Deck: How rejection, doubt, and barriers became part of a lifelong career in Deaf Education.

People have told me what I could not do for most of my life. They were quite confident about it, too. My high school counselor said it. Four school districts said it with their rejection letters. A few colleagues said it under their breath on my first day of work. I never found a good reason to listen to any of them. I just kept going, kept teaching, and somewhere along the way, forty years passed.

The Door That Closed at Seventeen

My first ambition in life was to be a nurse. Taking care of my parents and siblings when they were sick brought me a kind of satisfaction I could not explain. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. So, when the time came to think seriously about a career, nursing was the plan. I had not questioned it.

Then my high school counselor questioned it for me.

She told me, plainly, that nursing was not a realistic path for someone with my deafness. The job required two-way communication between patient and medical staff, and in her view, I could not meet that requirement. My resource teacher agreed. The conversation was short. The decision, as far as they were concerned, was settled.

I did not argue. I sat with disappointment and looked for another direction. What I did not know yet was that the direction was closer than I thought, and that it would find me before I found it.

The Afternoon in the Study Hall That Changed Everything

The turning point did not come from a plan. It came from an ordinary afternoon in the study hall.

I was assigned to tutor a fellow student in English. The work was simple enough. I explained concepts, went back and forth until something clicked for the other person. But something about that process stayed with me. There was a specific satisfaction in the moment when understanding finally landed on someone’s face, and I wanted more of it.

Teaching had not been on my radar before that afternoon. After it, I could not get it off my mind. I shifted course, committed to the new direction, and set myself on a path toward education.

I earned my Master’s in Deaf Education from Kent State University in 1972. I was ready to work. What I was not fully prepared for was how hard it would be to get anyone to let me.

Four Nos Before a Single Yes

After earning my degree, I applied to school districts across Ohio. Four of them turned me down.

The rejections were not always explained directly, but the pattern was clear enough. Some school administrators at the time resisted the use of ASL in Deaf programs, and a deaf teacher who believed in sign language was not the hire they were looking to make. I kept applying.

The Youngstown City Schools said yes. I walked into that job already knowing the doubts that were circulating around me. Former colleagues in the Deaf Program made their predictions early. They said I would not last long, that the demands of the job were too much, that it was only a matter of time. I heard every word of it. I went to work anyway. I did not spend much energy on what people expected me to fail at. I spent it on the students sitting in front of me.

The Student Who Answered Every Prediction

Years later, at Poland Local Schools, I was assigned to tutor a ten-year-old profoundly deaf student named Freddie in all subjects. The district’s Board of Education had not been eager to bring me on. The Special Program Supervisor pushed for me anyway and insisted I be hired part-time after our interview in August of 2003. She believed I could do the job well.

I tutored Freddie, held him to a high standard, and watched what happened when a deaf child is given focused attention and real expectations.

Freddie graduated with a 3.9 GPA. He went on to earn his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Akron.

I think about that often. The counselor who told me nursing was impossible. The four districts that passed on me. The colleagues who gave me six months. And then there is Freddie, with his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Akron.

Forty Years of Showing Up

I spent more than thirty years with the Youngstown City Schools and another ten at Poland Local Schools. That is over four decades in Ohio classrooms, built on a career that began with a closed door, survived four rejections, and outlasted every prediction that I would not make it.

My deafness did not define me. It never did. The career I built was not built in spite of it. It was built because I worked, because I refused to let one counselor’s opinion become the final word on what I was capable of, and because a routine afternoon in the study hall pointed me somewhere I was far better suited for than I had ever imagined.

The nursing dream I carried at seventeen was never truly forgotten. Life would answer it differently, years later, in the hardest way possible. But that is another story.

What this story is about is simpler than that. It is about someone who kept showing up. Every day, for forty years.

What a Lifetime of Showing Up Leaves Behind

I am the author of Rising From the Abyss of Grief, a memoir and 30-day devotional for anyone navigating loss, loneliness, and the long road back to living.

It is not the book people might expect from someone who spent forty years being told what she could not do. I do not dwell on the obstacles or ask for sympathy. I wrote this book the same way I have tried to live my life: honestly, directly, practically, and without performance. I wrote it for people who are in the middle of something hard and need someone to tell them, plainly, that it can be possible to keep going. Not easy. Not fast. But possible. If a reader has ever been counted out and kept going anyway, the book may feel familiar.

A Public Conversation on WDTN-TV’s Living Dayton

Not long ago, I was asked to share my story on WDTN-TV as part of their Living Dayton segment. I did not set out to be on television. That was never the goal. But sitting there and talking about the career I built, the rejections I worked through, and the students I watched move into their next chapters, I realized that the story had traveled further than I ever expected it to. Forty years in a classroom, and it took a television segment for some people to hear it for the first time. Better late than never, I suppose.

For guidance and inspiration on navigating loss, visit Irene Tunanidas’s book website, Rising from the Abyss of Grief, and follow her reflections and community support on her Facebook page.