Sign Language Club

For this week's Grant and Gillette's top ten things that you can do to put yourself on the path to becoming an excellent teacher, I decided to write about joining a group that is different from me. When we first got this assignment, I was really hesitant about joining a group. I really felt like I would be intruding where I wouldn't be welcome. However the first day I went to sign language club, everyone was very nice and welcoming. They gave me snacks, and there were also many students there who also did not know any sign language. But it was really hard not knowing how to communicate with anyone! Even though the people who ran the club were smiling at me and trying to sign with me... it was very frustrating that I didn't know how to sign back. I wanted to communicate with them, but I didn't know how. For example, at the second session, we learned about how to make family signs. It was great to be learning new signs, but my sign language vocabulary was so limited I couldn't really communicate questions or answers about families to anyone very effectively. I felt a like there was a huge barrier I couldn't cross, because I couldn't communicate effectively in sign language. English being my first language I have never been in a situation where the rest of the class spoke another language from me. But many students do enter elementary school speaking another language! I think that my experiences of being frustrated with not being able to communicate in sign language, may be what an ESL child might be feeling all day every day at school. I wanted to talk to these very nice people in sign club, just as an ESL student probably wants to make friends with his/her new classmates, but it is really hard when you can not express your self like you could in your own language! I can not just infer these students experience the exact same feeling I had, but I can imagine how frustrating it would be to not be able to communicate.
At this point I have been to four sign language club sessions. At each one I have learned a little bit more and am taking very very small steps towards being able to communicate in sign language. At the third session we got to make up skits with the help of one of the leaders. At the fourth session we translated songs to sign language. I worked on translating "You'll be in my heart" from Tarzan. It is really fun to continuously learn more signs. I am slowly making progress. I still feel frustrated that I can not always say what I want to in sign language, but I am really leaning a lot from being part of the club. Hopefully I will eventually learn enough to be able to communicate with a hearing impaired student if I have one in my class.