HELEN KELLERHELEN KELLER

Author: Margaret DavidsonAuthor: Margaret Davidson

Ryan KennedyRyan Kennedy

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was born she could see and hear. When she was about 1 ½ years old she got really sick. She had a really high fever and the doctor thought she was going to die. She got better but she was deaf and blind.

Helen could not understand anyone or anything. She acted wild all the time She didn’t even know how to eat with a fork. Her mother and father did not know what to do with her. They did not know how to help her. They thought they were going to have to put her in an asylum.

Helen’s mother read about a teacher from Boston, Massachusetts who could help blind people. Helen’s father wrote to the teacher for help. Annie Sullivan was the name of the teacher. She came to Alabama to try to help Helen. Helen was six years old when she met Annie. Helen did not like Annie at all because she was a stranger.

Helen had a bad temper. She would grab things and throw things all the time. She never got punished for it because her family felt sorry for her but her new teacher didn’t. The first day that Helen met Annie she kicked her. Annie Sullivan said that Helen acted like a wild animal and that she had to learn self control.

Annie wasn’t going to be able to help Helen while they were in the house because Helen’s family would just let Helen keep getting her way. There was a small garden house on the property so Annie moved Helen there away from her family. Annie taught Helen the alphabet by making the shapes of the letters in the palm of Helen’s hand. Helen was smart and learned how to do it but Annie had to teach her that the words she was spelling meant something.

One day Annie took Helen outside to a water pump. She pumped the water and let Helen feel it. She did the letters W-A-T-E-R in Helen’s hand. Helen got it and she understood that the words she was learning meant something. She wanted to learn more and more words. Annie taught Helen to read by using books that were written in Braille. These are raised letters so someone who is blind can feel the letters and read the words. Helen was so smart that she wanted to learn how to talk. She practiced a lot and even though she couldn’t talk clearly she did learn.

Since Helen was not wild anymore Annie took her out to other places like the circus, the Perkins Institute where Annie graduated from and other places. Helen loved to travel. She was learning new things everyday. She wanted to learn more and she really wanted to go to college. She went to Radcliffe College and all the time she was there Annie Sullivan sat next to her and spelled out everything into Helen’s hand. Helen graduated college in 1904.

After Helen graduated college she became a writer. She wanted to write about the problems of people who were deaf and blind. People wanted to know more about Helen’s life instead of people they didn’t know. Helen thought it would be a good idea to give lectures. Then she could talk about her life and make people know how hard it is for other deaf and blind people. Helen traveled all over the world and met famous people doing her lectures.

Annie Sullivan was getting older and it was getting harder for her to travel with Helen anymore. Annie Sullivan had very bad eyesight and was almost blind. She wore dark glasses because the sun and bright lights hurt her eyes. Even though her eyes got tired and it was hard for her to see she spent almost her whole life teaching Helen. Annie Sullivan died on October 19, 1936. Before she died she told Helen that if she didn’t keep up her work to help people then that would mean that Annie would have failed so Helen kept doing her work.

Helen Keller spent the rest of her life helping other blind and deaf people. She taught them that they could still have a good life and didn’t have to live in darkness and silence. Helen Keller said many times, “The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” Helen Keller lived until she was 87 years old. She died on June 1, 1968.

Vocabulary

Asylum noun: A hospital where people who are mentally ill are cared for especially for long periods of time: a mental hospital

Tame adjective: not wild; trained to obey people; not afraid of people; not exciting or interesting

Restless adjective: feeling nervous or bored and tending to move around a lot: not relaxed or calm; unhappy about a situation and wanting change; having little or no rest or sleep

Puzzled verb: confused; difficulty understanding something

Lecture noun: a talk or speech given to a group of people to teach them about a particular subject

Helen Keller using the finger alphabet to spell words into Annie Sullivan’s palm.

Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe College