By Alexis Rodriguez, Staff Reporter
May 2022
KIPP Collegiate’s new sign language club is a relatively new group that was founded last year and has been growing as the school year continues. The American Sign Language Club focuses on its members learning and developing their sign language skills. They decide as a group what they want to learn to ensure every member’s opinion is considered and are currently learning survival signs which help communicate basic needs usings hand signs.
The club was founded last year when two sisters, Daniella and Illiana Yanez-Martinez, wanted to learn and teach others ASL. Their goal was to create a community of students also interested in learning ASL so that they can rely on each other for support. Having a community of peers you can turn to is fundamental when learning sign language considering it is completely different from learning a spoken language. For Daniella, seeing her peers be willing to practice outside the classroom and work on developing their language skills at home brings her pride. “I’m proud people take that initiative to learn outside of the club because they’re passionate about it.” When asked about why the club was started, she commented, “I thought it’d be cool for there to be a club where students can just get together and have that community and rely on each other for growth in that area”
One piece of advice from members in the club is to use online resources for support and pay attention to the different ways phrases can be signed because there are different ways to say the same thing. Members agree that “There are accents all around the country, and there are so many different ways one word can be signed depending on how you learn it, where you learn it, and who you learn it from.”
The group meets on Thursdays during the second half of lunch and meetings take place in Wesley Nakamura’s room, the AP Biology teacher who is now the sponsor of the club. They welcome all grade levels to join, so feel free to join!
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