In reflection one and two, I first pondered the idea of language and then discovered an alternate aspect of it through an Indigenous perspective that I had never considered before. Now that I feel as though I have an understanding of what it means and how it presents its self in the word. This month and was able to make personable connections to it this month.
After completing my tasks for this course throughout November there is one aspect that stood out to me. ASL children and the importance of understanding the deaf community as an educator. I was able to reflect on my knowledge through life experiences which helped me gain greater insight for deaf culture. First I would like to show you the video that provoke my eagerness to learn more in hopes to broaden my skill set to become an inclusive teacher.
The aspect I feel is worthy of elaboration is when the boy she liked said to her “Why do you lisp?” and her response really touched me. She spoke to how she was heartbroken and it made me curious as to why he would say such a thing to someone with a hearing impairment.
The best way I can explain my desire to educate young children on the use of proper language towards communities such as ASL is because of something I personally experienced as an educational assistant. Although my experience does not directly correlate with being deaf it is about being blind which often comes with similar disadvantages in public settings. At the beginning of the year I was working with a grade 8 boy who was not deaf but was visually impaired. I made lots of mistakes because I was put in a situation that I had never been educated about. I think back to the first time I worked with him now and I am proud at how far I have come, I felt blessed to be open about my situation and allow him to teach me which is exactly what inspires me. As a 19 year old education student I was upset that topic’s such visual and hearing impairments had never taught to me.
This takes me to the next video I would like to share about, called “Why ASL”. If I am being honest in the first minute of the video I kept trying to turn up the volume wondering why I couldn’t hear anything and then I realized… I was uncomfortable with the silence of sign language because it was not something I have ever experienced before. Growing up the only time I ever saw it was on the sign at the park where me and my friends would try to spell our names out for fun but, I never thought much deeper into it than that. It was not till this video where I realized that sign is more than just hand signals it is a whole another language.
If I was in a cartoon a light bulb would have appeared over my head when the person in the video shared about the importance of sign in a deaf adolescent from a young age. This is because it forced me to erase all the previous thoughts I had about sign language, I realized that it is not something you teach when you are someone is grown and developed like how they help teach brail in school, it is something you teach at the same age you would teach english to a child. Just because it is a non-verbal way of communication does not mean it is different from learning any other language.
I have made it my goal to create an inclusive classroom that makes everyone feel welcomed and safe. Now, as part of that journey I plan to learn sign language. I want to be able to implement it in my classroom daily, by having a word of the week that by the end of the year would hopefully be a sentence of the week. The only difference from what I see in other classrooms through my job is that instead of verbalizing the words I will have my students practice sign language along side me.