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ASL dual immersion program offers second graders a new experience at Eastern Greene Elementary
Larry Leonard is in his 17th year of teaching with the Eastern Greene School District. This school year, after being approached with the idea by Superintendent Ted Baechtold, Leonard added a new twist to his teaching. His second-grade class at Eastern Greene Elementary spends each morning learning the same way millions of other second graders do.
In the afternoon, however, things get different.
Leonard and his class spend every afternoon learning, but they do it in almost total silence. Leonard "turns off his voice" in the afternoons, and teaches his students in American Sign Language. Leonard has been ASL-certified for some time, and adding the language to his class curriculum fell into place with the current school year.
The idea for the project came to Leonard through Eastern Greene Superintendent Ted Baechtold, who learned of a grant made available from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) to establish a dual immersion classroom -- a class in which instruction is done in two different languages at an equal rate -- and shared the information with Leonard, as well as Eastern Schools principal Sharon Abts.
"Working with second grade standards through a second language drives students to a deeper engagement and deeper understanding," said Abts. "They have to think about the subject content and how to communicate their ideas in a new language at the same time. An observer can see the children's brains working and expanding as they engage in academic tasks using ASL."
"We thought an application for ASL would be very unique and offer us the great opportunity to provide our elementary kids with exposure to another language besides English, and would be usable with other students in our buildings," said Baechtold of the program's beginnings. "My motivation for an ASL classroom was to offer our students the opportunity to learn a new language, and also to experience life as others do." The school applied for the grant, but at the time, the teaching assignments for the year had already been set, and the terms of the grant would not have allowed them to start the instruction with the current year. The school did not get the grant, but had done much work in preparation for teaching ASL, and it was decided they would move ahead with the project without the grant.
Parents and students were made aware of the project, and the response was very positive from both.
Leonard teaches calendar math and science in ASL, as well as basic conversational skills, and visiting the class during a lesson is initially a strange experience.
Unlike a typical elementary school class, there is almost complete silence in the classroom, with all words being signed rather than spoken. Leonard gets the attention of the class just like he would if the students were all deaf, by flicking the lights on and off, waving his hands or stomping his foot so the kids can feel the vibration as their signal, just as the hearing-impaired would. Even several vigorous rounds of the card game "go fish" were played in silence, with the kids signing, rather than speaking, the numbers and colors.
The students learn as they go, with total immersion in ASL from their first day of class. Some of the kids said it was "Weird at first, but it gets more fun and easier," and all of them had a favorite thing about ASL in the class.
Leonard recalls the first day of class, starting the kids out by motioning to a table and making the sign for "table," as the class followed along. Then he held up a cup, and made the sign for "cup." Some kids caught on right away, while others continued making the sign for "table," until Leonard repeated the steps, and eventually the class caught on. They moved on from there, and can now tell stories and sign along with songs. and converse with one another with apparent ease.
One student, Kayannah Murphy, started class after Christmas, and said, "I felt nervous at first. I wanted to learn, though."
She said after her first day of class, she went home and taught her mother the signs for "math" and "science," and said she wants to continue learning ASL.
"I definitely want to keep going with it, someday I want to be an ASL teacher."
Leonard and his class have appeared on "The Friday Zone," a half-hour educational program airing on public television stations across Indiana every Friday. His class is featured in episode 1622, "Good Learnin'," and can be viewed on YouTube. In the segment, Leonard and the show's hosts perform science experiments using ASL, and the class is interviewed.
Other videos are available to view on Leonard's teacher page on Eastern Greene Schools website, showing the class during ASL lessons in science and math.
As to the future of the ASL program at Eastern Greene Schools, Superintendent Baechtold says he wants the program to continue, the only issue being that there is only one Mr. Leonard.
"We don't know for sure yet what our teaching demands will be next year, but it is my intention to let Mr. Leonard continue to teach his class as a dual immersion program. It would be great at some point if we could offer ASL to more kids," Baechtold said.
As Greene County's only school known to offer such a program, Eastern Greene Elementary's success could bode well for the future of ASL as a second language, and its availability to more children