Grayma
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 956
- Reaction score
- 0
I'm Hearing, Christian, homeschooling Mom to seven, most of them grown up. Married to my man for 29 years. Four beautiful grandbabies.My connection to the deaf and sign: Tenuous, but long standing. First, when I was a teen I saw a cute deaf boy at church and I wanted to learn to communicate with him to improve my flirting ability. I started taking sign language for that silly reason. Cute boy liked somebody else. I didn't care, by then, because I liked sign language better than any cute boy at that time.
Moved to another state. Even though I knew no deaf, I took sign language at local community college. Because I was young, dumb, and ill informed, it was SEE. Moved to another state to major in Deaf Education and took ASL, which was great, but this means I always am mixing in some SEE with my signs and struggle with syntax.
Anyway, while in college I was unpaid aid for a young deaf girl in a mainstreamed school- I was assigned to be a one on one tutor for her with math. This is very sad for that girl, as math is always my worst subject. I was not knowledgeable enough to know how to handle this, but after a month or two I quit. Met the girl again at my church and helped her with communication there- that was a better fit.
Quit college after two years to get married to another cute boy. Adopted two of our children, one of whom is mentally retarded and totally nonverbal. I taught her sign, which is great, but she is profoundly retarded and only can hold onto about 30 signs, so it did not help me keep up my skills.
Two months ago a deaf lady showed up at our church. Somebody had seen me sign to our daughter, so they grabbed me. My new deaf friend prefers sermons to be typed and brings her own little laptop for that. But she likes for me to sign the songs, because, when I remember the signs, I do a decent job with that- she kindly tells me my signing is beautiful when I do the songs. I think she means it because she just encourages me to keep practicing and says I am learning fast when she is talking about my communication skills outside of songs.
So, since the day she came, I've been using Lifeprint, looking at youtube videos, watching Switched at Birth, reading here, and looking at other internet resources, plus talking with J. at church at least twice a week (we go to church 40 miles from where we live, so I can't visit more often). Tried something from the library, but it did not work on our computer.
I wanted to share a list of very, very helpful things I have learned from reading here, things maybe you don't even know you are teaching. Sometimes I have learned much just from small 'throwaway' comment that probably wasn't even significant to the person who made it, and I am so, so grateful this forum is open for outsiders to read. But my introduction is already way too long, so maybe I will share my list later.
