Anne Sullivan - Helen Adams Keller

"The most important day I remember in all my life, is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects. "
- Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was born June 27, 1880, in the northwest Alabama city Tuscumbia. Her father was a retired Confederate Army captain and editor of the local newspaper; her mother was an educated young woman from Memphis. When Keller was 19 months old, she was attacked by an unknown disease, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind.

Keller was very intelligent and tried to understand their environment through touch, smell and taste. However, began to realize that their family members said to one another with their mouths instead of characters as she did. Feel her moving lips, she flew into a rage when she was not able to join the call. At the age of six, Keller later wrote in her autobiography, "the need for some means of communication was so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly."

Anne Sullivan came to Tuscumbia be Helens teacher on March 3, 1887. Later that day Keller would call them "soul birthday." Perkins Director Michael Anagnos was clever, the strong-willed to choose Sullivan, for some young women would, persevered through the turbulent first few weeks of the relationship. Keller hit, pinched and kicked her teacher and hit one of her teeth. Sullivan eventually gained control by using the girl to move to the cellar plot in a small cottage. Through patience and solid consistency, they finally won the child heart and confidence, a necessary step before Keller's education could go.

Sullivan began with the developed by Perkins' first director techniques, Samuel Gridley Howe, when he used to work with Laura Bridgman 50. She fingers the names of familiar objects in her students in the hand. They innovated by Keller's favorite activities and their love of the natural world incorporated into the course. Keller enjoyed this "finger play", but they do not understand to the famous moment when Sullivan wrote "w-a-t-e-r", while the water pump on her hand. Keller later wrote:

Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness of something forgotten-thrill intended return; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that flowed over my hand. The Living Word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! ... Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. When we returned each object that I seemed touched to shake the house with life.
Keller wrote of the following days: "I did nothing but explore with hands and learn the name of each object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and applications, the more cheerful and confident grew my feeling of kinship with the rest of the world. "Sullivan constantly to her fingers and she trained in the give and take of conversation. Many people believe that Helens love of language, its articulation and great grace was built as a writer and speaker on this foundation.