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...

    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...

      With only seven more days of school to go and culminating projects in full swing, the ASL  Club had its most fun meeting yet.     Two weeks before, I had compiled a Holiday-themed vocabulary lesson, and scavenged the internet for the signs required to sign the first few verses of, " We Wish You a Merry Christmas " and, " Have a Holly Jolly Christmas ". A member had asked if we could sign a Christmas song before the break, so I decided to give them the option to choose from a list of at least two songs. In the end, I probably spent about four hours prepping for this meeting...but who's counting?      So when I handed out the Human Bingo sheets at the beginning of the meeting today, I was feeling conservatively optimistic that this was going to go pretty well. I had learned from the previous few weeks to not be overly hopeful or cynical about meetings, and I think I've found a nice happy medium.      After that, we did a q...

    After all the mistakes from the past four meetings, I meticulously prepared for this week's, in hopes that it would go without a hitch. I had created the slideshows well in advance, I reviewed the slides the day before, I printed the vocabulary sheet I would need for the end-of-class game, and I had even downloaded the slides onto a USB in case the wifi was down (this was a serious possibility as the school wifi had been completely down more than twice in the past couple of weeks).     But as I rushed over to Ms. Nguyen's room to grab the projector at 2:45, I couldn't stop myself from expecting something new and unexpected to go wrong.     By the time I had wheeled the projector cart to the Student Lounge, there were about eight people waiting outside.      I still can't believe how many people are in the club. Considering that most clubs in our school have about 10-15 members, I think we're doing pretty well!     After fiddling...

       I had thought that all the craziness and unpredictability of last week was just because it was the first meeting. But I learned today that craziness is an inevitable part of life. And sometimes, all you can do is just go with the flow.     Ms. Nguyen announced this morning that we would be meeting in the student lounge.     Except as we started to set up, we realized that we didn't have a projector. So to avoid the hassle of moving the projector, we moved the people!     In Ms. Nguyen's room, the laptop decided to take its sweet time logging me in and loading my slides. So I decided to teach the introduction game from memory, and I only forgot one rule. Go me!     Once the slides finally finished loading the game had officially died, we started the lesson on  introductory conversations . The nice thing about sign language is that it's often intuitive. Consequently, we flew through a lot of the signs like HI , BYE , ...

    Okay, remember when I told you that I had six sign-ups and I got really excited? And to be honest, I was expecting about 10 people to come for the first meeting. Well, it turns out that I’m terrible at predictions. Like, worse than Trelawney from Harry Potter.     The morning of the first meeting, the slides were completed, the games were organized, the number of sign-ups had amazingly increased to 17, the sheets were in my bag, I could breathe.      After school, I headed over to Ms. Nguyen’s room with butterflies in my stomach and a pep in my step from the excitement of finally meeting everyone. But as my best friend and I rounded the corner, I saw Ms. Nguyen locking up her classroom, ready to head out. My pep waivered.     "Oh, hi Julianne!" she said as she saw us, "Something's come up and I can't stay today. I've asked Ms. Marcella to watch you guys in the library, is that okay?"      And that was only the beginni...