My motivations and connections to this inquiry topic stem from my sister's experiences as a teacher. She had a student whose parent is deaf, and when she learned about this, we both wanted to learn more about sign language. American Sign Language was what her student's parent used to communicate to her child. My sister and I had conversations about the different ways the deaf community could understand others. For instance, reading lips is a method for deaf people to understand what is being said to them. However, this kind of dialogue felt one-sided in the sense that only one person was "communicating". They also communicated by writing on a piece of paper and passing the paper to one another, but again, that seemed to be the parent making the greater effort to communicate rather than the conversation being an equal effort. Shortly after, my sister and I tried learning a little bit about American Sign Language so that she could communicate to the parent in a language they knew. Very much like how my family and I enjoy hearing people speak to us in Filipino, there is a greater sense of community when people try to learn each other's primary language. In our teacher education program, we've been learning about how to foster a more inclusive environment, and I have rarely heard about the deaf community and how they are supported in the school environment. I think they are a community whose ideas and thoughts are not commonly recognized, so I want to bring light to their experiences and learn more about whether or not the deaf community is supported in the school environment.
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