It's Virtually Singing in ASL!

    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 school back to virtual for the New Year.

    I spent about an hour in total hunched over my phone, standing awkwardly in doorways, oblivious to my irritated family members trying to use the doorways for their intended purpose, hurridly stabbing the keyboard to get emails out, switching between yearning to punch and wanting to hug the inventor of auto-correct, ignoring the fact that this would all be much less cheek-reddening on my fully-charged laptop.

    A dozen emails and half a dozen Google Classroom announcements later, Ms. Nguyen and I had organized a virtual ASL Club meeting for what was now the first day back to school (the province delayed it).

    Now, I'm a very introverted person. So the switch to virtual was actually not all that bad. For example, I didn't feel that same tightness in my stomach that I had gotten before every meeting. I guess something about being at home made me feel more relaxed. And when I clicked the link to open the meeting, I could feel my shoulders relax and my heart rate not increase.

    We started off with the Fingerdown Challenge where everyone holds one hand up and puts one finger down if they meet a requirement that I list. We played for 10 items and then each shared how many fingers we lowered. I chose this game because it was supposed to be really fun and I also saw it as an opportunity to encourage people to turn on their cameras. Only two of sixteen people, one of whom was Ms. Nguyen, ended up revealing their faces, but we still got a few mics turned on and plenty of 'hahaha's and 'lol's in the chat. And I think that that was what set the mood for a truly enjoyable meeting.    

    Afterwards, we started learning the song. We rotated between learning the required vocabulary, attempting to sign along with small segments of the song at a decreased playback speed, and utterly failing at piecing together as much of the song as we had learned at its regular speed. Nonetheless, I heard plenty of laughter and delighted in messing up miserably among the other members.

    We didn't end up getting through as much of the song as I had hoped and we certainly didn't do ASL song interpretations justice, but we definitely had a lot of fun trying and laughing together. COVID is a source of constant stress, tragedy, and misery but we can still find ways to have fun and grow as a community.