In-Depth blog post #2
01/24/21
This week, I had my first meeting with my mentor. It was nice getting to know her and learn a little bit about sign language and Deaf culture.
About my mentor…
Today I met with my mentor, Tori, for the first time. It was really nice and we got to know about each other a little bit during the beginning. Tori told me that she’s always had a little bit of experience and background with sign language. She told me how she has a brother who is hard of hearing, although he doesn’t really use sign language as his main language. Her mom is also someone who works with people who are hard of hearing. She’s been to multiple courses, some online regardless of covid, some not, although the ones she went were all online. When I asked, she told me that queerasl was the best one. She said the other ones were ok, and that if I wanted to learn sign language and take it as a course, queerasl had the best learning and hands on experience.
What did we talked about…
At first, we sort of discussed about our next meetings and how we should move forward learning ASL. We decided to meet every Sunday at the same time in order to keep the meeting times consistent. We talked a little bit about Deaf culture and history. She told me about how being Deaf was not very accepted by people in the past. We talked about the Milan Conference which was held during the 19th century and at this conference, Deaf educators (who were not Deaf themself) decided that they didn’t want kids who were hard of hearing to learn sign language. They forced oral education as they declared it to be best. During that time, they also tied kids hands together so that they couldn’t use sign language which was terrible. Fortunately, being Deaf is now accepted and Tori also told me that because of everything they went through, they don’t liked to be called certain labels that hint that being Deaf is considered having your hearing ability lost. We talked more about that for a while. She also taught me that there is a difference between deaf and Deaf. These are proper labels that hard of hearing people choose.
Tori also taught me some greeting and introductory signs. Like, Hello, bye, nice to meet you, how are you, good, bad, ok, so-so, what is your name, and more. She also told me how to sign double letters, and numbers. We talked a lot more about signs and she answered some questions that I had. We decided to plan out our sessions, at least a little bit and we decided that we would move the complex parts of ASL to later sessions when I had a little more experience, like grammar. She told me to continue to practice and told me some good resources and which ones were better from her experience.
Being taught ASL by a hearing person…
Normally, it is not culturally appropriated to be taught ASL by someone who is hearing. As this is not something like learning ASL from school, it is sort of different and is “more” acceptable. For me, it was easier to communicate, although there are some drawbacks to learning from a hearing person. Learning from someone who only uses sign language lets me have more experience looking and forming muscle memory, which I don’t have. Tori still has a lot of experience which is great, and I’m glad she told me that she still would be my mentor. It was also nice because she listened to all my questions and were able to answer them and it made it easier for me to follow along as well. We stayed non-verbal when signing and when she was showing me so that she wouldn’t be explaining it which I’m glad she did, because it applied parts of the benefits of learning from someone Deaf, to our sessions.
Challenges and what went well…
I did not really come across any challenges. Sometimes, it would get a little awkward though because neither of us really prepared anything for the first meeting, although this problem has already been talked about and solved. I did prepare something for the meeting, although it was mostly main points and not detailed information. Surprisingly, it wasn’t bad meeting online. The only bad part was not being able to see my entire body, which mean whenever I tried to sign, I wasn’t aware and signed out of what Tori could see. That wasn’t really much of a problem, because I moved my camera down. A lot of things also went well. We didn’t “talk” via email, instead we used Instagram. This was great. It felt more comfortable because it was less formal and the recipient could respond a lot more easily. We were also pretty organized, we planned out a lot for how to meet and etc. No one was late, and initially, I had a little bit of Wi-Fi issues which was easily resolved. It was hard meeting for a longer time. Especially since this was the first meeting. Even though there are a lot of signs, each one requires practice and memorization. Tori decided to let me decide what I wanted to know, but we generally went with what she thought were more of a beginner level.
How to have a beautiful mind
How to agree, disagree, and differ
We did not have problems with agreeing too much with each other. Same with disagreeing and differ. This was because there wasn’t really anything to agree upon. I don’t really have any previous experience other than when I learned for 2 months as a passion project. She had a lot more experience and she was the one teaching me, so there was nothing I could really disagree or differ with. The first meeting was more of a listening period and I think it will stay like this until the end. Sign language is a language and culture and disagreeing with the culture would be disrespectful and offensive, and because I’m not Deaf and I am not credible to make negative comments about the culture, which I respect. Unlike other skills, learning a language is very different as there aren’t multiple or preferred way to learn. It was difficult to incorporate these aspects because of the skill I chose to learn. During my next meeting, I will try to use these aspects better, by building connections, and doing research beforehand so that I also have a little bit of background information.