Summer Breeze ASL Camp is a four-week course teaching students, most of them not hearing‑impaired, American Sign Language.
Inside Ms. Yancy's classroom at Harry Stone Montessori School, being quiet does not mean not communicating.
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WATCH HERE"If they can’t speak, they will just communicate using sign language," Dallas ISD ASL teacher Kiara Yancy told the class. "Everybody show me a 3."
The students are enrolled in Dallas ISD’s Summer Breeze ASL Camp, which is put on by Dallas ISD’s Academic Services and Enrichment Department. Most of the students have no hearing impairment.
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SIGN UP "I try to teach, like, the language itself, but also worldly, like, compassion," Yancy said. "Because that’s all a part of the language."
The class stresses ways to be inclusive.
"Now I’m going to tell you exactly what ‘dinner table syndrome’ is," Yancy told her class. "You’re eating, having a good time, talking, and then one person feels left out, ok? Normally, that one person is who? A deaf person."
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Student camper and rising fifth‑grader Bryelle Johnson knows that all too well.
"Because my mom is deaf," Johnson said, sitting next to her mom, Lyntyaniere Arnold. "Sometimes they want to communicate with other people, but they don’t know how to do sign language. I’m not talking about the deaf people. I’m talking about the hearing people."
"Once they get face‑to‑face with the deaf person, they’re like, oh," Yancy said. "They kinda freak out and they forget, ah, natural human interaction!"
Part of teaching compassion is understanding why someone can’t hear or can’t hear well. Yancy had students make model eardrums so they could visualize how sound travels.
Student camper and rising fourth‑grader Derick Jackson has a little experience with that. Jackson wears a hearing aid in his left ear and said he gets questions about it "a lot."
"Before summer camp, I didn’t know any ASL," Jackson said. "Instead of talking by using your mouth, the hands talk for you. The hands talk, and you can see what they’re signing, and you can have a good response by signing again!"
While Jackson and Johnson both have some experience with hearing loss, their fellow student campers are learning how to be inclusive by learning a new language. It’s a sign of the times that made Johnson’s mom emphatically sign, “PROUD!"
