Inspiring Kirkwood Graduate Wins Prestigious Scholarship

KIRKWOOD, MO — Growing up, many children would have been eager to get out of school early, but for Elise Schiller it meant going to speech therapy, meeting with guidance counselors or enduring yet another surgery. Born with branchio-oculo-facial syndrome, a rare autosomal disorder that left her deaf and blind in one eye, Schiller’s first surgery came when she was only 18 months old. Doctors initially didn’t think she would survive.

They wouldn’t be the last people she proved wrong. Schiller was just awarded the Anders Tjellstrom Scholarship from Cochlear America, a leading biotechnology company. That company’s bone-anchored hearing aid allowed Schiller to talk on the telephone by herself for the first time, and she credits it with improving her speech and restoring her independence.

Schiller graduated from Kirkwood High School in May 2017 and is now studying psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Without her hearing implants, she doesn’t think she would have had the confidence to study so far from home, in a country with a different dialect.

“I would not be studying in a foreign country, let alone a university that uses speaking as their primary mode of communication, without my BAHAs,” she said, using the acronym for her hearing implants. “It made my dreams possible.”

A precocious student, Schiller said she loved learning from a young age and always wanted to know more than what her teachers told her in class. But, because she couldn’t hear, adults made assumptions about how smart she was, and classmates bullied her. She missed lessons for medical procedures and speech therapy. Even meetings to discuss how to better help her learn put her further behind in her classwork.

“As a child, all I wanted was to learn, but instead of learning I was forced to focus on other things,” she said.

Schiller said there were few peers she could relate to in school, and she often felt like a burden to what friends she had, since she relied on them to interpret for her and catch her up on what she had missed. All the while, bullying took its toll. She still remembers the names she was called and how classmates — and even some of their parents — would look at her and talk about her in the third person when she was standing right in front of them. She also remembers the anger and frustration she felt when someone super glued her gym locker shut.

“Classmates and adults alike would look at me like I almost wasn't human,” she said. “It was beyond not fitting in, it was like I was not from earth, like I didn't belong. It hurt a lot at the time to know what people thought of me just by the way they looked at me.”

But, despite the pain she experienced, Schiller believes her struggles also brought her closer to family and taught her how to be a better person. “I built a better relationship with my mom than most pre-teens and teenagers,” she said. “My mom was the one person who held me up through it all. She taught me valuable lessons, many of which made me the person I am today.”

Schiller also credits her brother, who has autism, with showing her how much she has to live for and teaching her to see the positive side of any situation. “If I focused on the people who gave me nothing but pain, I would only be enabling them to hurt more people who have special needs or are from some other minority, but if I look to the people who show me kindness, and I recognize all the goodness that has come out of the bad, I can achieve anything,” she said.

That’s one reason she’s studying psychology in college, to help people facing the same challenges she faced growing up. “I want to use my prior experiences in dealing with my hearing and visual impairments and how they affect my life to help other people who are going through similar things,” she said. “I feel like there aren't many people out there who truly understand, firsthand, the difficulties that come with having special needs, and I hope I can be there for them.”

Until then, Schiller is doing what she can by volunteering. She was recently selected to be a student mentor for incoming psychology freshmen at Trinity College.

And she has a message for anyone living with a similar disability or being bullied for who they are:

“Keep your head up high and speak up for yourself, no matter what people think of you. You are incredible and one day you will shine. There are always going to be people who doubt you and what you're capable of achieving, but you just have to stay strong and keep going. Those people who try to tear you down, those people who put hate mail in your locker and who publicly humiliate you, are going to see you shine someday, and you can't let what they do keep you from your goals. It will feel amazing when you're able to prove to the world that you had that potential in you all along. Never give up, you're going places, and nothing can hold you back now.”

Photos courtesy of Elise Schiller