ASL Classes on Zoom “A Great Pleasure”
As Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services unveils a new set of ASL classes for January 2021, those who have taken such classes in 2020 say they are not to be missed.
One such student is Jan Bedrosian, a former Western Michigan University professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. The Kalamazoo resident recently retired from a department that prepares students for careers in either speech-language pathology or audiology, and her research focused on people who had a typical hearing but could not use spoken language as their primary mode of communication.
“They relied,” she said, “on what we refer to as augmentative and alternative communication, use of computers with speech output, writing with pen and paper, pointing to picture symbols on a communication board, sometimes using ASL.”
And in the early 1970s, as an undergraduate student, she had taken a few courses in sign language but not ASL. The instruction was in SEE signs (Signing Exact English).
“At that time,” she recalls, “some educators believed that Deaf children should learn how to sign using English grammar as opposed to ASL grammar. I’m glad that education has moved away from this philosophy, and I have always wanted to learn ASL grammar.”
Almost a half-century later Jan has a Deaf granddaughter, and now learning ASL has become not just professional but also personal.
“She was adopted by my daughter two years ago at the age of seven from an orphanage in China,” Jan says. “No one at the orphanage knew Chinese Sign Language, so she essentially lived for seven years with no language whatsoever.”
Jan’s daughter signed her up for the D&HHS summer camp in 2019 and again in 2020, and through her daughter Jan learned about the D&HHS ASL offerings. The results have been amazing, Jan says.
“As a result of taking ASL 1 and 2 with Nancy Piersma, we can now communicate so much better with our granddaughter and do not need to constantly rely on our daughter to interpret for us. We Facetime with her every night, so we have been able to practice what we are learning in class. I am really enjoying using my ASL skills in summarizing storybooks to her. I sometimes have to ask her to slow down in her signing, so that I can comprehend what she is saying! She loves to correct me when I make a mistake in my signs, and she is always happy to show me a sign that I am unfamiliar with.”
Jan and her husband have taken both courses on Zoom and highly recommend it.
“I was already familiar with Zoom for my own teaching purposes,” she says, “so it was not a problem. Considering the pandemic we are in, I’m grateful to be able to take these courses virtually. Nancy is a wonderful instructor and has adapted well to the uniqueness of virtual teaching. It has been a great pleasure to take these courses from her!”
