Signing in the School

    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 se...

     I have never admired teachers more than I do right now. I always pictured them going home with nothing on their to-do list apart from spending time with family, preparing a homecooked meal, sitting down to TV while passively marking assignments, throwing together a 10-minute slideshow for the next day, reading a good book in bed, and turning out the lights by 9 pm. Okay, well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the gist. I didn't think it was a lot of work.     I thought wrong. The time spent in class teaching is only the tip of the iceberg. There are hours and hours put into a 90-minute lesson and a constant flow of emails to respond to.     I'm just running an ASL club, so I don't even have any assignments to mark and I receive a scarce amount of emails. All I have to do is create lessons and activities to fill 60 minutes every two weeks. But you'd be surprised at how much time that actually takes.     Typically, in the week bet...