Gehlen students learn through silence

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
April 1, 2004

LE MARS - Kindergarten through sixth grade students at Gehlen Catholic in Le Mars "listened with their eyes" to a presentation called "Nails." The first presentation was for the kindergarten through third graders and the second was for fourth through sixth graders.

Roger Dobitz used mime, gestures, body language and music to communicate a Lenten message to the Gehlen students. Gehlen's theme for Lent this year is "Lent...a Time for Self-Improvement." The presentation done by Dobitz helped the students better understand themselves.

Dobitz grew up on a dairy farm in North Dakota with 14 siblings. He attended Catholic school and now works at Interbake Foods in Sioux City. He is mostly deaf and wears hearing aids to help with his verbal communication.

When the presentation began, Dobitz talked to the students and explain why he was there. He told them that he didn't like himself for a long time and now he loves himself.

"At their age, they go through so many different things," said Kathy Neary, a Gehlen teacher. "Friends don't like them, they fight with parents or they just don't like themselves. They need to know that there is someone there that loves them. He presented that very well."

Neary explained that she felt the fourth, fifth and sixth grade students are at a point in their lives when they may feel no one likes them. She commented that Dobitz helped the students relate to him by talking about how he didn't like himself when he was growing up.

The silent portion of the presentation began with Dobitz becoming his clown self. He transformed himself into a clown, named Regor, in front of the students. He used different gestures and actions to get the students to laugh while he was preparing.

The only sound during his presentation was instrumental music playing in the background. The music went along with what he was doing. When he was getting into costume, there was circus music.

Before he put on his clown costume and make-up, he told the students about his acronym for clown which is "Christ loves our weaknesses now."

Dobitz went back and forth in front of the students in a silent conversation with Jesus. He showed through his actions that he was grateful for what Jesus did for him and others. On one side of the room there was a crucifix and a wooden cross on the other side. On the wooden cross he had different words pinned to it such as slain and nails. During the presentation, he changed the words to explain what was going on since everything else was silent.

"He presented it so you were focused," said Neary, a sixth grade teacher. "When it is silent and there is a music background, you have that focus. When he is right in front and there is no talking, you absorb so much more with your seeing and your hearing if your mouth is not moving. I think our kids really did."

At the end of each presentation, Dobitz passed out a nail to each student and a yellow card explaining what the nail is for. The card says that if someone doubts their worth, value or that they are loved, they are to hold the nail and reflect upon; "God so loved the world that he sent his only son to die for us." The students were asked to put the nail in their pocket as a reminder of what Jesus did for them.

"I learned that you should respect Jesus. When you see him being nailed to the cross on a movie you should really think about it," said Breanne Kraus, a sixth grader. "When you see him on the cross, you should say a prayer. When you are hurt, just think how he got hurt when he was on the cross."

Another sixth grade student, Josh Schreiner, commented that he learned that people should be happy with themselves the way they are and not try to change.

After the two Lent presentations, Dobitz talked to the fifth and sixth graders in more depth about his hearing loss. The fifth and sixth graders are currently studying Helen Keller, so Dobitz talked about his experiences being deaf from the age of two until now.

He did an activity with the students, so that they could understand what it is like for him being deaf in the hearing world. They ate Doritos and plugged their ears, so they could understand how Dobitz can hear everything going on in his head with his hearing aids in.