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All signs point to success

When Guadalupe Ricardo Ramirez’s alarm buzzes in the morning to wake him up, he doesn’t hear it — he feels it.

Better known as “Richie” to family and friends, Ramirez is deaf.

Ramirez’s special, vibrating alarm clock is just one example of how the 17–year–old Highland High School senior overcomes his limitations.

Graduating as a successful student — who just happens to be deaf — in just a few short weeks is another.

Diagnosed with severe hearing loss when he was only 3, Ramirez has excelled in high school with a 3.4 GPA in college prep classes throughout his academic career as well as making the wrestling team for the past four years.

But behind Ramirez’s success — and his disability — is a young man and his family who have used this adversity as a stepping stone, rather than a stumbling block.

Ramirez’s father, Ricardo Ramirez, remembers first dealing with his son’s deafness.

“It’s tough at first, you wonder how you are going to handle it. But eventually, as doctors start referring us to specialists, we started in the direction we should be going,” said Ricardo Ramirez.

That direction was learning sign language.

Ramirez and his wife, Christina, immediately started taking classes at Bakersfield College to learn how to sign in ASL, American Sign Language, and SEE, Signing Exact English, so that they could effectively communicate with their son, who began learning sign himself when he was 4.

Richie Ramirez says that, for him, learning sign language was easier than most people think.

“It wasn’t really difficult. I use my eyes a lot, that’s my skill,” he said through sign language as interpreted by his father for this interview.

Ramirez often uses his parents and his little brother, Jesus, as interpreters. In fact, Ramirez’s father attended every wrestling meet his son participated in to interpret for his son. Ramirez credits his parents as one of the most important factors to his success.

“Since I was in kindergarten, they have been very important. They have helped me through all of my obstacles,” he said.

Deaf students comprise a small percentage of students enrolled in Kern County Schools.

In the 2005-2006 school year, Kern County reported 92 enrolled deaf students. Of this number, 73, or 79 percent, were of Latino origin. By comparison, Latino students comprise 56 percent, or 96,398 students, of the total student enrollment of nearly 72,000.

One of the biggest obstacles Ramirez faces as a deaf person, according to Ramirez himself and his father, is the ability to write in the English language.

According to Ramirez, while ASL is a great way to communicate for deaf people, it is not an exact replication of English structure.

The Ramirezes have been adamant that their son use SEE sign language whenever he can, especially in educational situations.

“We don’t oppose ASL, we use it in social situations, but we do know what our son needs in the classroom,” said Ricardo Ramirez.

Florence Witherspoon, an interpreter for the Kern High School District for the past year, says the difference between ASL and SEE sign language is that ASL is a shorthand way of sign communication that leaves out certain structure and syntax elements of the English language.

“In SEE sign, it would be ‘We’ve already eaten,’ but in ASL it would be ‘Eat finished,’” said Witherspoon.

Ramirez has gone to great lengths to ensure that he knows SEE sign and that he can effectively write in English.

Throughout high school, Ramirez has attended a special, after-school program on a daily basis to get extra help with his writing. He also has private tutor sessions three times a week.

“Our greatest concern is that our son learns English and that he has a voice of his own,” said Ricardo Ramirez.

So far, so good — Ramirez passed the writing portion of the Kern High School exit exam last May.

“I didn’t allow my disability to hold me back,” Ramirez said. “I aspire to be better, to produce better English on paper.”

Indeed, it has been the Ramirez family’s positive and hardworking attitude that has
helped him be successful.

In the fall, Ramirez made it to the valley championships as a wrestler in the 103–pound–class.

“He is a good wrestler. If you get to see him, you will see — he is legit,” said Paul Gonzales, wrestling coach at Highland High School.

Ramirez says one day, he hopes to be a wrestling coach.

Speaking of the future, Ramirez looks forward to the challenge of college.

He will attend Bakersfield College in the fall where he will work to complete his general education requirement before transferring to a four–year university. From there, Ramirez wants to either go to CSUB and study to become a teacher or he wishes to pursue civil engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

But whatever Ramirez aspires to do, he insists his disability will not be a factor.

“I’m happy to be deaf — I don’t feel bad about it at all,” said Ramirez.