Signing in the School

     No introvert   likes being lonely. Our batteries get charged from being alone and they get spent from participating in large social gatherings. But being alone and lonely are two very different things.      When we switched to  learning online last year , I was excited to have more alone time and by the end of the year, I couldn't remember the names of more than half the people in my classes from in-person . So I made a promise to myself that I would join some clubs and build true connections with people.      But I couldn't think of any clubs at our school that I would be any good in, as most are skill-focused. Now, that would be fine if I was in grade nine, but I wasn't exactly in love with the idea of being that  eleventh-grader being taught the ropes by someone younger.     And that was what sparked the idea of the ASL Club. And that moment of celebration and sharing my ideas with my family only lasted about 10 minutes. I started envisioning what it might look lik

    What if I told you that Deaf people can sing? Mute people too! And I know what you're thinking. Don't you need to be able to talk in order to sing?  Well, Deaf and Mute people can do that too; you just need to expand your definitions of "talk" and "sing". With body language and facial expressions, professionals and those fluent in sign language create song interpretations that can convey even more emotion than spoken words and tone. But what about a small group of teenagers who've been learning ASL one hour every two weeks for less than three months?          As per request, the last two ASL Club meetings for the semester were going to be focused on learning a song in ASL. We had voted in favour of Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars and everything was set for us to get together for a fun time after the third day back to school. And then, in true COVID fashion, its case counts in Ontario started to rise with dramatic flair just in time to send scho