What’s next in the Learning Journey?

This week I did a lot of my learning using an instagram account that I follow. Her name is Mckinnon Galloway. I actually found her account over a year ago, and her personal story plus her ASL teachings were the reason I decided to follow her. She was diagnosed in high school with an illness called NF2 (I learned that essentially these are tumors that grow on nerves throughout the body). The doctors found two brain tumors and she was told she would be deaf before she graduated high school. With this illness, she mentions that most of the time the tumors are not cancerous (but they can turn cancerous). Rather these are essentially good cells. She is just missing a thing called the “merlin gene” which tells the cells to stop forming around the nerves. Throughout her journey she has been through many rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, different types of medical trials and many surgeries(including 4 different brain surgeries). Because of these surgeries she has experienced many other medical difficulties such as seizures, facial paralysis and is now deaf. I really love her page and her videos because although she has experienced all of these different things in her life, many which can be life altering, she is a very positive person and a major activist to the deaf and hard of hearing community. I think a lot of the time we assume a person that is deaf or hard of hearing was born that way or it happened when they were infants. Her story helped remind me that there are many causes or ways a person may become deaf or lose their hearing. A lot of my learning this week was about Mckinnon’s own experiences and the illness NF2 which I had not heard of before. 

The other part of my learning included which hands to use while signing. I knew prior that your dominant hand would be your main signing hand but when it comes to signs that involve both hands, I wasn’t sure there were rules to which hand you use where. While I guess there aren’t technically any rules, the way that Mckinnon explained in her videos is that your non-dominant hand is essentially used as a base for your dominant hand. This was helpful when learning how to sign nice, which is essentially your non-dominant hand in front of you, palm facing to the ceiling. Then your dominant hand facing towards the ground touching the base of your fingers to your palm and swiping towards the finger tips of your non-dominant hand. (WOW this is a lot harder to explain than it is to sign). Here is a quick youtube video that shows you how to sign “nice” in ASL.

I also learned the sign for “thank you” and “today”. I have learned a few other greetings such as “what’s up everyone”. I love her videos so much she is so positive, resilient and has a fun bubbly way of interacting with her followers!