Signing their way into NHS

Noblesville High School has over 28 clubs, one of which is the newly introduced American Sign Language Club or ASL. This club’s purpose is for students to teach other students sign language to broaden their perspective and understanding of the world.
Countries all over the world such as Canada, the United States, Chad, China etc. use ASL for communication with the deaf community. “ASL is an American language, so the thought of not being able to talk to people in my own country is awful, but with knowing the language, there is no barrier.” co-creator sophomore Taylor Burns said. Burns is just one of the leaders of ASL. Other leaders such as junior Amber Garrett, freshman Alec Leflors and sophomore Jake Jordan. When the group of friends and Burns started the club here at NHS they had a sole purpose for it. “We wanted people to share the same love for language as us, and for people to be able to talk to anyone.” This is the key goal that the ASL Club has for its members.
Some of the people at NHS, such as Garrett and Leflors, and sophomore Tara Douglas have special reasons for joining the club. They are known as Children Of Deaf Adults, or CODAs, in the signing world. These students have at least one deaf parent in their home. “My mom is deaf so I thought I could get more experience in the deaf world and learn a little bit more about it,” said sophomore Douglas, a CODA herself, explaining why she joined the club. There are several other students in the club who learned sign language to better communicate with a loved one in their family.
The ASL Club has been quite successful in the eyes of its members. Burns says that when he started the club, he was concerned about how the turnout would be, but instead, he was surprised at the results. “We were concerned that people wouldn’t care about it, and only come to get out of AL, but we have a group of about 20 people who are genuinely interested.” This number reached and went higher than expected for the ASL members showing just how many students want to be able to communicate with others in their community. In ASL, they not only learn signs but also to do other activities around the signs. “It’s not like you are just learning from a book, they show you the signs and you play a game over it,” said Douglas when explaining why she liked the club. In the future, both Taylor Burns and Tara Douglas agree that they want club members to be able to communicate with not only students inside NHS, and around the school, but also gain experiences for the outside world through the ALS club.