Fourteen little hands wiggled in the air as teacher Kiara Yancy brought her thumb, pointer and middle finger close to her head.
The American Sign Language educator placed her thumb on her ear and bent the two longer fingers, signing the word “hearing.”
“It’s like you’re pulling the sound in,” Yancy said during a Monday morning class. “Let’s go around the room and sign it.”
One by one, the fourth and fifth graders quickly raised their fingers to their ears and mimicked Yancy with ease.
Two weeks ago, most of the students had never signed before. But Dallas school officials hope that by the end of its new four-week ASL summer camp, the children know the basics of sign language — and will want to learn more.
“If I ever meet a friend that’s deaf or hard of hearing, they might not have any other friends because nobody else knows sign language,” said Emma Pumarejo, a fifth grade camper learning ASL for the first time. “I can be there, and I can sign to them and talk to them.”
The goal is to expand access to and interest in sign language earlier in students’ education, said Lisa Whitaker, who came up with the idea for the free camp.
Typically, students who want to learn sign language must wait until high school. Even then, the elective course is only offered in two schools. This fall, some DISD elementary schools with a language-learning program will include lessons about ASL.
“It’s an important language, and the earlier that students learn language, the more apt they are to be skilled at it and proficient,” said Whitaker, who oversees the district’s electives as director of health and physical education. “Ninth grade is a great starting point, but we all know your brain is more malleable earlier.”
More than 400 students are enrolled in Dallas ISD’s deaf education program, which provides instructional services to those who are deaf or have hearing difficulties. The total number of hearing impaired students is likely higher since some don’t enroll in the program, said A’Nease Linnear, Dallas ISD media relations coordinator.
The new summer camp — which serves 40 third to fifth graders and is based at Harry Stone Montessori — aims to reduce stigma around hearing loss and help kids understand the values, attitudes and practices shared by the deaf community.
Yancy started a recent class by asking students to think about how they would feel if they lived in a world where they could not hear. After some wrote “scared” and “sad” on orange Post-its, she offered a different perspective.
“Some people feel special about their deafness,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with being deaf. The only thing that happens when you’re deaf is that you can’t hear.”
Derick Jackson, 10, who has partial hearing loss and wears a blue hearing aid in his left ear, scribbled a different answer than his classmates on his orange Post-it.
“I would feel a little bit happy, because I could start learning more sign language,” he wrote, punctuating with a smiley face.
At first, Derick wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of a camp this summer. But after he found out he would learn sign language, he was “hyped up.”
His mom has told him learning ASL is helpful “just in case” he loses hearing in his right ear. He’s more excited that camp is a chance to teach classmates about his hearing aid and what it does.
“It kind of made me frustrated a bit, because I had to keep answering the question over and over,” he said. “They should know what it is by the name.”
For others, the allure of ASL camp is becoming fluent in another language.
When Emma’s mom suggested the camp, the 9-year-old thought learning sign language would be “really cool because I’m also learning Spanish.” Once lessons began, she marveled at the way her hand swung through the air when she signed “everyone” — straight down and back up, like a boomerang.
Each night, Emma writes a list of the words she learned that day. Her mom quizzes her. She hit her goal of learning 50 words last week. By the end of camp, she wants to learn 200.
The hardest words to sign are numbers, the kids say — seven and eight are deceptively similar. The sign for six is the common hand gesture for the number three.
The students pepper Yancy with questions.
Does Spanish sign language exist? Yes, she says, showing them how to sign “amigo” by placing the right palm atop the left fist. What happens if you’re born without an ear? It can be harder to hear, she responds, so you might need a cochlear implant or a hearing aid.
Derick quickly chimes in: “That’s what I have!”
One recent lesson included building model eardrums out of plastic cups.
The kids stretched plastic wrap over the cups’ mouths, which represents the eardrum, then sprinkled a pinch of rice atop the taut surface. They gripped pencils in their fists. Then, at Yancy’s direction, they gleefully started tapping the bottoms of their cups, sending the grains bouncing.
“What do you think the rice represents?” Yancy asked, raising her voice to compete with the rattle.
“The sound waves,” the kids answered.
Bryelle Johnson, 10, has communicated in sign language her whole life.
Her mom, Lyntaniere Arnold, is deaf. Arnold, who often volunteers at Harry Stone Montessori, already feels the impact of having more students on campus who are familiar with ASL.
“Before this class, there were some kids who tried to talk to me, but they had to ask Bryelle, ‘What’s she saying?’” Arnold said through a sign language interpreter. “Now I can talk directly to the kids and don’t have to depend on Bryelle all the time.”
The students don’t all have to become interpreters, she said. But she hopes they help other people, whether that means translating for deaf people or increasing others’ exposure to ASL.
That’s what Derick plans to do. With two weeks of camp left, he wants to learn to sign more nouns: bee, ship, cheetah. That way, when he returns to school, he said, he’ll be ready to teach his friends.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
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