I am a CODA and I do help. Just not for free. I do not believe that ANY teacher should volunteer their valuable time and expertise for zero reimbursement.
The school I work for contacted me and asked me to create a curriculum and adopt a program in the school that would offer ASL as a foreign language. You can check their website out
here.
They consider it a foreign language and offer their hearing high school students the option of choosing it instead of Spanish and French. I am so happy to be working there and educating young hearing adults about Deaf culture and the beauty of my mother's language.
I have another website
Creative Hands - American Sign Language Resource so you can see what else I do to try and promote what you are talking about.
Wow. I so wish I would have taken more time to write my original post. It has gotten so misunderstood because I said it all wrong.
Originally, I was doing a writing class assignment. The assignment was to write a proposal to better your community, state or world. We had to look at the obstacles to our proposed improvements and address those issues.
I use all of my writings as an excuse to inform my classmates and teachers of Deaf issues. We do peer reviews on all assignments, and I am pleased that most of my classmates are getting very interested in Deaf issues. They had no clue that they were ignorant about Deafness, because heries are going to stay ignorant until somebody informs them.
Anyway... My proposal was this. I wanted to introduce ASL into the preschools and lower grades. I wanted to use a few experimental schools for about a year, so we could gather data about any problems and successes. If ASL was catching on, and the little kids were able to learn it easily, then it could start to expand to other schools. But first, I had to find a way to gather the data about how successful it was going to be, and that little kids could indeed learn it without interfering with their English skills. So, the first obstacle I saw, was that the school board is not going to give up any money unless they just have to.
So, I proposed that maybe the research data could be obtained by starting a volunteer based program for one year. I was thinking that Deaf people love ASL, and they want to promote it, so they might be willing to volunteer a short time a month to help. I didn't think it would be too difficult to teach youngsters basic signs, right along with english vocabulary... like toilet, mom, dad, dog etc. Would it be that hard to teach the word and sign for red at the same time? Anyway, if the experiment were successful, then I assumed that if the program were expanded, these volunteers could then get paid for their time and expertiese. I was thinking that it would be a good way for senior signers to supplement their income, and maybe Codas too, or maybe ASL students and terps could help. I was in no way suggesting that Deaf people should work for free... hell no. I was suggesting that the experimental part could be done through volunteers so the school couldn't object on the grounds of money.
Now, please bear with me. My main objective in this is this.... I may be totally wrong, because I have not yet had to make a school choice for my granddaughter and I don't know that much about mainstream education on a first hand basis,, But, that having been said...
*I am worried that too many Deaf children, born to hearing parents are attending mainstream schools, and they are having trouble communicating. I think that they get isolated and depressed in public schools because they stand out as different. Why do they stand out as different? Because hearing kids don't know how to make friends with them if they can't communicate and socialize easily. If little kids of the future were automatically taught to sign in school, then our mainstreamed kids would not be so alone. Maybe the only way to kill prejudism is to kill it from a young age.
I really don't know how to fix the problems of Deaf kids feeling isolated in public schools, and I don't pretend to be an expert on deafness, but damn it I care to try to protect any of these children from being teased or isolated in school where they will be spending much of their time trying to learn to be oral just to please the hearies. I think it is time that hearies recognize that Deaf people are beautiful just as they are, and that it is time to meet them half way by learning their language.
Unfortunately, ASL can be very complicated for an adult to learn, especially after thinking in English for all of your life. The sentence structure is hard to reverse for hearies. They have to work at it. But, little kids, can become bilingual much easier than adults, becasue they pick up vocabular at age appropriate levels. Just like they do English. I was just hoping that maybe we could teach them a visual language as a second language automatically. I realize that in the higher grades, it would require professional instructors to teach the more complicated aspects of ASL, but the basic vocabular and structure could be taught sooner. Maybe I am wrong. I am not a linguist, and that is why I was asking for input. I really don't know how to break down the barrier between the hearing and the Deaf, but I am praying that something can be done. Now that CIs are becoming a trend, there will many more Deaf children mainstreamed, and many of those may never get exposed to ASL or Deaf culture unless we put it into the public school system as a second language, and also, I think that the history of Deaf culture should be included in history class. How else will some of the mainstreamed kids ever come to know of it? How will they ever learn to be just as proud of their deafness as hearies are of their hearingness? That sounded stupid, but I think you understand. If we don't take it to them where they are, they may remain isolated and alone in a world that they can barely communicte in. Please let me know what you think can be done to protect Deaf kids from being isolated in the mainstream realm? I really want to know if there is a solution.
