Alumni Profiles

Rebecca Archer

Full Circle: an Alumna’s Lifelong Ties

What does Rebecca Archer remember from her preschool and kindergarten days at Tucker-Maxon in the early 1980s? Singing songs on the playground swings with her eyes closed, playing a troll in a school production of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and Pat Stone calling her “Little Red Riding Hood” one day when she was dressed in red from head to toe.

Although Rebecca transitioned to All Saints Academy in first grade, those early years at Tucker-Maxon marked the start of not one, but two, significant relationships.

Today Rebecca is a teacher in Tucker-Maxon’s Mainstream program, continuing a connection to the school that began when she was diagnosed with hereditary hearing loss as an infant.

She’s also married to fellow alum Chris Archer. Rebecca and Chris’s kindergarten teacher, Pam Fortier, would not have guessed the two would end up together. “At that time they didn’t seem to get along very well.” The pair obviously had plenty of time to work out their early differences. Married seven years, Rebecca and Chris became the proud parents of daughter Elise Diane in 2005, and they are expecting a second child in September.

In between leaving Tucker-Maxon as a first grader and returning as a teacher in 2000, Rebecca has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments. She graduated from George Fox with a degree in elementary education, and later from Lewis & Clark with a master’s in deaf education and a 3.9 GPA. Rebecca served on the A.G. Bell Society Board during the 2003-04 school year.

Rebecca’s students inspired her to get a cochlear implant of her own at age twenty-five. “I cannot even begin to tell you how much the cochlear implant has changed my life!” she says. “Everything sounds so clear and distinctive.  I am able to talk on the phone and also listen to the radio—two things I couldn’t do before.” Rebecca’s implant has improved her appreciation of music, a vital enhancement for someone whose favorite movies are “The Sound of Music” and the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.”

With the implant, Rebecca can hear sounds she didn’t know existed, like “the clicking of a pen or mouse; a single sheet of paper being dropped on the floor.” And, says Rebecca, “I hear at a further distance, which is a huge blessing, being able to listen for my daughter.”

Rebecca credits Tucker-Maxon with “instilling the confidence that I can do anything I put my mind, time, and effort into.  I was able to make—and keep—friends that could relate to the life of a person with a hearing loss. Tucker was like a second family to our family—someone that understood, supported, and believed in us.”
--Jessica Johnson and Laura Sanders

This profile is from the Spring 2007 issue of our newsletter, Now You're Talking. Download a PDF copy here.