Miss-Delectable
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Speech without words: It's a sign of the times
SANDY - At 5 months old, she was signing. She would clench her tiny fist to tell her deaf mother she wanted milk. Four years later, she was hearing and speaking for two.
"My grandfather made it known to me that I was my mother's voice," recalls Jeanette Goins, now 33. "It was a huge responsibility."
Today, the Jordan High teacher is one of three American Sign Language instructors in the Jordan School District. But her reach extends beyond Jordan High's walls. Her six crammed classes are telecast over an educational network to four other high schools - Alta, Hillcrest, Bingham and West Jordan -and, all told, she's teaching ASL to at least 450 students.
"I'm happy to see there's so much interest," she says. "You never know if someone in your life will be deaf or lose their hearing. . . . This is a language where students are going to take it home."
Indeed, interest in learning ASL - the third most commonly used language in the United States behind English and Spanish - has skyrocketed. But the number of qualified teachers isn't keeping pace with that demand, which is why Goins' classroom is wired for distribution.Two television sets are mounted behind her and a third sits on a cart against the opposite wall, next to a large pull-down screen. A facilitator controls a computer, calling up camera shots and sound and zooming in on students.
"Alta, how are you?" Goins says into her microphone. "West Jordan, it's good to see you."She takes attendance in her classroom by finger-spelling names, and the 25 students - only three are boys - focus on Goins' hands, raising their own when they are "called." Minus the buzz of the projector, the room is quiet as students begin their finger-spelling drills. They start with their dominant hands, spelling the proper city names listed on the sheets in front of them, before practicing with their other hands.
The language - a mixture of defined figurative motions, manual spelling and visual grammar rules - is specific to North America. Other countries have their own sign languages, and ASL, a language that continues to evolve, even has "accents" or distinct regional signs. Although attempts were made to abolish sign language and some still undermine it, Goins emphasizes the importance of ASL, noting that only 30 percent of speech can be understood through lip reading and 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents.
Robert Sanderson, 85, an educator and a leader in Utah's deaf community, takes ASL advocacy even further: "Every deaf child has a deep psychological need [for] free, open and clearly visual, meaningful communication. Add lip reading if you will. Add cochlear implants if you can round up $50,000. Do as much as you can to improve hearing. . . . But even with all that, children will get more out of sign language. Believe it."
In a previous class, students learned descriptions of people. So Goins' arms and hands are fluidly forming sentences to quiz the group, which is made up of juniors and seniors. Some crinkle their eyebrows, while others imitate the signs. All are fixated on their teacher, and they giggle or smile when they decipher - or at least try to - "The man with the mustache was a little chubby." As partners, they sign phrases to one another, practicing their receptive and expressive skills.
"Stay in your signing area. Keep your signs tight and controlled," urges Goins, who - as Mrs. Utah America 2004 - is advancing deaf awareness. "But be as creative with that mustache as you want."
In 1994, the Legislature officially recognized ASL as a language. In 1998, state lawmakers encouraged teaching it in public schools and deemed it worthy of meeting foreign-language requirements.
Joan Patterson of the state Office of Education credits those measures for ramping up interest.During the past school year, 27 secondary-school teachers in 11 districts were offering ASL courses to 4,790 students, according to the state. Granite School District has four instructors; Salt Lake City has one. With more support, those numbers could soar."The problem is: Where do you get your instructors?" Patterson says.
Hundreds of college campuses, including many in Utah, offer ASL instruction. While a number of schools - among them Utah State University and Utah State Valley College - provide training in deaf studies, these programs are geared toward working with the deaf. Turns out, only three U.S. universities offer curricula for prospective ASL teachers who want to instruct hearing students. And, as of 2002, the University of Utah became one of them.
So far, however, the U.'s Department for Communication Sciences and Disorders has graduated only one ASL teacher. The school expects a few more to complete their studies this spring.
J. Freeman King, director of USU's teacher-training program in deaf education, says he hopes his school someday can help meet ASL teacher demands.
"We have high hopes to move into this arena," he says. "If we can ever find the money to do it."
ASL course enrollment at some Utah colleges appears to have maxed out, with limited class offerings reaching capacity. But, nationally, a study by the Modern Language Association of America reports that ASL enrollment climbed by 432 percent between 1998 and 2002.
Some naysayers charge that students take ASL because they see it as an easier way to earn foreign-language credits. For some visual learners, ASL may come more naturally. But for others, "They find out very soon that it's not [easier]," says Bryan Eldredge, ASL and deaf-studies coordinator at UVSC. "For many students, it's much more difficult."
Martin Sternberg's American Sign Language Dictionary has 833 pages holding close to 5,000 signs, notes longtime advocate Sanderson, who is deaf and the namesake for the Robert G. Sanderson Community Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Taylorsville. He says the signs have multiple meanings, making their usage more complex, and that people "conveniently forget that the average spoken vocabulary of hearing people is around 700 words."
What's more, ASL requires users to step outside themselves, even perform. Facial expressions are more than encouraged, they are essential.
"It also can be scary in its directness, shocking in its visual presentation of what hearing people say in a roundabout way," Sanderson writes in an e-mail. "[For] example: 'Sexual intercourse,' two sterile words when written or spoken, comes to life graphically and visually when [signed]."
Utah's first high school ASL program was launched at Ogden High in 1989 by Jean Thomas, who left to become the sign-language specialist for the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind in the mid-1990s. Her first year teaching ASL at Ogden High, she had 30 students. A year later, she had 200.
"They just flocked in because they thought it was interesting," says Thomas, whose father is deaf, as were her maternal grandparents. "It was new and exciting - something different."
Different is what BreAnn Derrick was looking for when she registered for Goins' class at Jordan High. The 17-year-old junior took Spanish for a year before moving to Utah from Washington at the start of the school year, but didn't enjoy it and only remembers random words and phrases. ASL always has intrigued her. She remembers being mesmerized by a deaf couple signing at church.
"It's a fun way to get to know people," she says.
BreAnn has brought her lessons home and used them in public in ways she never dared with Spanish. She taught her family to sign "Jingle Bells" and together they signed it when caroling this past Christmas.
Her mother, Patricia Derrick, says she loves what ASL has done for her daughter, especially after the move from Seattle. "She's always been a go-getter, but sign language has opened her up . . . and has really helped her with the transition."
Because ASL works both parts of the brain, Goins says learners are less apt to forget it. She says countless students have taken the newfound language and greater sensitivity for others out into the world. Some use ASL on their LDS missions. Others are teachers, interpreters or simply individuals who strike up conversations at stores.
"A lot of students come back and say - or sign - 'Thank you.' "
History
Early sign language appeared in colonial times, notably on the East Coast island of Martha's Vineyard, where hereditary deafness was prominent.
In 1817, Thomas Gallaudet brought Laurent Clerc from Paris to Hartford, Conn., where the Frenchman served as the first deaf teacher in America's inaugural school for the deaf.
As a result, modern and standardized American Sign Language is largely rooted in French Sign Language.
Source: American Sign Language Teachers Association
By the numbers
28 million: Number of Americans considered deaf
or hard of hearing
8.8: Percent of population with significant hearing loss
1.7: Percent of population considered deaf
196,481: Number of Utahns who are
hard of hearing
3,341: Number of Utahns who are deaf
Sources: National Association of the Deaf, Utah's Division of Services of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
SANDY - At 5 months old, she was signing. She would clench her tiny fist to tell her deaf mother she wanted milk. Four years later, she was hearing and speaking for two.
"My grandfather made it known to me that I was my mother's voice," recalls Jeanette Goins, now 33. "It was a huge responsibility."
Today, the Jordan High teacher is one of three American Sign Language instructors in the Jordan School District. But her reach extends beyond Jordan High's walls. Her six crammed classes are telecast over an educational network to four other high schools - Alta, Hillcrest, Bingham and West Jordan -and, all told, she's teaching ASL to at least 450 students.
"I'm happy to see there's so much interest," she says. "You never know if someone in your life will be deaf or lose their hearing. . . . This is a language where students are going to take it home."
Indeed, interest in learning ASL - the third most commonly used language in the United States behind English and Spanish - has skyrocketed. But the number of qualified teachers isn't keeping pace with that demand, which is why Goins' classroom is wired for distribution.Two television sets are mounted behind her and a third sits on a cart against the opposite wall, next to a large pull-down screen. A facilitator controls a computer, calling up camera shots and sound and zooming in on students.
"Alta, how are you?" Goins says into her microphone. "West Jordan, it's good to see you."She takes attendance in her classroom by finger-spelling names, and the 25 students - only three are boys - focus on Goins' hands, raising their own when they are "called." Minus the buzz of the projector, the room is quiet as students begin their finger-spelling drills. They start with their dominant hands, spelling the proper city names listed on the sheets in front of them, before practicing with their other hands.
The language - a mixture of defined figurative motions, manual spelling and visual grammar rules - is specific to North America. Other countries have their own sign languages, and ASL, a language that continues to evolve, even has "accents" or distinct regional signs. Although attempts were made to abolish sign language and some still undermine it, Goins emphasizes the importance of ASL, noting that only 30 percent of speech can be understood through lip reading and 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents.
Robert Sanderson, 85, an educator and a leader in Utah's deaf community, takes ASL advocacy even further: "Every deaf child has a deep psychological need [for] free, open and clearly visual, meaningful communication. Add lip reading if you will. Add cochlear implants if you can round up $50,000. Do as much as you can to improve hearing. . . . But even with all that, children will get more out of sign language. Believe it."
In a previous class, students learned descriptions of people. So Goins' arms and hands are fluidly forming sentences to quiz the group, which is made up of juniors and seniors. Some crinkle their eyebrows, while others imitate the signs. All are fixated on their teacher, and they giggle or smile when they decipher - or at least try to - "The man with the mustache was a little chubby." As partners, they sign phrases to one another, practicing their receptive and expressive skills.
"Stay in your signing area. Keep your signs tight and controlled," urges Goins, who - as Mrs. Utah America 2004 - is advancing deaf awareness. "But be as creative with that mustache as you want."
In 1994, the Legislature officially recognized ASL as a language. In 1998, state lawmakers encouraged teaching it in public schools and deemed it worthy of meeting foreign-language requirements.
Joan Patterson of the state Office of Education credits those measures for ramping up interest.During the past school year, 27 secondary-school teachers in 11 districts were offering ASL courses to 4,790 students, according to the state. Granite School District has four instructors; Salt Lake City has one. With more support, those numbers could soar."The problem is: Where do you get your instructors?" Patterson says.
Hundreds of college campuses, including many in Utah, offer ASL instruction. While a number of schools - among them Utah State University and Utah State Valley College - provide training in deaf studies, these programs are geared toward working with the deaf. Turns out, only three U.S. universities offer curricula for prospective ASL teachers who want to instruct hearing students. And, as of 2002, the University of Utah became one of them.
So far, however, the U.'s Department for Communication Sciences and Disorders has graduated only one ASL teacher. The school expects a few more to complete their studies this spring.
J. Freeman King, director of USU's teacher-training program in deaf education, says he hopes his school someday can help meet ASL teacher demands.
"We have high hopes to move into this arena," he says. "If we can ever find the money to do it."
ASL course enrollment at some Utah colleges appears to have maxed out, with limited class offerings reaching capacity. But, nationally, a study by the Modern Language Association of America reports that ASL enrollment climbed by 432 percent between 1998 and 2002.
Some naysayers charge that students take ASL because they see it as an easier way to earn foreign-language credits. For some visual learners, ASL may come more naturally. But for others, "They find out very soon that it's not [easier]," says Bryan Eldredge, ASL and deaf-studies coordinator at UVSC. "For many students, it's much more difficult."
Martin Sternberg's American Sign Language Dictionary has 833 pages holding close to 5,000 signs, notes longtime advocate Sanderson, who is deaf and the namesake for the Robert G. Sanderson Community Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Taylorsville. He says the signs have multiple meanings, making their usage more complex, and that people "conveniently forget that the average spoken vocabulary of hearing people is around 700 words."
What's more, ASL requires users to step outside themselves, even perform. Facial expressions are more than encouraged, they are essential.
"It also can be scary in its directness, shocking in its visual presentation of what hearing people say in a roundabout way," Sanderson writes in an e-mail. "[For] example: 'Sexual intercourse,' two sterile words when written or spoken, comes to life graphically and visually when [signed]."
Utah's first high school ASL program was launched at Ogden High in 1989 by Jean Thomas, who left to become the sign-language specialist for the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind in the mid-1990s. Her first year teaching ASL at Ogden High, she had 30 students. A year later, she had 200.
"They just flocked in because they thought it was interesting," says Thomas, whose father is deaf, as were her maternal grandparents. "It was new and exciting - something different."
Different is what BreAnn Derrick was looking for when she registered for Goins' class at Jordan High. The 17-year-old junior took Spanish for a year before moving to Utah from Washington at the start of the school year, but didn't enjoy it and only remembers random words and phrases. ASL always has intrigued her. She remembers being mesmerized by a deaf couple signing at church.
"It's a fun way to get to know people," she says.
BreAnn has brought her lessons home and used them in public in ways she never dared with Spanish. She taught her family to sign "Jingle Bells" and together they signed it when caroling this past Christmas.
Her mother, Patricia Derrick, says she loves what ASL has done for her daughter, especially after the move from Seattle. "She's always been a go-getter, but sign language has opened her up . . . and has really helped her with the transition."
Because ASL works both parts of the brain, Goins says learners are less apt to forget it. She says countless students have taken the newfound language and greater sensitivity for others out into the world. Some use ASL on their LDS missions. Others are teachers, interpreters or simply individuals who strike up conversations at stores.
"A lot of students come back and say - or sign - 'Thank you.' "
History
Early sign language appeared in colonial times, notably on the East Coast island of Martha's Vineyard, where hereditary deafness was prominent.
In 1817, Thomas Gallaudet brought Laurent Clerc from Paris to Hartford, Conn., where the Frenchman served as the first deaf teacher in America's inaugural school for the deaf.
As a result, modern and standardized American Sign Language is largely rooted in French Sign Language.
Source: American Sign Language Teachers Association
By the numbers
28 million: Number of Americans considered deaf
or hard of hearing
8.8: Percent of population with significant hearing loss
1.7: Percent of population considered deaf
196,481: Number of Utahns who are
hard of hearing
3,341: Number of Utahns who are deaf
Sources: National Association of the Deaf, Utah's Division of Services of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.