Being deaf is ‘a capability’

[Smithtr]

Just another exciting school spelling bee by most appearances, the recent third annual Regional Deaf and Hard of Hearing Spelling Bee in Bowling Green featured children from several schools.

Several children couldn’t hear and others could barely hear, but that didn’t stop them from having fun and competing for the trophies sitting on the table in the corner of the room.

In the deaf world, a lack of hearing is not a disability, but rather a capability, those in that community say.

Kids from Barren, Daviess, Grayson, Hardin, Jefferson, Muhlenberg, Ohio and Warren counties, plus representatives from Bowling Green Independent and Glasgow Independent school districts, were ready to spell.

Those in the audience clapped loudly at Hillvue Heights Church, stamping their feet and cheering to get the contestants energized and ready. They also threw their hands up in the air and shook them vigorously, the American Sign Language sign for applause and expressing enthusiasm. Several times, Wilton McMillan, one of six judges in the competition, exhorted the audience to scream louder.

“I can’t hear you,” he said in sign language and also announced in English to the audience members.

They screamed louder and laughed.

Then it was time to get down to business. The five first- and second-grade students took the stage and soon that portion of the regional spelling bee – which included boys and girls up to grade 12 as two stages were used for different grade levels – was down to two smiling girls, Raygen Shirley of Barren County and Hailey Charlton from T.C. Cherry Elementary School in Bowling Green.

As the morning had progressed, the words had quickly been spelled by the two girls with little hesitation: class, king, leaf, walk, drip, from, read, find, long, grass, small, worm, slide, check, nurse, snow, house, think, black. And then the moderator said another word: store.

Both girls quickly picked up their markers and wrote on the dry erase boards that they held in their laps, a difference from a hearing world spelling bee where the kids step up to the microphones and spell out their words for the judges. Their faces beamed confidence. When the girls revealed their answers, Hailey held up “storm” on her board. She was now nearly out of the competition. If Raygen spelled the next word correctly, she was the champion.

The moderator announced “white” and Raygen quickly wrote it on her board to take the contest.

“I feel so excited,” Raygen said afterward.

Heidi Givens of Daviess County, in explaining the rules of the spelling bee to the students that morning on the stage, had noted her No. 1 rule for the competition. She signed as an interpreter sitting off-stage spoke into a microphone in English, “We all can’t win. It’s important to win, but the rule is to have fun. Enjoy yourselves.”

Tony Peavler, Raygen’s teacher in Barren County, said the two of them had practiced the words on the spelling list.

“We had it narrowed down to 10 words that she was struggling with,” Peavler said. They worked on those words again before the competition. That hard work had paid off.

The deaf and hard of hearing spelling bee is a peek into a world with its own culture, language and understandings.

Those who work with ASL in the deaf community stress that the language is not easily translatable into English. A Dec. 3 article in The New York Times pointed out that there is now a movement in America and in Britain to add signs for physics and engineering terms, including the words “light year” and “X-ray.” The article, titled “Pushing Science’s Limits in Sign Language Lexicon,” noted that deaf students taking science classes believe that the hearing students are at a disadvantage because ASL can quickly express oblique concepts of the universe, such as mass and gravity.

“ ‘If I wanted to indicate mass, I would probably hold up a balled fist,’ ” said Kate Lacey, an interpreter at George Washington University who often works with science students. “ ‘Then, to indicate weight, I’d drop that fist toward the floor.’ The implication is that weight represents gravity’s effect on mass, which is about as clear a definition as one is likely to find,’ ” the article in The New York Times noted.

Holly Bean, a senior psychology major from Tompkinsville at Western Kentucky University, is president of the WKU American Sign Language Organization, which has 70 members “and growing,” she said.

“The hardest part (about ASL) is realizing that you have the confidence to talk to a person with a different language,” Bean said. While names and some places are “finger spelled,” one sign per letter, ASL is also conveyed through expressions.

“People think that you finger spell each word,” Bean said. “It has its own language and sentence structure. I don’t think people understand that.”

Being deaf or hard of hearing is not a disability, Bean said, but instead, is “a capability.”

Anna Vied of Paducah, a WKU senior majoring in child studies, said WKU American Sign Language Organization students attend dinner nights at Cici’s Pizza for the deaf once a month, and that also gives them practice in mastering ALS. Several students also attended a recent Christmas event at the Skate Box where they helped deaf children and adults communicate their wishes to a Santa Claus who also understands ASL.

Vied said there are cultural differences between ASL and the English language. For example, a person cannot say that they are sorry in sign language or “you’re welcome” – there’s no sign for those expressions. If two deaf people are conducting a conversation in ASL , she said, it’s not considered rude to jump right into their conversation. “Interruptions are encouraged,” she said.

Recently, Vied was seeking to praise a deaf friend of hers. She said “rocked,” then realized that English expression doesn’t translate into ASL. “I said, ‘You’re awesome.’ He understood that,” Vied said.

Another translation wrinkle in ASL is the expression “touch-finish.” Vied said it means that someone has accomplished something or visited somewhere. “You have been there, done that” is the closest English comes to the sign language concept, she said.

Vied and Renaye Shipp, mother of 11-year-old Sarah Joiner, who has been deaf since birth, agreed that ASL can be grasped quicker than spoken English. Serenity, Vied’s 18-month-old little sister who can hear, knows several signs already, Vied said. “She knows to say when she is finished with something.”

Shipp said her daughter plays basketball in school and is doing well with her lessons. She attends public school with all the children and it is not apparent that she cannot hear, her mother said.

“Sarah has really worked hard to get to where she is today. She has showed a lot of people. She pushes herself and gets out there and does it.”

Miranda Stewart, a teacher for the deaf at William Natcher Elementary School in the Warren County Public School District, said Sarah is an honor roll student and is doing well as a mainstreamed special education student in the school. The key, Stewart said, is finding the balance between the support needed to accomplish her tasks while at the same time allowing for independence in the classroom.

“You want them to know that they can do anything that they want to do,” Stewart said. “In our school, kids have been with deaf and hard of hearing kids since preschool. It’s just normal to them.”

Being deaf is