Research into Practice: ‘Cuse ASL
In mid February 2012, I founded ‘Cuse ASL Club with an enthusiastic co-organizer, Corinne Sartori, a Hard-of-Hearing iSchool freshman. I can now say that I’ve happily passed the torch over to Corinne to lead the club as I prepare to finish off my graduate program. Milestones though, there were several:
- Club launch poster I created with Corinne as model. I was in a hurry and needed someone to help realize my poster concept and Corinne was perfect! She signed “love it” – so apt for an intriguing poster! Corinne does such a great job creating our Event posts on Facebook, you should check them out.
- Creating our Tumblr blog http://cuse-asl.tumblr.com/ and having our own Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CuseASL
- Finally being able to locate students in SU who signed and were looking for sign partners :)
- Katelyn, our own member, teaching us to sign an English song, “Follow Me”. It was really fun as we tried to figure out which signs were most conceptually accurate.
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| Katelyn Tamargo teaching members how to sign a song. |
- Going to Chipotle for a club meeting and turning patron heads with our dancing hands!
- Antonio, Elaine, Jack, John V, Carlton, Chuck and other members of the local Deaf community who came to our meetings and taught us to sign! I made many new friends through ‘Cuse ASL.
- Spreading the news about a great TV series “Switched at Birth” that had hearing and Deaf actors and getting a few members hooked! :)
- We were featured in the May/June 2012 Siracusa, a publication of the local Deaf community.
Founding ‘Cuse ASL brought sunshine (and parallel challenges, of course) into my graduate life in Syracuse. Being able to translate my current research study into practice: bringing different communities together in a shared — what they call “third” space/hybrid space — to learn from one another; wracking our brains to create weekly programs to do so, these were all immensely rewarding to me. I will miss all these when I leave. May ‘Cuse ASL continue to flourish!
