Erica Ebel

Service-Learning with OSU

Spring 2023

Self Introduction

community partner info

goals

Learning Goals

Improve my ASL skills and learn new ASL vocabulary
Learn about Deaf culture in a way not possible inside of the classroom
Learn more about systematic issues in a real-life setting.
How to use my privilege in these types of setting.
One of the first days of class, Krisin told us "you don't know what you don't know." I want to learn more about what I do not know.

Service Goals

How to best support the Deaf community in professional settings.
Learn (more about) the boundry between being an ally and overstepping boundries.
Work and build relationships with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing
How to properly communicate with people from different communication modalities

Why did I take this class?

I love my ASL minor and all of my ASL classes, but I wanted more "real-life" expierience using sign. In my ASL 1103 class, I remember Marla telling us we would never become fluent or become more comfortbale with ASL without getting out into the Deaf community. I was looking for this expierience.

Services activites and expieriences

What were my Responsibilities?

My responsibilities were doing whatever I could throughout the course of the semester to make my teacher's life easier. In the contained classroom, I often had my own station the students would go to during station time. I would help support students in various math topics such as adding money, multiplication cards, and place value work.

I also had the oppurtunity to play a variety of games and activities with the students throughout the course of the semester. This helped grow my relationship with the students, gave them the oppurtunity to ask about college/OSU, and gave me the oppurtunity to grow my communication skills/ability to explain topics visually.

Multiplication Cards

On one of my first days at Dominion, I did multiplicaton cards as a station with the students. During this time, I had to figure out how they prefered to communicate (orally, through sign, or SimCom), and their ability level with multiplication. I started out with easier facts first, such as 2 x1 and 3x2, and chose which other facts to do with them from there.

I also had to figure out how to best explain what 2 times 4 means, giving context. I would say and sign, "think 4, two times" and physically show four fingers on both of hands to show what the multiplication means. This helped me grow by learning how to explain topics more visually while helping the students practie multiplication.

Cirlce time

The teacher starts everyday by doing circle time. The thing I find most interesting about circle time is that it's one of the only times the teacher actually signs instead of using SimCom. For example, half the students are completely oral and half the students utilize sign. When the students who are completely oral tell the other students their anwer, the teacher acts as a translater and signs what the student is saying. Although from the outside it may look accessible from the outside, the information is not completely accessible to the students. She has told me multiple times she is not certified to be an interpreter, and sometimes role-shifting and facial expressions are missed when she is signing for the students.

adding money

In small groups, I worked with the students with adding money. I would start by writing on a whiteboard the three numbers and SimCom, "where should we start." After one student answered, I would ask the next student "now what should we do?"

This challenged my ability to communicate accessibly. Students who were completely oral and students who only signed were in a group together, and I had to make sure I was communicating with both groups effectively, while making sure the students who utilized sign had access to what the oral students were saying.

Bead seperation

Although small, this task ensured we finished the lesson on time. The teacher did a fraction worksheet where 1/4 beads had to be one color, 1/2 beads had to be a different color, ect. While she was explaining the worksheet, I put different colored beads into different piles. This made sure the teacher was spending her time teaching engaged with the students, and also made sure the students were engaged in the lesson instead of digging for beads.

ABC GAME

The ABC game is a game where each person goes in a cirlce and signs a sign with the handshape of whatever letter is theirs. For example, A is "attitude" because it uses the A handshape. B is "brown" because it uses the B handshape and so on.

The thing I found most interesting about playing this game with the students is that they did not completely understand what a handshape was. When we got to the letter "E" the student signed elephant. The teacher then had to explain why this was incorrect, because elephant is signed with a "B" handshape. I then thought about how the students do not have an ASL class the way I had English classes growing up, and how that must be difficult.

Timeline support

During our stations, I helped students complete a timeline worksheet. If students got stuck, I would ask "tenth, thousands, hundreths which?" and point to their place value notes.

During this activity, I worked with one of the girls who is Deaf and autistic, and utilizes sign to communicate.

place value support

I did a place value worksheet with the students during group work. As shown, the worksheet would have the word form of numebrs such as "nine and eighty-eight hundreths" and the students were required to write the number form of the words written.

In order to make this more visual, we used a table similar to what's shown for support. If the students were stuck, I'd ask "hundreths, where?" and point to the table. I think this helped me grow with my ability to explain topics visually.

potential and kinetic energy presentation

During the science period, my teacher had me present this potential and kinetic energy presentation to the students. I would first sign what the object was ("Apple"), then I would explain the photo (Food waiting, eat not yet). I would then call on the student to have them tell me whether the example was kinetic or potential. This was a good expierience because I was required to give more context to the what I was signing, similar to what we learned in class. The thing I did not like about this activity is I did not feel like I had a good enough understanding of Kinetic and Potential energy to explain it to the students. I communicated this to the teacher I was working with and she supplemented my explanations where they were not detailed enough. This helped grow my relationship with the students by actively engaging with them in the activity as well as my teacher by explaining my emotions to her.

spoons

I went to the school because Deaf Teen Quest works with the students on Fridays and my teacher thought it would be a good experience for me to go. When I arrived, the volunteers from Deaf Teen Quest got the students together at a table and explained the game of spoons. We then played the game of spoons. This was fun because I got to chat with some of the students. During 8th period, I hung out with the students in 7th and 8thgrade while they played the game with Deaf Teen Quest. The woman I was with let me explain the game in sign. All of the students made fun of the way I signed, and laughed every time I tried to explain the game. One student even signed to the woman I was with “she signs funny.” I let the woman explain the rest of the game and played with them until I went home.

I was suprised by this expierience because in many classes we've learned about how patient D/deaf people are with people who are learning sign. Then, when I took a step back, I realized they were still a group of 11-13 year olds and the way I acted when I was that age.

Chatting with students

Another fun part of my service expierience was chatting with the students during their sensory breaks. One girl would always ask me about OSU and college and tell me what she wanted to be when she grew up. One day, one of the students showed me how to do a magic trick. I liked being able to talk about my college expierience and answer any questions they had. This was also helping me grow because I was improving my ASL skills my chatting with the students.

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