counts down a huge percentage of any possible interaction with another human being. Being alone in the world with little possibility of making friends or even having someone there is scary and depressing thought. This is why I believe that that was the "light" Helen was looking for. #4: It was important to Helen because she was just learning about one thing having a name, but everything having a name opens up a whole new world to Helen. A chance to communicate with people and to learn new things about everything and everyone. #5: The "mystery of language" was revealed to Helen by the help of her teacher. They went to the water spout and the teacher started pumping for the water to come out and she put one of Helen's hand underneath the water, and spelt the word "water" in the other hand. That is when it was revealed to her and she knew that there was so much more than just water in the world. At the sametime, however, it was pretty consequential for her because there were all of these things that were open to her to learn but at the sametime she was very restricted at being able to learn all of it. Due to her being blind and deaf it was very difficult and would take her very long to learn everything and even if she did it...
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...Helen Keller may be the world's most famous ‘supercrip’. Very few people can claim to have "overcome" disability so thoroughly and spectacularly. A blind and deaf wild child at the age of 7, she became, by the time she published The Story of My Life at 22, one of Radcliffe's most successful and polished students, fluent in Latin, Greek, German, French and (not least) English--not to mention three versions of Braille (English, American, New York Point) and the manual alphabet in which her renowned teacher Anne Sullivan first communicated with her. But let me dispense with the scare quotes for a moment. Helen Keller is famous--and justly so--precisely because she did, in many respects, overcome the physical impairments of deafness and blindness, as well as the formidable social obstacles facing people with disabilities at the end of the nineteenth century. Her story retains its power to startle and inspire even now, just as Anne Sullivan's story remains among the most startling and inspiring tales in the history of pedagogy. Keller's story is also a member of the genre of disability autobiographies in which the writing of one's life story takes on the characteristics of what the philosopher J.L. Austin called "performative" utterances: The primary function of The Story of My Life, in this sense, is to let readers know that its author is capable of telling the story of her life. The point is hardly a trivial one. Helen Keller was dogged nearly all her life by the charge that she...
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...Helen Keller was born June, 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her parents were Captain Arthur H. Keller and Katherine Adam Keller. She grew up on a large farm called Ivy Green. Helen enjoyed the horses, dogs, and chickens. She began speaking at 6 monthes old and by the time she was a little over a year old, Helen was walking. In 1882, she was stricken by an illness. She was running a high fever with headaches for several days. This illness left her blind and deaf. Today it is believed she had brain congestion or scarlet fever. Helen became a very wild, unruly child throwing tantrums, kicking, hitting and seemed very frustrated. Her parents new something had to be done to help their daughter. In 1887, they contacted the Perkins Institute for...
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...Helen was ill when she was young and made her life different from other people. Helen Keller was born like any other kids in the world, but when she was nineteen months old, she had an illness that was believed to be Scarlet Fever. When Helen was young, she was uncontrollable because of Scarlet Fever. When she was older she once said that “Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.” Helen had a difficult life, but her parents and her teacher helped her through rough times. Helen was born in June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Helen was born with normal senses and she even started to speak. Then in 1882 Helen fell ill to Scarlet Fever and began...
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...Helen Keller was one of the greatest women who had achieved many amazing things even when they had obstacles in their way, but for Helen she didn't let her being blind and deaf stop her from learning and for always wanting to speak up. Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was born as a regular healthy baby and nothing was found wrong with her until Helen was nineteen months old, she became seriously ill and during this time there was no medicine to help cure her fever. Everyone thought that Helen was not going to get better and that she would not going to make it. But somehow luckily Helen’s fever seem to have been going down and had later disappeared. After the fever, Helen did not returned back to the healthy baby she was before because she lost both her hearing and her eyesight....
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