We had fun games that everyone could enjoy with themselves. To break the communication barriers, we gave papers and pen to those who don’t know ASL. This has enabled hearing and deaf to communicate by writing. This is what I usually do to communicate my friends and my coworkers who don’t know ASL. This way of communication has always been useful to me. In fact, I prefer communicating via note writing than communicating through interpreters when I am socializing with hearing people.
We “event facilitators”, typed on the computer with projector, so all people could see what we were typing. We put all the instructions of the games on the PowerPoint so that everyone could read it. I told people that to have a fair communication, I will not sign or voice. Instead I would type everything on the board and let everyone read it. This was so interesting, because we had many hearing students who did not know ASL. No one felt left behind in the game unlike what happens most of the time when deaf and hearing people are in an event together. It was great learning environment and everyone seemed enjoying being there. I was impressed how effective was to use this kind of communication.
One important thing that I learned tonight is that people just need encouragement to break the communication barriers between deaf and hearing. In fact, hearing and deafness cannot be a factor to separate our community unless we want it to be so, specially at RIT which has a huge diversity students,. We should not let having a communication barriers stop us from socializing as community. We are hoping to do more of this event in the campus. I hope a lot of deaf and hearing students in other colleges across the country could do too. This is best way to educate people about sign language and the importance of the community integration.
Your event sounds like it was fun. We should have such events here in Bakersfield. The only thing we have that I know about is a deaf softball team. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou should try this event. It is fun and educating one :)
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see events like this happening. Too many people let a language barrier stop them form participating in anything. It is sad that such a small community, like the deaf, had to spearhead activities like this. I think every college should have events like this and hopefully it will spread to the rest of the hearing and deaf communities.
ReplyDeleteShelly,
DeleteI agree with you. This event is facilitated by a hearing and a deaf(me) students. Our main goal is to break the communication barriers that blocks our community integration. I hope other colleges would do activities like this. It would be educating a lot of people.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteYour Mix and Mingle event sounds great and a lot of fun. You should be very proud of yourself for helping to coordinate such an event! I am an ASL student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Your Mix and Mingle event would be very beneficial to the students of UWM. It would be extremely beneficail to the public though, to teach those in the community that communication is very possible if you're willing to work at it a bit.
There are too many people out there that are prejudice against the deaf community, some of them because they have never been told or taught any different.
Sara
ReplyDeleteThank you for the nice comment. Yes we are going to try to reach other colleges. Hopefully we will be able reach many colleges in the near future. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to talk to me how we can reach to UWM.
thank you
Wow. What a great idea that you had. I'm glad you had a good turnout too.
ReplyDelete