Introduction to Learning Project

I had trouble deciding what I wanted to focus on for my leaning project. I was tossing around learning to play the ukelele that I got for Christmas last year, learning to crochet, or learning American sign language. Ultimately, I have decided to learn ASL because it is the topic that I have been interested in for the longest amount of time and I feel that it will have the greatest impact on my career as an educator. I started to become fascinated with ASL when I got into a show called Switched at Birth in high school. If you are not familiar the show it is about two girls who were switched at birth and had grown up with a family that they were not biologically related to. Once they

find out, the two families begin to live together so that they can get to know their biological daughter without feeling that they are abandoning or losing the daughter that they have raised. One of the girls is deaf and has many friends that are also deaf so both families learn ASL in order to communicate with her. I found that as I was watching I began to pick up on some of the signs and their meanings. After I had finished the show, I found that I wanted to learn more so I went to the app store in search of an app that could teach me. At the time there were not many options aside from programs targeted to teaching babies and toddlers some basic signs while they learn to talk. However, there was an app made by one of the characters in the show who is deaf in real life as well called Marlee Signs. I had spent a few weeks learning through this platform, however other aspects of life had taken over my time to be able to develop this skill further. I also found it difficult to stay motivated to continue to learn this language when I had no one around me that I would be able to practice communicating with.

Since my brief introduction to sign language, I have not held onto too much of what I had learned. I can do most of the alphabet and I know a few simple phrases for basic communications, but I can in no way have a conversation with someone in sign language. With that being said I was recently taught how to sign O’ Canada during my internship. While this has been interesting, reignited my interested in sign language, and is great to know as an educator it is not very helpful as I try to converse with someone. My overall goal at the end of this semester is to be able to have an introductory conversation. I want to know that if I were to meet a person that was deaf, I could communicate without resorting to other tools such as pen and paper or our phones. Additionally, I would love to learn some signs that will be useful for my future students to utilize, whether that be as their main form of communication or as a secondary form in order to communicate without distraction.

To help me achieve my goals I plan to utilize a mixture of two app: Marlee signs and ASL Bloom. Both of these apps can be found on the Apple app store. I also want to see what I can find on YouTube. I know that I will be able to learn specific signs that would not typically be on an app. For example, during my pre-internship I learned the sign for “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day” to share with my students. I also just followed a sign language Instagram page called @signlanguagestagram. I have also seen pages from people who are deaf and want use their platform to share a sign of the day so I would love to find a couple of these pages to follow as well. In the end, I hope that I can get together with some of my peers that are also focused on learning ASL so we can practice having a conversation using our new skills.