Fund for Teachers Fellows teach every subject and language, including American Sign Language (ASL). At FFT Fellow Mick Posner‘s school in West Hartford, CT, ASL is one of the world languages offered and he used his grant to learn from deaf Inuits in Nuuk, Greenland, basic conversational skills in that country’s official sign language system to expand current ASL classes and deepen students’ understanding of the human spirit’s resiliency.

FFT Fellows Amanda Kline and Jenny Cooper‘s situation is a little different. They are teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing at Metro Deaf School in Sant Paul, MN. Metro Deaf School is a pK-12, free public charter school that provides bilingual and interdisciplinary curriculum using ASL and English for students who are primarily Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard-of-Hearing. Enhancing their curriculum are short, timely lessons they create for their YouTube series Did You Know That?!

Amanda (who produces the videos) and Jenny (the host and who is deaf) created a Fund for Teachers 2020 fellowship to document pedagogies of Deaf cultures and communities across Iceland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Ireland to provide linguistically-accessible primary resources that increase world knowledge for and decrease language gaps of deaf students. Due to COVID, they had to defer their fellowship, but we wanted to touch base now to learn more about their plans through a Q&A interview…

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]In your proposal, you wrote: “Many of our students have grown up with world experiences; but without the language to accompany those experiences, they are unable to process, understand, internalize, or apply their experiences.” When your students experience everything, yet rarely have the language for processing and sharing, how do you build community?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]There is community building in the simple “same as me” experience among students. Empathy is a deep thread that runs throughout our student body DNA. When students transfer to our school at 12 years old having had 12 years of life experience with 0 years of language and are finally given access to ASL to process those experiences, we see so much growth. Then, when other students transfer in after them, those students can come alongside them to support growth. It is also important for them to see how far they’ve come! Taking language sample videos and then showing them those videos 1-2 years later is always a treat!

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]You have 12-year-old in your classes, deaf, 12 years old, and at a 3 year old math and 0 year old reading level, yet within less than two years, you have that student perform at a 5th grade math level and reading at a 3rd grade level. How do you motivate and inspire students with such obstacles to achieve at these levels?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]Honestly, they don’t need extrinsic motivation, it’s an innate need, passion and desire. When they can understand what’s happening, their cognition goes into hyper-speed.

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]While your fellowship involves filming historically-significant sites, you also plan to focus on significant elements of the respective deaf communities such as: traditional folklore, celebrations, and language evolution. Can you talk more about that?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]Yes! We are excited to be visiting various Deaf Clubs, Deaf community gatherings, Deaf immigrant immersion programs, and much more. We can’t wait to see how these various cultures incorporate their local cultures and history overlap with Deaf culture and history. For example, by meeting with the Scottish Ethnic Minority Deaf Club, we will experience how members celebrate various diverse people groups within the Deaf community and take away ideas for events, programs, and approaches to be able to apply within our own community.

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]Your research will also include interviewing organizations about building community with parents. Why do you feel as though that is vital?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]Students can grow and learn 8 hours a day when they’re with us, but when they go home in the evenings, weekends, and during school breaks, that’s where they need continued education and support in ASL. When families get on board with their child’s newly acquired language, we see significant growth in those students.

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]Would you explain the SignPal program and your plans for implementing it with your students?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]We piloted a program like this within our own state a few years ago where we networked with another deaf school. This operated similarly to traditional Pen Pals, but in ASL using sign as opposed to writing in English only. We paired up students based on language levels, then they sent videos back and forth to one another, getting to know another person. We provided guided questions for suggestions. At the end of the academic year, we all met together at a local Deaf club where we had a tour and lesson about the history of the Deaf club, then had lunch together and played games. This proved to be a rich social experience for all students involved and formed lifelong connections. We would like to try a program like that, but to make it an international experience.

[minti_dropcap style=”box”]Q[/minti_dropcap]Lastly, how do you foresee your fellowship impacting the Metro School for the Deaf school community?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap]We, as a team, as a school, and as a community, recognize American deaf culture is complicated and we recognize the ways the education system is failing our D/HH students; however, we also recognize our students are full of passion and drive. They need a global deaf identity, including more creatively-designed, visually-engaging, linguistically-accessible resources to be successful in their futures in the global society and marketplace. This experience will lead to opportunities for our students, staff, and community members to analyze their current cultural and educational situations and to problem solve with the support of an expanded global-knowledge. This is not a change that can happen overnight, it requires a community and a culture of first becoming aware of options, then being willing to adapt and change for the future benefit of each individual. Thankfully, the deaf community is a profoundly adaptive group of individuals willing to grow.

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Jenny Cooper (right) teaches American Sign Language and more to deaf/hard of hearing high school students at Metro Deaf School. Her passion comes from her family who are also deaf, making her a third generation deaf person in her family. She obtained her Masters from the only deaf university in the world, Gallaudet University. Amanda Kline teaches deaf and hard of hearing middle school students reading and language arts at Metro Deaf School. She is passionate about making learning exciting, impactful, and memorable. She enjoys combining world knowledge with creative film making and editing to create accessible videos for ASL users throughout the country and world.

Alexander Graham Bell’s most well-known accomplishment is the invention of the telephone; however, his first job was as a teacher. In fact, he was teaching at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes when he began creating a machine that changed the way we communicate forever.

Deborah Tubbs and Dana Smith share a lot in common with Bell: They are deaf education teachers and are also intent on changing the way their second- and third-graders not only communicate, but also integrate and socialize with their hearing peers. Ostensibly our most excited grant recipients judging from this video, Deborah and Dana designed their fellowship to attend the AG Bell Association for the Deaf‘s Global Listening and Spoken Language Symposium in Madrid.

  

In advance of the symposium, Dana and Deborah toured London schools with programs similar to theirs and with whom their students interact via a pen pal program. En route to Spain, they visited the National Institute for Young Deaf in Paris, established in 1760 as the first public school in the world for deaf students.

We caught up with Dana and Deborah in Madrid as their fellowship is drawing to a close…

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What are your main takeaways so far?

“Deaf Awareness. Not just for a select few but for the entire staff and student body, including our students who are deaf. Everyone needs to understand and appreciate the potential challenges that can arise when communicating with individuals who are deaf. And it is up to all parties to anticipate and recognize when they occur in order to overcome them. For our students who are deaf, they must learn to advocate for themselves.”

How will this impact your students?

“As we come back to Davis Elementary School in Plano, TX and apply what we have seen and learned, our students who are deaf will become more confident in who they are and how they communicate. Our short term plan for our own learning goals can be summed up in two words: learn and connect. Each leg of our fellowship is providing us with both of these opportunities. We are learning from and and connecting with our historical predecessors, our British colleagues and our global professional mentors. Long term, we’ll use these unique experiences to help students become more confident in challenging listening situations, develop skills necessary to repair communication breakdowns, and evolve from a fixed mindset, where they are too intimidated to speak up for their communication needs, to a growth mindset, where they recognize the challenges they face and have the tools and strategies they need to become successful and effective communicators.”

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Follow the remainder of this fellowship on the teachers’ Instagram feed @deborah_dana_fft.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]B[/minti_dropcap]ack in the ’80s, when Saturday Night Live was funny, Jon Lovitz did a skit called “Get to Know Me!” espousing how the lives of people (i.e. Steve Martin) benefited from knowing him. We believe the same is true of our 2019 Fellows and are, therefore, beginning a blog series to introduce many of our grant recipients throughout the summer.

For our first installment, we introduce you to a Fellow whose fellowship ranks among the most unique we’ve funded in almost twenty years. Get to know Mick Posner of Conrad High School in West Hartford, CT.

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On why he designed this fellowship…

I am now in my 10th year of teaching American Sign Language (ASL), which was actually the first language I learned as a child because I was born deaf. As a faculty member of my high school’s World Languages department, I work with students in 9th through 12th grade. Students take my class to fulfill their World Language credit and to learn about the deaf community. More than 90% of my students have not been exposed to a sign language system until they take my class. I believe that students enjoy my class because they are being introduced to an entirely different culture that, in a sense, intertwined globally and for many of them, the challenge of communicating in different environments and situations is mutual.

Many people do not know that there are 200+ sign language systems around the world, each with their own grammar, vocabulary, influences and origins. Twice a year, my students complete a survey in order to share their feedback about my ASL classes. Consistently I receive the same inquiries — students have a strong interest in learning about unique deaf communities in other countries, particularly those shaped by linguistic and geographical barriers (such as the fact that deaf people in Cuba who are not allowed to drive and work full-time, among other government imposed restrictions.

After conducting extensive research, I found very little exists regarding the Greenland Deaf Community (and deaf Inuits), thus leading me to the following learning experience that I wish to pursue: understanding how such an unique population survive in such a remote part of the world, despite their deafness, by becoming a student of Inuit Sign Language (ISL), which is the official sign language system of the Greenland Deaf Community. This fellowshipwill deepen students’ understanding of the human spirit’s resiliency and the importance of continuing learning and pursuing knowledge in sign language systems.

ISL is a dialect that is centralized around vocations (a large percentage of their vocabulary is focused on being able to communicate related to hunting and fishing) and survival skills.  It is a language based purely on livelihood and survival in a very remote section of the world and would be a strong evidence of sign language’s relevance to a community that depends so much on a particular dialect to survive. There’s not many other languages like this, particularly in the form of a sign language system.

From this FFT experience I will have my students actively involved in the creation of online resources regarding different deaf communities around the world. In this project, students will include locations of community, what makes them unique, how they interact with the rest of their community at large, and the identification of unique signs necessary for survival.

On learning he is a 2019 Fellow…

When I first found out I was an FFT Fellow, I was overcome with an extraordinary sense of relief. The grant was something I had worked diligently on for four months, stemming from an idea I had from over a year ago based on articles I read the previous summer — quickly, that feeling turned into so much joy. My students were really excited for me — after it was announced, I asked if I could have a few minutes to call my wife. My 5th period class (that was when it was announced) voiced their support and understanding.

The impact on students already exists — I received several congratulatory and well-wishes emails from parents who shared that their students came home and told them about the FFT award. Along with a few additional parents who contacted me via social media, some of my seniors shared that they wish they could stay in high school for another year so they could hear about the experience (of course, I will see if I can extend an invitation to them when the time comes.)

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Mick is the only member of his family who was deaf, yet his parents believed in having ASL as his first language, which he learned before English. You can learn more about his life experiences and his own family from the A&E documentary “Born this Way Presents: Deaf Out Loud.” He and his wife also own Posner Inclusion, a consulting firm that creates bridges between businesses and unique markets, such as the deaf population.