Micromentary Reflection.

For this term, our school focused on the deaf community and culture, we also spent 3 weeks learning ASL (American sign language). Thanks to Lexicon Handmade,an organization that focuses on the deaf community, they provided us with two amazing teachers; Thomas and Eugenie both helped us get a better understanding of what American sign language is and how the similar signs are supposed to be used. For our GCE work, our teachers put us into groups where we had to create a micro-mentary regarding the deaf community. My group and I had to come up with a good guiding question that required people to have more of an insight of what we were learning. I will go more in-depth about the micro-mentary we created throughout my essay. Lastly my classmates and I had to go on an external field experience to participate in deaf culture, and to get a better understanding of what it is. I am proud of my group and I because without each other we would not have completed a successful video.

For my individual project/ field experience I embarked on a journey to Washington park where my brother, my friends, and I helped volunteer at a local basketball game. Getting to the basketball game was fairly easy because as we were getting off the train we immediately saw a group of people using sign language,which made us know that they were going to the basketball game too . When my friends and I asked to confirm I felt relieved that I was able to communicate in another way, being a part of another community can truly help you sometimes.

When we arrived at the park district we didn’t know where to go so we just decided to watch a brief basketball game. I immediately saw people signing, even people that could here (to what I assumed). It made me realize how big this community truly was. In the beginning, I felt as if we were misguided, because we didn’t see anyone we knew. At that time, I felt like I was just “going just to go.” But after awhile, we were introduced to the woman who organized our volunteer experience, and I felt like I had a purpose.

Instead of working with the lady we met, we worked with a lady named charlotte who was a part of the hearing community, but knew ASL. She was kind enough to get us volunteer shirts and tell us what we were doing. She told us that she worked for another park district but she has a passion for ASL so she decided to volunteer there that day. She also said she went to Columbia college and that is where she learned ASL. My friends and I spent about 4 hours getting the basketball players lunch, moving boxes of lunch, and cleaning up.

Overall,I thought this experience was great, it taught me how to be independent from most school activities, where I always depend on my teachers to take us one place safely. It was also fun interacting with the friendly people who were deaf. They did not judge us because we knew very little sign language, they encouraged us to continue. It also made me more determined to learn ASL because it made me feel like an outcast not knowing what everyone there was already familiar with. This experience taught me to be to be more independent, and open to all the experiences you fulfill.

For my groups micro-mentary we all had individual parts to carry out. I fulfilled the role of the researcher and partial interviewer. My role mostly consisted of finding facts, statistics, pictures, and overall useful information my group could use to put together this micro-mentary. In the beginning, I thought the researcher role would be a fairly decent task to take on, my opinion about that role changed throughout the weeks. It was very difficult finding specific research that pertained to our topic, it was also difficult to keep up because with this role as a researcher I also had to fulfil my ASL work, and my weekly journals involving the deaf community in the news, and what not. Overall I thought this role was very stressful but I wanted to get the work done regardless of the task. I am proud to say my group and I made an outstanding video. Below is my individual video expressing my gratitude towards what I've learned and who helped me learn throughout this term.

These are pictures of the basketball game I attended. The picture below shows the sportsmanship both teams had during the game and after.