The first day of class, I was not able to be in attendance, but who cared it was the first day. I didn’t miss much, right? Well it wasn’t until the third class period that I realized I missed A LOT! Class began and my American Sign Language (ASL) teacher began speaking and requested that we take out our text books and turn to page 5. We began to practice vocabulary words with their ASL signs in silence. Pictures of an object or person were our vocabulary, instead of actually spelled out words. As we followed the order of the pictures in the book, we would look up to see the sign of that word and would copy our teacher. If someone did not understand, they would ask a question aloud and our teacher would explain. We did this for the entire class period.
The third day of class approached, and I was pretty excited. My teacher noticed that I was not present in class the first day, and so she suggested that I speak with her after class, so that we can set up an appointment and get to know each other. At first I found it a little weird because I never had a teacher want to “get to know each other.” After class, I walked up to my teacher whose head was down in her phone. “Hey, so you suggested that we meet?” I asked. Nothing. She didn’t respond. “Hey Dr. Logan,” I said. Nothing again. One of her TAs (teacher assistants) tapped me and said…“she’s DEAF.” I was in disbelief! I did not want to stereotype but she spoke so clearly and responded flawlessly to questions…how so?
Her life story was what I missed the first day. She wanted to meet because in order to understand the culture of the classroom, I first had to understand her. I was instantly inspired and intrigued by her story. So intrigued that I produced a short documentary on her for one of my media production class projects. We were to complete a 5–8 minute documentary about anyone and anything, and the first person to cross my mind was my teacher Dr. Logan. I wanted others to hear her story, and see how those who are labeled “disabled,” are still able to serve, help, and create an impact on others and in their community. While editing the documentary, I wanted to share some of my experience with silent films, as I mentioned in my previous blog post. Therefore, I decided to keep the beginning of the film silent with captions. It did have some music playing, but the no voicing part was my main concern.
The class setup was majorly different from any other class that I have taken. It consisted of us using sign language only. We were not allowed to voice, unless absolutely necessary. We would practice vocabulary most days, and break out into groups where we would sign with our peers. Periodically throughout the semester we had to complete ‘Cultural observations,’ which is introduced in my previous blog post. For our final, we had to interpret a song in ASL and perform it in front of the entire class and any guest that were invited. These performances were called ‘FPP’s’ or Final Project Performances. These were assigned because our teacher loved music and musicals, and after she lost her hearing, she lost the feeling that music and musicals brought to her. These performances triggered her memory, and gave her sense of that feeling again through our facial expressions, rhythm, and interpretation. The assignments were also given for us to experience interpreting, which is one of the main objectives of the class. We had exams, that involved us interpreting what our teacher signed. There was absolutely no talking. The teacher would sign a sentence in ASL, and we would write what she signed in English grammar or ASL grammar.
After my three semesters of ASL were over, I left Dr. Logan’s class inspired. I eventually would like to take ASL more serious and become an interpreter.
