Sunday, October 19, 2014

"My thoughts about Paul and Tina and the ASL song project/assignment" - Federico A. Quintana, M.Ed.





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

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