Here is my thought for the day. Viewers’ disclaimer: It
may contain some hiccups of intellectual satires by ASL MacGyver. This may be
reassuring and enlightening message, coming from native Deaf & ASL teacher,
to the some hearing viewers who are unable to express their art of songs in ASL
form because of ongoing heated cultural controversial by certain groups of deaf
people.
All of the sudden! So… Paul and Tina, the
infamous couples merrily did the signing & singing while driving had become
a "Bonnie and Clyde" of the Deaf Culture at this century? Give me a break and them too. Tell this to
the general surgeon to advise all deafies that YouTube.com may have some
harmful mental side effects by opening their portal abyss of pointless enraged
discussions. I taught my ASL students to enjoy the ASL song interpretation for
class projects, personal enrichment and NOW this....
My students brought a series of complicated questions
about the over-sensitivity of cultural issues, like “why can’t white people rappin’
?“ That I don't even care or bother to
deal with because my students have to finish the assignment with the significant
educational and rational benefits on TIME! This is what "Empowering the
learning ownership in every student about the culture and language" in
accord with 5 C's standard under American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages
is all about giving learners an opportunity to play with the learned language
to find their form of self-expression in an artistically way. It is no different from hearing artists whose fine
tuning their replicated songs inspired by the originals. FYI it is no secret that
plenty of us deafies who sing and signing our favorite “copyrighted” lyrics by
ourselves while playing with a rubber duck… Don’t let social media be one of
stressor that unnecessarily put strains on your fragile health.
Myself as an ASL teacher, the Paul and Tina thingy, I am
still having a trouble comprehending to my own kind, the deafies, their
frustrations and I decided to do some digging into this issue on my own to see
the final verdict in professional educator’s viewpoint. We, as school teachers, plan the lesson plans
and our first step to design the content, any instructional materials/activities/information
that are aligned with learning
goals/objectives based on the state mandated standards to deliver the instructional content to all learners
accordingly by the law.
In accord to ACTFL, the Five Standards-based world
languages education for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (1999),
known as "The Five Cs." These standards describe the "what"
(content) of world languages learning and form the core of standards-based
instruction in the world languages classroom. As I will interpret the 5 C’s
standards in Layman’s terms in order to help general viewers to understand why
we shouldn’t fuss over this Paul and Tina and basically they haven’t committed
any cultural crimes. They may be found guilty for infringement of copyrighted
materials by hearing people’s law.
Communication
The communication standard
stresses the use of language for communication in "real life"
situations. It emphasizes "what students can do with language" rather
than "what they know about language." Students are asked to
communicate in oral and written form, interpret oral and written messages, and
show cultural understanding when they communicate and present oral and written
information to various audiences for a variety of purposes.- You’re just at the beginning
point of my whole argument.
Cultures
Cultural understanding is an
important part of world languages education. Experiencing other cultures
develops a better understanding and appreciation of the relationship between
languages and other cultures, as well as the student's native culture. Students
become better able to understand other people's points of view, ways of life,
and contributions to the world. - - The art form of music is a great median of portal between two different cultures. It connects everything and you will gain a new insight about the "connection" to learn the culture and languages in next passage.
Connections
World languages instruction must
be connected with other subject areas. Content from other subject areas is
integrated with world language instruction through lessons that are developed
around common themes.- Paula and Tina
would make a great ASL ads about driving safety, undeniably I found myself sort of entertained
watching them, and more role of MALE ASL
students NEEDED.
Comparisons
-Students are encouraged to
compare and contrast languages and cultures. They discover patterns, make
predictions, and analyze similarities and differences across languages and
cultures. Students often come to understand their native language and culture better
through such comparisons. This is why an
ASL song project is well-known ASL teaching practices taught by all of us, ASL
teachers, and it is always one of our favorite
assignment/activity. It is fun and BENEFITICAL for learning practices! Which Tina or Paul makes a better ASL
performance and discuss ! Any thoughts on gender differences ?
Communities
-Extending learning experiences
from the world language classroom to the home and multilingual and
multicultural community emphasizes living in a global society. Activities may
include: field trips, use of e-mail and the World Wide Web, clubs, exchange
programs and cultural activities, school-to-work opportunities, and
opportunities to hear speakers of other languages in the school and classroom- So should we tell students to stay away
from youtube, internet to look up for their favorite English version song lyric
to interpet into ASL song version , and disallowing them to show off their digital
work samples to their parents & friends ?ASL language itself are evolving over-time, thanks to Sean Forbes and among other deaf artists for the great inspiration that the music isn't only be heard and it also can be seen ! LIVE LONG ART ! .
How do we ensure to provide the every opportunity for all learners
to explore all the 5 required C’s from above into our ASL classrooms? The
classrooms cannot be learned without students’ presence, their active participation and engagement
into learning about the deaf culture and ASL by navigating through the 5 C’s with a
teacher’s guidance. The first thing on
our mind should be “Creating a risk-free learning environment” in our ASL
classroom for our students to be able to play, practice and getting proficient
with the learned language.
By creating the ideal classroom for our ASL students to
work on the ASL song projects. It’s been known that ASL song project are fun to
do but it requires certain tasks of mental and physical work by both of teachers and students to achieve the learning outcomes, it is a high
learning curved activity, and an access
to resources to deliver the student’s final product. Before I justify my support for the case.
There are countless of educational research journals and publications claimed
the evidence of empowering the students’ responsibility to learn the skills and
gain understanding the cultural differences. The fastest way is to empower
students is to make their work matter in the real world.
Try service learning
or project-based learning which the ASL song project is ideal assignment. By
creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can
help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are
still students. The beauty of it, ASL
Song project is the one of most effective teaching strategy to get students engaged into learning an unique visual language
that hits on all the 5 C’s at once.
***UPDATE****
My response from FB group discussion (ASL instructors) to clarify my professional intentions:
#1 - I see it bit differently myself as I will provide some
of insights after I understand everyone's roles here focusing on
"Profiting". I didn't mention any word regarding to making a profit
or marketing related in my blog and it is mainly about the cultural paradox with project assignment itself had brought questions by my students... Shifting the focus of discussion- ASL
song project fun fun fun but for profit bad bad bad... That's the seed of idea
where hearing students may get from us.
# 2- No hard feeling here, it is all about reflecting on
specific assignment that got stuck with the current issue with Tina and Paul.
and I would like to remain my own code of ethic as a teacher (not an
interpreter) assigning the ASL song interpretation that may lead to repeat
future incidents with another aspiring new couples ! The idea of cycle can be
fierce. Since everything we teach are being politically corrected by which
certain group of deaf people ? There are diversity types of deaf artist and
performers and most of their ASL performance were based on English lyric which
they made it to visually interpretation as the way you guys just described following by ASL grammar orders.
Again, a new question raised, it is ok for deaf people to profit off the
hearing songs' lyric to interpret it into ASL ? That's line of politically
correction I am willing to tip in for sake of future ASL pedagogy.
– ASL MacGyver
