Week 11: El Fin

And it’s the last and final week of my senior project. Wow. Time has flown, and not with small bird wings, but with the wings of an airplane speeding at 600 mph. This senior project, especially this past week, has been an airplane flying through turbulence. There have been ups and downs, times I thought I would crash, and the end has definitely been bittersweet. I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity to work with the children. Theo, Veronica, Mena, Lawserian, Sophia, Maxine, and so many more. It’s been an absolute honor to have been able to make an impact on their lives and watch them grow and laugh and play these past few months. I definitely will miss them, but I hope to see them again.

The end of my project not only signifies leaving the children and the centers, but also means I must declare my answer. The answer to my research question. And my answer is that I don’t have an answer. Beginning my project, I thought I’d be able to definitely choose total communication or no total communication. However, now at the end, I’ve realized I can’t. As I explained in my previous blog post, 3 months is an extremely short period of time with regards to language learning and growth. I would need years to even be close to giving an answer of whether learning ASL helps cochlear-implanted deaf children with their acquisition of English. While I can’t give the end-all answer, I can provide my thoughts. I personally believe learning ASL while learning English can benefit all children, regardless of hearing loss. From the connection in the Broca’s area to the flowing nature of signing to just having fun, learning ASL can bring about better communication in regards to coherency and vocabulary. The amount of exposure and usage of ASL completely depends on the child. If the child has special needs or is cochlear-implanted and therefore may be behind in language skills, total communication and ASL provide an alternative way of communication which may be easier on the child. As for hearing children without any specific needs, ASL, if anything, is just another language to learn, and being multilingual is an extremely valuable skill. It exposes the child to a different culture/world and can even help teach the child to always make eye contact. So, in the simplest terms, my answer is this: I don’t know, but I believe learning ASL is the way to go.

As a whole, the senior project has been an amazing experience and one that has greatly impacted me. It has given me the opportunity to pursue my passions and a research question from start to finish. Working with these children who I have grown incredibly close to, I have learned that I can change the world for the better in any field or sphere. Before the senior project, I was extremely unsure of what I wanted to do, in college and in life. While I am still open to exploration of different fields and subjects, the senior project has strengthened and clarified my love for education, working with children, and languages/linguistics.

Before I close off, I would like to give a few thanks. Thank you Mr. Vermouth, my BASIS faculty advisor, who has supported my project the entire way and given me the guidance I needed. Thank you Ms. Belcher for organizing the senior projects and being an incredible research resource. Thank you to my dad for driving two hours to Berkeley every Tuesday with me. Thank you to the teachers/therapists at the centers, Vinona, Melissa, and Joni, whom I have learned a great deal about linguistics and speech therapy from. Thank you to my on-site internship advisors, Lexi and Anna, for providing me with this opportunity. And, lastly, thank you to the amazing children I worked with who have forever impacted my life and become my little brothers and sisters.