Yesterday I had my English class with my deaf students.  After the class was over, I talked with Karla, the interpreter, about the class.  I told her that the deaf students are picking things up faster than the other class.  When the class was over, some of my students were still trying to work on the worksheet that I had given them.  They wanted to continue to practice and seemed very eager to learn more.  When I talked to Karla about it, she said that when they were in school, they couldn't learn English with the other kids because of their disability.  They are also taking computer courses at ALPI and the programs that they work on in those classes are all in English so it's important for them to learn English.

Now more than ever I'm realizing how much of a difference I can really make.  Working with these students has really opened my eyes to the challenges that people with disabilities face.  I have enjoyed this experience so much and I have only been teaching them for three weeks.  I am considering specializing in teaching English to deaf students and students with other disabilities.

I'm really enjoying teaching my English classes.  Susanna (one of the education coordinators), Agustina (one of the secretaries) and myself are taking a signing class with one of the interpreters from ALPI.  Last week we had a class on Monday after my English class got out.  We were going to have signing class on Mondays and Wednesdays for half an hour after my English class but it's been changed to just Mondays for an hour.  When we met with Karla the interpreter, she told me to bring the vocabulary that I was teaching to my students.  As of now, I can say days of the week, seasons, man, woman, boy, girl, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, the colors, some emotions/adjectives, ser (to be) signs depend on the situation, and then estar (to be) has one sign.  

Last week in class, my deaf students told me that they have a unique sign for each of their names so they don't have to sign the whole name using the alphabet.  My other class is doing very well and they are progressing very quickly.  We have done a bunch of present tense verbs such as to go, to talk, to walk, to dance, to say, to do/make (hacer).  They understand using an auxiliary verb in the negative as well. This past Thursday we looked at people's personalities and the words associated with personalities.  I gave my students a worksheet and we went through the words one by one so that they understood what they meant and then we did an activity where they had to write whether the personality trait was good or bad and put them in a chart.  After they were finished, we talked about their answers.  

 This has been really good practice for me and I look forward to the rest of the class that I have with them.  There is the possibility that we might be starting a third class on Fridays but I haven't heard a lot about that in awhile so I have to talk to Graciela about that today.