IMG_8103
Crossposted from flickr
This was taken by a student of ours. I thought it was a nice photo. Look at my hair, so messy. I also noticed that I grinned with evident happiness. We were standing near the water fountain, looking at the bubble bath. I think someone had added a detergent or cleanser that made a lot of bubbles to clean the fountain. Several people sat with their bare feet in the water.
Even though, we seem happy, I think looking at the photo now, I can see where things were ending. This is the just conclusion, and with a reigning sadness. I'm happy to have taught the class, and I'm glad that I was able to convey my enthusiasm. The email sent to us thanked us for teaching this semester.
I have taught the decal class for a year. DECal, which means Democratic Education at Cal, is a program that allows students to teach other students. In some cases, this leads to a variety of classes that are not exactly considered worthwhile, but are offered because they are easy credits. For example, I once took a Harry Potter decal, which claimed to require reading through each book in the series, then discussing critically what happened in the books. I got through the class rather easily, and have sometimes wished that I had the incentive or foresight wisdom to take something else that would be more challenging.
My ASL decal class has been so much fun. Many students have told me that ASL, compared to other classes, are worth taking and earning credits for. Some have asked why Berkeley didn't offer the class. I can only say that the reasons are complicated. I already made a long rant some three years ago about why some colleges refused to accept ASL as a language.
Guess what? That college I was referring to ... was UC Berkeley.
Amazingly enough, I posted that May 11, 2004, which is almost exactly three years ago. I guess the time is either a coincidence, or I have come full circle. UC Berkeley accepted ASL for fulfillment of the foreign language requirement in the middle of 2004, which was late for me. And now, three years later, Berkeley still doesn't offer an ASL class, so students would have to know that they could take ASL at Berkeley City College (formerly Vista Community College), an unlikely occurrence, or wait for a decal class to offer, which I happily did last year and this year. I think that Anna, the other deaf student who recently started at Berkeley, will take over for me. That way, she can maintain the sort of continuity of offering ASL that I have started. It was lucky that she showed up at Berkeley chat at just the right moment. It was probably good that I continued to teach this semester, even though I had already graduated.
Otherwise, ASL class would have stopped, and it would have been unlikely, without my encouraging Anna, that ASL would be offered again.
This was taken by a student of ours. I thought it was a nice photo. Look at my hair, so messy. I also noticed that I grinned with evident happiness. We were standing near the water fountain, looking at the bubble bath. I think someone had added a detergent or cleanser that made a lot of bubbles to clean the fountain. Several people sat with their bare feet in the water.
Even though, we seem happy, I think looking at the photo now, I can see where things were ending. This is the just conclusion, and with a reigning sadness. I'm happy to have taught the class, and I'm glad that I was able to convey my enthusiasm. The email sent to us thanked us for teaching this semester.
I have taught the decal class for a year. DECal, which means Democratic Education at Cal, is a program that allows students to teach other students. In some cases, this leads to a variety of classes that are not exactly considered worthwhile, but are offered because they are easy credits. For example, I once took a Harry Potter decal, which claimed to require reading through each book in the series, then discussing critically what happened in the books. I got through the class rather easily, and have sometimes wished that I had the incentive or foresight wisdom to take something else that would be more challenging.
My ASL decal class has been so much fun. Many students have told me that ASL, compared to other classes, are worth taking and earning credits for. Some have asked why Berkeley didn't offer the class. I can only say that the reasons are complicated. I already made a long rant some three years ago about why some colleges refused to accept ASL as a language.
Guess what? That college I was referring to ... was UC Berkeley.
Amazingly enough, I posted that May 11, 2004, which is almost exactly three years ago. I guess the time is either a coincidence, or I have come full circle. UC Berkeley accepted ASL for fulfillment of the foreign language requirement in the middle of 2004, which was late for me. And now, three years later, Berkeley still doesn't offer an ASL class, so students would have to know that they could take ASL at Berkeley City College (formerly Vista Community College), an unlikely occurrence, or wait for a decal class to offer, which I happily did last year and this year. I think that Anna, the other deaf student who recently started at Berkeley, will take over for me. That way, she can maintain the sort of continuity of offering ASL that I have started. It was lucky that she showed up at Berkeley chat at just the right moment. It was probably good that I continued to teach this semester, even though I had already graduated.
Otherwise, ASL class would have stopped, and it would have been unlikely, without my encouraging Anna, that ASL would be offered again.
posted by AJ at May 04, 2007
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