It’s not about quality of instruction– though I agree there are good and bad instructors out there. It’s mostly that I think those of us who are late-deafened or parents of Deaf children need more individualized instruction than a Community College setting where we’re doing busy homework type stuff.

These are NOT appropriate classes for either the late-deafened or parents of Deaf children who want to learn ASL. We need to use this language right now in our homes TODAY. We come to class with so many questions. It is an interruption to the class for me to keep asking questions during class when they need to get through a lesson plan.

My first ASL class focused a lot on work environments for some reason. I learned how to sign “You’re improving.” “This is our schedule.”
“You’re hired!” None of this applied to my daily life, and it wouldn’t apply to either of these two moms who need to know how to sign to their toddlers.

At the community college where I’m currently taking classes, none of these people are that interested in practicing outside of school. ASL is just one class to them. Deafness isn’t their life. They can hear. So again it’s not the best place for me to learn, but I am learning slowly. Also the college classes require a lot of busy work type homework. For example, I’m auditing my grade, but if I weren’t I would have to write several reports–one would be on the history of hearing aids. This is soooooo unnecessary and NOT appropriate. I have worn hearing aids for years, but the class is geared toward people who have never had any exposure at all to anyone or anything related to deafness/Deaf culture or hearing loss.

I had to get special permission to audit the class— and then it’s a hassle to register every quarter because my pre-requisites don’t show up on my transcript. I have to get special permission again every time I want to register for the next level–EVERY time. If I transfer to another school, I’m sunk. Next quarter I many have to take a credits so it will be on my transcript because I’ll have to transfer to another college since this one only goes so far. This will mean lots of stupid homework. I’m fifty– I work and I have a family.

It’s such a pain to have to jump through all these red-tape community college hoops.

What we need is Deaf people willing to teach ASL one-on-one with families in a more individualized environment. Professionally. I don’t want to bug Deaf people to practice with me on their social time. It’s not fair to them. But I NEED someone to understand that my deafness is very real, and and classes geared toward hearing people once or twice a week won’t work because I am no longer hearing. My needs are much, much different from theirs. And the needs of parents of Deaf children are more like mine than those in community college.

Sorry for such a long comment.

To force change via public policy or laws doesn’t necessarily create positive public acceptance of the change overnight. For example, it took more years of civil rights protests after the Civil Rights Act became law to get rid of Jim Crow policies. OTOH marketing can change public acceptance of an idea in a more positive way.

As doctors and audiologists are the first contacts that parents of a deaf child see regarding their child’s deafness, it’s logical to target the doctors/ audiologists first thru ASL and Deaf culture awareness seminars at medical schools, conventions, etc. There are other targets as well, but this is the first target that I’m thinking about, as one example. Anne Marie in her above comment said her doctor was informed about ASL and the Deaf culture– how did he learn of it?

This is what I’ve been saying in some of my blog comments:

Instead of blaming AGBell, the government, or hearing people, or other generalizations, do positive marketing of ASL and its benefits instead. Leave the anger at home, it tends to cloud the ASL message you want to convey.

Thank you, Anne Marie. I find the professionals (outside the Deaf school my son attends) are always having to readjust how they talk about my 2.5yo’s language abilities. If he were judged by how much he spoke and auditorially understood, he’d be 6 mos old, but with ASL his language skills are at least age appropriate, if not higher. It becomes so common in parent circles to equate language development and speech/auditory development, which is simply not true in our (bilingual) case. His speech therapist, I think, is intrigued.

that’s amazing that your dr has read ASL/Deaf books.

My Deaf son Noam saw his doctor, Dr. Mehl who is a chair of Early Hearing Detection Intervention committee for the Colorado state. An intern pediatrician was with us. First thing Dr. Mehl asked, what is Noam’s first sign if he has signed yet? Wow. I explained that Noam is still signing prototypical signs. The doctor expanded on that and explained in more details about ASL language how it differs from English to the intern. Then he asked us about Noam’s use of digital aids and if he receives speech – auditory stimulation since we all are mostly ASL signers in our house. I said Noam is wearing high ended digital aids and receives auditory speech training three times a week. He is now vocalizing with syllables and can articulate few two sounds. He really enjoy listening to many different music on CD and watch cartoon with aids on.

Then the doctor said he already read books about ASL and Deaf identity issues and gave me his e-mail address for links to Deaf blogs.

This is how things work both ways..

Research show that it takes a bit longer time for bilingual children to become fluent in two languages than monolingual children. Bilingual children do mix up rules of both languages for while and at average of about 10 years, they finally smoothen out. In general girls tend to be faster.

It is normal and bilingual children should not never be compared with monolingual in language and literacy development at all. It is important to be aware of this when you are at an IEP meeting.