Two West Virginia University researchers, Kirk Hazen and Audra Slocum, examined how language has, in part, defined how Appalachians are viewed and judged elsewhere in the United States.
(WVU/Sheree Wentz Chart)

(Editor’s Note: WVU is the host site for the 45th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, “Making, Creating, and Encoding: Crafting Possibilities in Appalachia,” which runs through March 20. During and after the conference, WVU experts are available to discuss all things Appalachia.)

Language and how we use it is important for more than communication. According to two West Virginia University researchers, the language has, in part, defined how Appalachians are viewed and judged in other parts of the United States.

In turn, the Appalachians, or people of an eight-state region that stretches from southern New York to northern Georgia, either held their own and continued to use the vowel sounds that betray their linguistic roots, or adapted their speech patterns to fit in new places. or situations.

Kirk Hazen, director of the West Virginia Dialect Project and professor of linguistics in the Department of English, said Appalachia people are stigmatized for their speech and may be marginalized in school or in the workplace because of that stigma. And therein lies the linguistic choices that speakers of the region make – those who choose to maintain their use of stigmatized linguistic features – such as their accents – because of a sense of connection to that identity and those who choose to use less stigmatized language features.

“Teachers who are more proactive can help create these classrooms where we interrupt stigma, whether it’s about language or racial or class identities,” Hazen said. “When we don’t disrupt the social stigmas that limit people’s ability to envision a broader future, then it’s a serious problem educationally.”

Enter “Shayla,” a high school student from Kentucky who was selected for a summer arts academy in Lexington where her speech was ridiculed and one of her peers offered to be “a performer.” “Shayla” said it wasn’t her language, but their perception that was the problem, telling them, “You need to get your ears checked.”

“And that made him never want to go back and never go to college outside of his area,” said Audra Slocum, an English education teacher. “She doubled down to stay home and keep those vernacular characteristics.”

Slocum, also co-director of the National Writing Project at WVU, notes that the linguistic characteristics associated with the region are not “right or wrong.” Society has assigned meaning to the variations.

“There is no singular Appalachian English,” she said. “There is not just one set of models. It’s a whole host that people choose in different contexts for different purposes and there are social consequences attached to those choices.

Hazen said that whenever people interact, language and linguistic nuances are exchanged. In fact, language evolution and vowel shifts only occur in two-way encounters, whether face-to-face or online.

And although Appalachia, in reality, is no more isolated than any other region of the United States, this description fits the purposes that some late 19th and early 20th century authors had for the depiction of the region – rural, pristine, pastoral. Other.

Slocum said an Appalachian “otherness” is still going on, the myth of an Appalachian exceptionalism that says it’s somehow different from the rest of the country. This myth, when rolled onto the tongue, she says, means that people, including Appalachians, will look for differences and retain certain items to sort people based on those differences.

Standard or not, Hazen finds beauty in iterations of Appalachian English, and he believes that if regional speakers and those who judge them find out how the language works, it can give them hope.

“We might be able to foster understanding of their own society and themselves, but also of others and their variety of languages,” he said.

Listen to “How We Talk,” a Sparked podcast from WVU magazine.

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03/17/22

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Michelle Tanner was looking for a way for deaf students in Utah to experience theater — and when pursuing the state’s most prestigious theater festival didn’t work out, she decided to start her own.

This is how the National Deaf High School Theater Festival – marking its second year, but its first with in-person performances – began. The festival takes place Thursday through Saturday in Salt Lake City.

The festival will draw students, ages 14 to 18, from 10 schools across the country – including Texas, Minnesota and Oklahoma – to perform drama, as well as dance, storytelling and visual vernacular.

Students will participate in a mix of workshops, trainings and other social opportunities, said David Kurs, artistic director of Deaf West Theatre, a Los Angeles-based troupe that bills itself as “the bridge between the deaf and hearing worlds. “. ”

On Saturday evening, the general public will be able to see the performances of the students and the stars who contributed to their formation. The performance will take place Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Salt Lake City campus of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind, 1655 E. 3300 South, Salt Lake City. Free entry. Performances will also be streamed live on deafwest.org.

Audiences attending Saturday’s performances will find themselves completely immersed in deaf theater, Tanner said. Interpreters will be on hand for basic introductions and explanations, but not during the performances themselves, she said.

“People who come to watch it and observe it will be able to experience it in the first language, the natural language in which it was developed,” Tanner said. “To experience different performances in this way, I think, will be a great experience for people who hear people who don’t know sign language either.”

One of the guest performers is Daniel Durant, who last month won a Screen Actors Guild award as part of the ensemble cast of “CODA.” This movie — about a Massachusetts fishing family whose hearing member (Emilia Jones) learns she has a talent for singing — won four awards at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and is nominated for three Oscars, including best film.

Sign language actors feature in two of this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees. Besides “CODA,” which also stars nominated supporting actor Troy Katsur and former Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, the Japanese film “Drive My Car” features a character who communicates in Korean Sign Language — and it is by sign that she delivers the film’s final speech, as part of a performance of the classic “Uncle Vanya”.

It was the classics — and the lack of access to them — that prompted Tanner, associate superintendent of the deaf at Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind (USDB), to start the high school festival in the first place.

For years, USDB students have attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, competing in the festival’s high school competitions and occasionally winning. Tanner said she complained that the judges did not criticize the deaf student actors, but the performers voicing the actors’ dialogue.

Tanner said the Shakespeare Festival has provided American Sign Language interpreters for years so its students can attend professional performances at the festival. In 2019, she said, organizers told the school they should start providing their own ASL interpreters. Instead, USF provided tablets that played closed captioning.

USF Executive Producer Frank Mack said in a statement this week, “The festival provides live captioned performances to every play we produce each season. Live captioning is fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. »

Tanner pointed out that it is difficult for deaf students to read captions and pay attention to visual performance on stage simultaneously. Plus, she says, Shakespearean English is hard to understand, whether you’re deaf or not.

USDB, another school, and the Utah Association of the Deaf sued USF, Mack, and Southern Utah University in 2019, alleging the festival violated the ADA by not providing language interpreters signs. A judge dismissed the lawsuit the day after it was filed.

Having lost in court, Tanner took a different approach. She thought there should be high school drama competitions for deaf children, but there was nothing. Tanner said his reaction was, “Game, we’re gonna do it.”

The USDB first began partnering with Sunshine 2.0, a professional touring theater troupe from Rochester, NY Deaf West, who later signed on.

These groups, Tanner said, offer its students more than the Shakespeare Festival could. “They don’t know it from a deaf person’s perspective, they don’t know what it is. They can’t give that advice. They can’t teach my students that while Sunshine 2.0 and Deaf West can,” she said.

Plans for the new festival have been put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced organizers to stage last year’s inaugural season as a virtual event.

Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West, said that “before the pandemic hit, we were doing this type of work on a smaller scale here in the Los Angeles area with different schools and programs around. We were sending teachers to different campuses to teach and teach and then put on shows. »

When the pandemic started, Kurs said he realized Zoom calls would allow the troupe to grow.

Tanner said having students work with real deaf actors provides a level of “prestige and professionalism” that helps overall competition — and gives students the chance to grow into well-rounded individuals.

“In schools, we usually focused on academics, academics, academics. But kids are so much more than just academics,” Tanner said. “They are a whole being and they have a whole aspect that they can develop and cultivate.”

For this year’s festival, student actors from participating schools have been participating in weekly online workshops since January. They also wrote their own works, jammed them, and rehearsed them to perform in Salt Lake City.

There are no common themes in what the students write, Kurs said, but the process has been “fascinating.”

“When you think of deaf children coming together, [you’d think] usually they write about their culture and their language, but that’s not the case,” Kurs said. For example, a group develops a work of science fiction. “When you have full access, everything else really falls apart,” he said. “The deaf side of things, all that language. It’s more about “I want to tell my story in the setting that I want to offer”.

Kurs said the theater is a natural place for deaf people.

“We are born communicators,” Kurs said. “We know how to communicate with our hands, faces and bodies naturally and we don’t use those skills often enough, and it always breaks my heart to see a deaf child give up on a dream like this and make a different decision. . .”

Cindy Anderson, an English teacher at Culbreth Middle School, has worked with students from diverse backgrounds, many of whom are new to the United States and have come from non-traditional educational paths.

When English learning moved online during the pandemic, Anderson said, it became difficult for teachers and students.

“It’s put (the students) at least a year behind, if not more, and trying to get them to a certain level at this point is very difficult,” she said.

English language learners often aren’t able to get as much help outside of school as other students, Anderson said. This lack of support can hurt them academically.

“Some of our better-off students can get a lot of help, our kids can’t,” she said. “Maybe they were home alone while mom and dad worked, or mom and dad slept during the day so they could work at night.”

As the pandemic and associated staffing shortages have taken their toll on North Carolina school districts, English teachers like Anderson have faced many unique challenges.

Emily Lewis, ESL facilitator for Orange County Schools, said in an email that the broader teacher shortage has affected the ESL curriculum for the school district.

Lewis said that at one school, several kindergarten teachers had to learn how to deliver language lessons to students due to a lack of available ESL teachers.

“Truly the teachers are stretched and doing their best, but we all know we could do more if we were full,” she said in the email.

Lewis supervises, provides instructional coaching, and monitors the effectiveness of the ESL program. This work, she said, has been directly and significantly affected by the pandemic.

Along with other ESL teachers, Lewis has been forced to learn how to navigate remote learning during the pandemic. She said she provided lessons and support directly to students due to teacher shortages caused by the COVID-19 quarantine and isolation.

Sashi Rayasam, director of K-12 English learner services for Durham Public Schools, said in an email that the pandemic has also had a significant effect on ESL teachers for the DPS.

She said that although the pandemic has affected English learners, there have not been significant vacancies for ESL teachers.

“Teachers had to adapt to virtual delivery of the curriculum, ensure students had access to technology, and manage student access to social/emotional support,” Rayasam said.

Fight against the shortage

To make up for the lack of certified teachers, Lewis said the OCS has added English tutors to its ESL program. She said this opportunity has allowed English learners to receive more one-on-one support.

Carrie Doyle, president of the Orange County Board of Education, said OCS’s ESL programs are working “reasonably well” despite the pandemic and associated staffing shortages.

“Specifically for ESL teachers, we currently have one part-time position at the primary level that is vacant and one full-time position at the middle level that is vacant,” she said. “We don’t have any vacancies in high school.”

However, she said it was difficult to find people involved in translation and family outreach services, which led to these specific shortages in some schools.

To address these staffing shortages, the district has established Parent Academies for families whose first language is not English. These programs are designed to provide parents with a better understanding of how to access services such as the college application process and online education programs for their students.

“A lot of people come from different countries with different understandings of public school, and so it’s as much the language (as) the way the American education system works that we offer families,” Doyle said.

Lewis said in an email that although many families struggled during remote learning, the return to in-person learning has helped ESL teachers better reach their students.

“This partnership between schools and families has continued beyond remote learning and I am proud of our ESL team’s continued efforts to help families become essential members of their respective school communities,” said she declared.

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Senate candidate Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro wants the country’s state universities and colleges (SUCs) to strengthen their partnership with international educational institutions to expand exchange program opportunities for Filipino students.

Teodoro, a former Secretary of Defense, made the speech establishing his educational platform during his interview with DZRJ radio.

“It is important for our SUCs to partner with educational institutions around the world, especially for gap year program offerings,” Teodoro said.

“A gap year abroad is a good experience for our students to acquire skills and for their development,” he added.

Teodoro, a lawyer and senior barrister from 1989, said taking a gap year abroad will help students develop an overall mindset that could be an advantage when they join the workforce.

A gap year is a semester or full year of experiential learning typically taken between high school graduation and college enrollment. Gap years give students a break from academic studies to determine the further education and career they wish to pursue.

The former Tarlac representative said basic language skills should be reintroduced into university curricula to broaden students’ language skills and prepare them for global opportunities.

“As we promote our country as a destination for tourists and multinational companies, it is strategic that we prepare our students to think globally by exposing them to international exchange programs,” he added.

Education reform is one of Teodoro’s platforms. The UniTeam candidate for the Senate aims for quality education accessible to all, enriching the curriculum at all levels of education and providing more learning opportunities for Filipinos.

Last month, Teodoro pushed for research-based learning in higher education to improve students’ ability to do research and development.

He said the college curriculum should focus more on discussing and submitting research concepts and papers, with the exception of science and math.

Thanks to this type of learning, the search for knowledge will be integrated in the students, according to Teodoro.

“Your learning process and method will improve if you have a teaching concept based on research rather than lectures. You will develop the habit of researching and improving your skills because learning is a lifelong business,” Teodoro said.

“Inquiry-based learning helps students develop their intellectual skills and critical analysis, which are crucial abilities when entering the job market,” he added.

Amazon has named 140 U.S. colleges, including nine in Texas, where hourly employees can take classes and earn degrees as part of the company’s plan to raise the education level of its workforce.

Amazon said it would spend $1.2 billion to provide free tuition benefits to more than 300,000 employees by 2025. The largest U.S. online retailer said on Thursday it had expanded colleges where it had established a relationship for its employees.

Hourly Amazon workers in Texas can pursue bachelor’s degrees at these schools:

• Alamo College
• Austin Community College
• Dallas College
• Houston Community College
• Lonestar College
• Tarrant County Community College
• Texas State University
• University of Texas at Dallas
• University of North Texas

Eligibility for the Employee Education Program begins after 90 days of employment. Education benefits also include industry certificates, English courses, and high school graduation programs.

Amazon has more than 70,000 employees in Texas, including 37,000 employees in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to an economic impact report released last summer.

Walmart is the largest employer of hourly workers to extend tuition benefits to all employees. Traditionally, companies provided tuition allowances to salaried workers, but the burden of student debt has led large employers to rethink how tuition allowances are awarded. Other companies such as Taco Bell and Disney Co. have added such benefits.

In 2018, Walmart originally asked workers to contribute $1 a day to cover costs. Last year, Walmart said it would cover full tuition and books for its 1.5 million part-time and full-time Walmart and Sam’s Club employees in the United States.

Target followed in 2021 with a program for its hourly workers and said it would spend $200 million over the next four years.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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Two Catholic high schools on Long Island were struggling to enroll, so church leaders came up with a bold plan: turn them into a bilingual, bilingual school.

Six months after the start of the Diocese of Rockville Center’s first venture into bilingual programs, the dual-campus Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Central Islip and Deer Park is thriving, with waiting lists for some classes , including kindergarten and pre-kindergarten, school officials said.

The school receives support from Boston College and Notre Dame University, and recently hosted a visit from the Consul General of El Salvador to Long Island, who said he would report to the President of the Nation of America. central to the project.

“I have been in Catholic education for 30 years, I have worked in recruitment at high school level, and I have never seen the interest that schools arouse on the part of parents, declared Valérie Serpe, Head of Notre-Dame School. from the Guadalupe school.

Kindergarten and Kindergarten students at sister schools in Central Islip and Deer Park spend half the day studying in English and the other half in Spanish. The program will go up a level each year until the whole school is bilingual.

At the end of the 8th year, pupils should be fluent in both languages.

“We’re developing it from the bottom up,” Serpe said.

Schools have a mix of children whose parents are Latin American immigrants and whose first language is Spanish, and others whose parents are long-time residents and whose first language is English .

The schools were previously known as Our Lady of Providence in Central Islip and SS Cyril and Methodius in Deer Park.

Their turnaround is notable as the number of Catholic high schools on Long Island is shrinking amid declining enrollment — a trend made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, church officials say.

Between 2020 and 2021, the diocese closed five high schools, leaving it with 31. At its peak in the 1960s, the diocese had 92.

The Guadalupe school receives support from the Marianist Brothers, who help oversee a revitalization of Catholic high schools on Long Island. Marianists operate the highly regarded Chaminade High School in Mineola and Kellenberg High School in Uniondale.

Brother Thomas Cleary, the president of Chaminade who is also leading the revitalization effort, said it was essential to keep the two Catholic schools afloat because if they closed there would be few other options nearby for them. parents who want a Catholic education for their children.

Cleary said numerous studies have shown that children who learn a second language at an early age show improved cognitive abilities later.

The old model of learning a second language from middle school or high school is far less effective than starting at a young age, he said.

“Who wouldn’t want to learn a second language in the early years instead of the traditional methods of studying it later?” he said.

Schools accept children of all religions, although around three-quarters of their 400 students are Catholic. Tuition is approximately $6,000 per year and includes before and after school care from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Both Boston College and Notre Dame offer support through regular training, access to research, advice on how to attract students, and visits to other bilingual schools.

There are at least 2,000 bilingual schools or programs in the United States, including about 100 in Catholic institutions, said Elena Sada, head of the Two-Way Immersion Network of Catholic Schools at Boston College.

The programs cover 18 languages, including Portuguese, Mandarin, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Native American and Russian.

Parents from Central Islip and Deer Park schools said they had a variety of reasons for enrolling.

Blanca Umanzor, an immigrant from El Salvador who lives in Central Islip, said she was worried her 4-year-old son, Matthew, knows almost no Spanish since the family speaks mostly English at home.

Now he speaks Spanish regularly and comes home from school asking him how to say certain things in Spanish.

Sandiya Quackenbush, whose mother tongue is English, said it was essential for her 5-year-old daughter, Amiyah, to become bilingual.

Amiyah was in a Spanish immersion preschool, and when Quackenbush heard about the new school in Central Islip, she enrolled immediately.

“It was a no-brainer,” she said.

Berlyne Roche, a Haitian who lives in Brentwood, wants her 5-year-old son, Cedrick, to become trilingual. He already speaks Haitian Creole and English.

With the booming Latino population on Long Island, “I think in the future it will give him a lot of opportunities” if he speaks Spanish, she said.

Serpe said the school’s goal was to train bilingual students and build bridges between different ethnic groups.

Henry Paul Salgado, El Salvador’s consul general for the region, said he was impressed during his visit last month.

“You see the cultures reflected, where there is no difference between whites, Hispanics and blacks,” he said in Spanish. “It’s very important because we are in a globalized world.”

Besides teaching languages, schools show children “how to live in peace”, he said.

PINE VALLEY — In rural school districts like Mountain Empire in San Diego County, COVID is hitting especially hard.

A triple whammy of pandemic-related issues — insufficient staff, frequent absentee students, lack of reliable internet — has hit virtually every school, but its impact is compounded in rural schools by the distance and isolation they face. clean.

Just ask Mountain Empire Superintendent Patrick Keeley. For two months this winter, he was named principal and vice-principal of the only high school in his district. This is because the principal and deputy principal were recruited from schools in large cities.

It’s hard for him to find new employees, he says, not just because of COVID, but because he has to convince job applicants that it’s worth driving 30 miles or more a day in the hills to work in their schools.

“When you talk about rural education inequities, we don’t have the resources,” Keeley said. “I really think rural education has been affected, and it regularly is, by larger events, whether it’s COVID, recessions, any of those things.”

The state recently reported that 35% of Mountain Empire students were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year. This is worse than the 22% who were chronically absent two years earlier. This is an increase largely related to COVID.

Many schools saw higher than usual absences last year, when school sometimes meant logging onto a computer at home, rather than coming to a campus. But even when school doors have reopened, some rural schools are still struggling.

” Let’s be realistic ; this has been difficult for all schools in California, but… these rural schools have very complex transportation, connectivity and staffing issues. It’s very, very difficult,” said Tim Taylor, executive director of California’s Small School Districts’ Association.

Mountain Empire already had attendance issues before COVID. It is a sprawling 660 square mile district, with seven schools serving 1,700 students. The eastern side of the district borders the Imperial County deserts and its southern side borders Mexico.

It has eight bus drivers – two less than the district needs – and 10 van drivers who transport the 90% of students who rely on buses to get to school.

Mountain Empire students are diverse – they live on farms, trailer parks, housing estates, and three Indian reservations served by the district. Some families have moved here for the open spaces and quiet; others have moved here because they cannot afford to live in the city or in the suburbs down the hill.

Many Mountain Empire students have high needs. Three in five come from low-income families and about one in three is learning English.

But many of the reasons for their absences were beyond the control of students and schools.

Chief among them last school year was the lack of reliable internet. Students were supposed to learn online, but there are gaps in data coverage across the district, and some areas are only served by small data providers.

County school officials offered Verizon Internet hotspots for school districts to give to students who did not have Internet access.

But in Mountain Empire, due to topography, Verizon only works along major roads, so the district has purchased its own AT&T hotspots, costing the district about four times as much per student, said Keeley. But even AT&T doesn’t cover all parts of the district.

In October 2020, Mountain Empire reopened its school campuses for part-time in-person instruction, but it has struggled to stay open consistently.

The following month, the district closed for two weeks as it had to quarantine nearly all of its transportation service due to COVID cases. This was a problem because the vast majority of students depend on buses to get to school.

The district returned to distance learning and had planned to reopen after the Thanksgiving break. But four days of high winds and power outages forced the district to remain closed, Keeley said.

Mountain Empire has returned to remote learning whenever it has had to shut down unexpectedly, Keeley said. Each time, however, it risked having students absent due to connectivity issues, he said.

Not only was it difficult to get children to school, but it was difficult to find enough adults.

Job applicants declined interviews the district attempted to arrange once the applicants realized how far away the Mountain Empire schools were.

Keeley can’t offer to pay employees as well as large school districts. This is partly because 7% of the district’s budget, or about $2 million, automatically goes to bus transportation.

Most school districts charge parents for the bus, but Mountain Empire doesn’t because many of its students come from low-income families, Keeley said.

This means Keeley has less money to pay his staff. The starting salary for teachers at Mountain Empire is $47,377, which is $3,400 less than what San Diego Unified offers. Mountain Empire only pays substitute teachers $150 a day, compared to $250 for San Diego Unified.

Mountain Empire has approximately nine substitute teachers for the entire district of 110 educators. Keeley ideally wants at least 20 to 25.

“It’s always been a challenge here with the subs, but this is unreal,” he said of the pandemic.

It’s not just about new employees; the district lost other opportunities to larger districts, Keeley said.

Earlier this year, Keeley hoped to strike a deal with an organization that would offer after-school and summer programs. But the organization said it would not be able to work with Mountain Empire because it had a bigger deal with a larger school district.

Amid the disruption, Mountain Empire students’ performance on standardized tests plummeted last year.

About 71% of its students failed to meet state standards in English and 85% failed in math. That’s worse than in the 2018-19 school year, when 63% failed to meet English standards and 76% failed in math.

To improve academics, Keeley said the district is focusing on reading in the early grades by staffing each elementary school with a literacy specialist.

“I wouldn’t call it learning loss. It’s just that we need to create interventions to close the gaps and catch up with students,” said Mona Noren, principal of Campo Elementary School in Mountain Empire.

Despite the challenges, says Keeley, her students are resilient. After all, many get up early and walk out into the cold to catch the 6 a.m. bus and make the hour-long trip to school.

And every weekday morning, Keeley drives more than 30 miles from her home in Santee to Mountain Empire. He grew up here and went to school here and speaks fondly of the neighborhood.

It describes how, in the fall, families gather to watch Friday night football at the high school stadium, which is framed by a wide backdrop of mountains and open skies. Families here trust principals and teachers, he said, because they’ve been in the community for decades.

“This school meant a lot to me when I was a kid, this district did that,” Keeley said. “So to try to come back, to try to be a part of it, to help improve and help improve the lives of the kids here in any way we can, is pretty important.”

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. (KFVS) – What was once a school club is now a class at Poplar Bluff High School and it’s showing signs of growing even more.

Students learning American Sign Language use their skills outside of the classroom.

“They love it, it went really well,” said ASL teacher Audrey Harris.

The American Sign Language class is in its first year and teacher Audrey Harris said it was a rewarding class to teach.

She gets along badly herself.

“I also have several friends who are also deaf and hard of hearing and those experiences give me this passion to just be able to give them a way to communicate,” Harris said.

Now her students are using what they learned in their work outside of school.

“Those who have had experiences… there’s a couple here, they feel like they’ve seen the joy of deaf culture in their lives and someone can actually connect with them and help them,” said she declared.

Christian Redden experiences this in his film work.

“It’s very basic, it’s not all the time, it’s once in a while, but most of the time I can get through the conversation and get them to the movie they want to be at,” said Redden.

Some students like Lynn Thurner want to make a career out of it.

“Now that I’m in this class, I’m doing it so I have a goal for the future. I want to be a performer, I want to be able to communicate with others, I want to work with others all the time,” Thurner said.

“It never occurred to me that it would become as big as it did and it would have the impact it has,” Harris said.

Harris said administrators may create a second-tier ASL class because of its popularity.

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