Assignment 5b-Human7

Assignment 5b

Sierra Baxter –
I learned to think about the hospital situation where Sam dies of cardiac arrest differently. Seirra brings up a good point that maybe the hospital was trying to help the family any extra grief by not allowing them to use family as ASL interpreters. I did not think about that I mostly thought of the fact that they lost his father and then seemed uncooperative with the family and the family did not get to say goodbye to Sam. I think that I would be very sad if I was unable to have closure with my dying family members. I know that this was not done on purpose but it is sad to imagine what that must have felt like for Oscar.

Anthony Frye-
What I learned from Anthony was that Leah Cohen the author did not really have a chance to get really close to her grandfather because of the stigma behind ASL. How sad is that? I did not think about her writing about not being able to read any of his writings and mentioning his false teeth in a container as all she had left of her grandfather. I think that ASL has come a long way but definitely this book has made me aware of the struggles it has gone through to get here. Not being able to be close to someone because of a language barrier is difficult especially since you have wanted to learn your whole life as Leah had.


Elisabeth Laxton-
Liz wrote a great intro to her essay of a deaf student who goes to a convenience store and tries to buy some gum only to have the clerk get angry for not understanding what they were saying and then leaving embarrassed because they were kicked out of the store. I also learned to reconsider the fact that James had to take the Regents Competency Test. It is like taking a test in a different language than you use every day. Why is the test not in ASL? I wonder what changes will take place with the placement of college students if they do not have enough people pass this test. I think they would have to restructure it or schools will have to add more classes in English reading and composition for this test to work. It seems that until the deaf community and the hearing community start to work together more many of these students will get left behind and miss out on opportunities that hearing people take for granted.