LaFAYETTE, Ga. – Silence reigns in Room 701 at LaFayette Middle School, but the conversation is nonstop.
The students in Dale Oxendine’s American sign language class on Friday were learning to talk to each other with their fingers and facial expressions.
It’s a first-time class offering for students at Walker County Schools’ LaFayette Middle and the LaFayette High School, said Oxendine, whose wife is deaf and whose daughter is a sign language interpreter.
Oxendine said the experience with his wife’s hearing impairment raised his awareness, and he discovered the value of sign language in learning to better communicate.
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He said students enrolled in two segments of the class will have learned between 700 and 1,000 signs by the end of the school year.
Seventh-grader Robert Dewald said he will use the skill to communicate with his father and share what he has learned.
“My dad lost his hearing when he was 2,” Robert said, moving his hands with each word.
He said his father learned some sign language from a neighbor as a young boy, but since has forgotten much.
“I do signing to him and have him guess what those signs are,” Robert said. He gives the class his highest recommendation.
“This is a very fun class,” he said. “If everybody learned this it would be like everybody could speak the same language.”
LaFayette Middle assistant principal Karen Hughes said the class was offered, at students’ request, to seventh-graders in two, one-semester segments this year. The sign-language class is similar to other connections classes such as art, Spanish, physical education and career-oriented ones.
Gracie Davis, Grace Beard and Drake Cabe say they think learning to sign will help them in life, maybe with a career but certainly when they encounter people with hearing impairments.
Gracie said she thought it would be interesting to learn.
“And maybe it’ll help in future years,” she said.
Grace got a taste of signing from a relative’s book collection.
“My aunt learned sign language. She had a book she let me use,” she said. Now, the class gives her a way to continue learning, she said.
Drake liked the uniqueness of the language.
“It was something different that I knew not a lot of people know about,” he said. “The skill will be handy, just in case I run across a deaf person.”