Forest Hills — Paws With A Cause volunteer Ronda White held both her hands in a Y-formation, palms up, and made two quick downward gestures.
“This means ‘today,’” said junior Lily McMartin as she and classmate, junior Susie Foresman, followed White’s actions. “It can mean ‘today’ or ‘right now.’”
The students are part of Central High School’s American Sign Language program, which fulfills the school’s foreign language requirement. They are currently taking ASL 3, a course available to both juniors and seniors and taught by Kim Anderson, a dedicated advocate for expanding ASL education within the community.
Because of her involvement, Anderson often involves her students in opportunities to teach ASL outside school, such as in senior living homes and the Forest Hills Community/Senior Center.
Given Paws With A Cause’s background, which began with training hearing dogs and expanded to provide service dogs for a variety of needs, Anderson has welcomed its staff into her classroom to talk about the work they do with the deaf and hard of hearing community, she said.
“Following their presentation to us last year, I inquired how the trainers communicate with the deaf people and their dogs they are partnered with,” she explained. “They responded that they don’t sign, but they use pen and paper to often communicate, or an interpreter.”
It was enough to inspire Anderson to create an opportunity for her students to volunteer at the organization’s Wayland headquarters
Bonus: Free Snuggles
Students have visited once a month since October. During their May visit, they assembled dog beds and taught basic ASL to staff and volunteers.
Junior Arcadia Pawloski was inspired to research and then encourage her family to foster a black lab puppy.
“Teaching the volunteers and seeing how they interact and how the process works has inspired me to pursue something with ASL and to possibly be a dog trainer,” she said.
Junior Sydney Boersma said it has been a great opportunity to show volunteers and staff that sign language can be used beyond working with those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
“The kennels are really, really loud,” Sydney explained. “It has been helpful to teach them that they don’t need to rely on their hearing in that situation, but that they could use sign language instead.”
Paws volunteer White said working with the students has been “super fun” and she has been applying what she knows.
“A dog is used to seeing the hands first,” she said. “So at the fitness place (where) I go, I have shown them how to calm a dog down using signs, and I have also been teaching my friends.”
Anderson said several of her students have independent study next year, so she hopes to have them take over the program at Paws.
“I really like the fact that we helped in a small way with the training,” Sydney said. “We are training the staff to do their job more efficiently, whether working with each other or (in) the community with participants.
“And the snuggles aren’t too bad, either.”
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