Hearing-impaired student makes All-State Band

Alanna Benoit practices the clarinet.
Buy Photo Diana Soliwon/Staff
Diana Soliwon
Staff Writer
Published: Monday, November 7, 2011 at 11:52 a.m.

Until earlier this year, Alanna Benoit's hearing was limited to muffled sounds akin to what you might hear while under water.

The 15-year-old Thibodaux High sophomore said she decided four years ago that the hearing impairment would not keep her from her passion of playing the clarinet.
“I wound up improvising every time I played music,” she said. “But the sound of it wasn't good.”

Benoit compensated by putting in extra hours of practice, sometimes squeezing in extra sessions in secret while attending East Thibodaux Middle School, her mother Anna Puente said. Her family and then-band director Denise Roper encouraged her.
“She was really bad in the beginning,” Puente said. “But she said, ‘I want to make Honor Band' so we told her she was going to need some practice.”

Benoit has come a long way since the tone-deaf days of sixth grade. This year, she is the only Thibodaux High student to qualify for Louisiana's All-State Concert Band, which performs Nov. 21 at the Crowne Plaza in Baton Rouge.

Benoit's age and attitude make her a standout student and musician, Thibodaux High band director Brian Dupuis said.

“For a musician of that caliber to be impaired is significant, and a sophomore making All-State is pretty much unheard of,” he said.

Benoit said she took her commitment to a new level because she did not want her impairment to keep her from playing music.

Benoit said she experiences about 40 percent hearing loss in each ear.

Puente has four other children, one of whom also suffers hearing loss. Benoit's impairment is the result of several early ear infections and one particularly severe, untreated one that occurred after doctors put tubes in her ears as a 3-year-old, Puente said.

Better insurance coverage helped Benoit upgrade from the one hearing aid she long had to two. The change improved her hearing dramatically and allowed her to transmit television and stereo sounds straight to her ear, Puente said.

Benoit has a slight speech impediment, a symptom of her hearing loss, and has had to deal with some bullying in school, her mother said.
“I always tell (her), ‘Keep your head up ,” she said.

But Benoit isn't letting any jeering get in the way of her success.

She said her proudest feat was last spring when the then-freshman qualified for her school district's senior honor band. The honor is typically reserved for 10th-, 11th- and 12-graders.

Benoit has since moved from third chair to second chair on the District 7 Honor Band, and she also plans on participating in the Lafourche Parish Honor Band in the spring.

“My goal is to be the best I can be,” she said. “I hope this serves as an inspiration for others and when they have life experiences … to turn to music.”

Hearing-impaired student makes All-State Band

Diana Soliwon

__._,_.___




.