Breaking barriers through ASL
Kiara Yancy, an American Sign Language teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School, slapped the heel of her dominant palm against the center of her other palm twice, suddenly gestured down at the floor with both index fingers, and then, raising just her right-hand index finger, pointed at her mouth. Having signed her message, she pointed at a yellow poster that read, “How would you feel in a world where you could not speak?”
Her students, attending a summer camp on ASL, jotted down their answers on blue Post-it notes as part of the lesson taught for mostly hearing students. Some students wrote they would feel “scared” and “sad.” In contrast, one student who is hard of hearing wrote that he would feel “happy” because he would learn to communicate in a new language.
Yancy, who is one of only two ASL high school teachers, always has taught at the high school level, but this summer, she reached out to lower grades. Yancy taught third to fifth graders at Dallas ISD’s first-ever ASL summer camp at Harry Stone Montessori this past June. Director of Health and Physical Education Lisa Whitaker, who came up with the idea, said the goal is to introduce students to ASL and Deaf culture earlier in their education.
“Research tells us that children learn language best because their brains are still developing,” Whitaker said. “But we don’t offer ASL until ninth grade, so how would students even get there when they don’t know about it? Our goal in teaching it early is proficiency and awareness.”
September is National Deaf Awareness Month.
Yancy said she took an interest in ASL in high school when she had a choice between Spanish or ASL. Because she could not roll the R in Spanish, she opted for ASL instead.
“I had a deaf ASL teacher who told me there weren’t many minorities teaching ASL,” Yancy said. Taking that to heart, she went to Lamar University—the only school in Texas with a bachelor’s degree in American Sign Language—and returned to Dallas in 2022 to teach at Woodrow Wilson.
She said her students often tell her they would like to continue learning ASL beyond the classroom.
“One group of students that I had were like, ‘Miss Yancy, when I go to college, I’m going to be an interpreter, because you made me want to do it,”’ she said. As part of her curriculum, Yancy asks her classes to attend at least one social event within the Deaf community where they have to sign.
“If they don’t practice the language, it’s not really worth it. So they do have to have an in-person interaction,” Yancy said.
Even though the four-week summer camp at Harry Stone didn’t require a social event component, Yancy still taught the same curriculum she uses with her older students. The only difference, she said, is that her elementary school students did more interactive, hands-on activities.
“Instead of just sitting up there and looking at a PowerPoint, I found different ways to keep them engaged in the lesson,” Yancy said. “I feel like that was a challenge and something different.”
Yancy recalled two instances in which the camp changed students’ lives: one boy with partial hearing loss and a hearing aid in his left ear was thrilled to learn to sign, and a girl who wanted to improve her fluency in sign language because her mother is deaf.
“The student with partial hearing loss likes the language, and I see him interacting with his classmates more,” Yancy said. “But all my students are excited that before they could only communicate with their mouth, and now they can do so with their hands.”
More than 400 students are enrolled in Dallas ISD’s deaf education program. And the number could grow in the future. This fall, some elementary schools with language-learning programs have introduced ASL lessons to the curriculum.
“ASL is a language, and we want to elevate that,” said Whitaker.
Beyond highlighting the linguistic differences of a language based on hand signs to the greater community, National Deaf Awareness Month also promotes opportunities for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Yancy said it’s important to remind students who are deaf or hard of hearing that they may qualify for a free college education. Most students and their parents, she said, are unaware of this opportunity.
Yancy sees the camp and the classes as an initiative to destigmatize the Deaf community and their values. This stigma, she said, is rooted in misunderstanding, lack of communication efforts, and systemic barriers, rather than inherent differences between Deaf and hearing communities.
“Nobody takes the initiative to learn ASL, but, really, the only barrier that defines the Deaf community from hearing people is the lack of communication,” Yancy said.
