I come from a Deaf family. My great grandparents were Deaf and my family members are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). Growing up, my dad would teach me signs and I knew enough to have a basic understanding of ASL. Until I got to college, taking ASL wasn’t offered to me, and I had learned from watching videos on Youtube. Considering how millions of people are Deaf in the U.S., I felt it was an important language to learn and understand. When I was given the opportunity to take it at SUNY Geneseo, I jumped on the opportunity.
Before taking ASL, I had seen a few movies and TV shows that represent the Deaf community. I had already seen Switched at Birth and spent an entire weekend binge watching Deaf U on Netflix. What I would notice in both of these shows is that everyone struggled to communicate. In Switched at Birth, in a scene where one of the deaf characters was hospitalized, the nurse struggles to find an interpreter and isn’t able to tell the patient what is going on. In Deaf U, the Deaf college students struggle to communicate with the hearing community. They have to rely on typing on their phones to communicate with new people, which is challenging. By having TV shows represent the struggle that members of the Deaf community have gone through so many times, it shows how many people don’t know Sign language and how important it is to learn the language.
Before taking an ASL class, I have interacted with people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing in my everyday life. My school is close to Rochester, NY which has the largest Deaf community in the country. On many occasions while in Rochester, I have interacted with someone who is Deaf or hard-of-hearing, trying to help them communicate with someone who does not know ASL. While I didn’t know as much ASL as I wanted to, it interested me more when I called upstate New York my new home.
Throughout the year taking ASL, my professor also taught the class about Deaf culture and how Covid-19 has affected the community. I was taught about the history of ASL, art and was able to read many books by deaf authors. While learning more about the Deaf community, we also discussed how wearing a mask has affected everyone. Since the pandemic first started, many people in the Deaf community have struggled to communicate with the hearing community. With the requirement of face masks, many people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing would use lipreading to help them understand what the other person is saying. This can make the usual task of going grocery shopping a difficult and frustrating situation. Not only is interacting with everyone wearing a mask hard, so is online video chats. With classes and work meetings on Zoom becoming more common, it is difficult for someone who is deaf to understand what is going on without closed captioning. It hadn’t occurred to me how difficult it is to sign and understand others on Zoom until my class went online for two weeks.
ASL can be a very easy language to learn with some time and dedication. Even learning the basics of ASL can be useful to you. I was able to learn more about a language that isn’t taught as much as it should be in schools. It was a great opportunity to be able to learn not only the language, but also the culture. Knowing ASL has come in handy in my life while interacting with someone from the Deaf community. I was able to learn more about a language that is very important to me and be able to teach my friends a few signs.