Helen Keller

     Last month I was required to do a research report on a topic of my choice. I have always been fascinated with Helen Keller, so I picked her. I read her book (The Story of My Life) and a couple other articles on the internet and got to work. There are a lot of things I learned about her that weren't in my history book. She wrote 12 books, several articles, lots of letters, and a story that she accidentally plagiarized. She knew sign language, read Braille, and learned how to speak by feeling the movement of the mouth and tongue and the vibrations of the larynx. (Think about teaching a deaf and blind person to speak... trying to talk with her hands in your mouth. Then she would stick her hands in her mouth then back into yours #howaboutno) She was deaf, yet she learned English, French, German, Greek, and Latin. (the only other language I know is pig latin...) She did a lot of cool things, and she didn't let her disabilities stop her. I think that's pretty inspiring. A lot of people don't even know how to properly clean a toilet, let alone know 5 different languages. There are a lot of ordinary things she did that are difficult even for people who can hear and see. Through all of her struggles, she kept a positive attitude and never gave up when people told her to quit.

-Dakota