On Monday, Feb. 22, the American Sign Language Club met after school in the library in a circle of five. During the meeting, they reviewed signs and selected coloring pages to work on while discussing social events to attend and ways to bring awareness to the school.
“If we do something for disability awareness and we have it on LCTV News, other people will see us learning stuff and go, ‘Oh, that sounds pretty cool.’ Then they might want to join the club to learn new stuff, and the club will get bigger,” Katelin Cunningham (9) said.
Throughout the meeting various visuals were used to help the students understand signs. To review colors, Ms. Sarah Mayer, West Lake, held up a colored pencil, and in return, the students gave the sign for each corresponding color. A video of “Hello” by Adele also showed different ways sign language can be expressed.
“Not everyone can perform ‘Hello’ by Adele and have it be a beautiful thing to watch, though I think in that sense [sign language] can be dancing or music with your hands. I think you have to be pretty confident and come outside your comfort zone because you’re moving your body. Teenagers don’t seem to like to draw attention to themselves, but signing is putting emotion behind your hands and your body. I think in that way it’s creative. Usually it seems like people who are attracted to it are more creative in their mindset,” Ms. Mayer said.
