Classroom
To understand what's going on in the small summer class that meets in a quaint corner of the Humanities Building, first go down the hall, to the big lecture room full of students.
There, students gaze at their feet, the wall, or the backs of heads in front of them — not the professor. In that class, Professor Craig Werner's popular Black Music course, you don't even have to look up to hear the messages. The sounds of Stevie Wonder's “As,” a sweepingly melodic ode to the powers of everlasting love, fill the room, communicating deep messages through rhythm, harmony, and lyrics. Staring off and tapping your feet is almost compulsory.
Back in the smaller room, the approach is different. Here, there is no sound at all, yet plenty of communication. The instructor is up at the front of the room, sweeping his arms, scrunching his nose, and pointing. Students are watching intently, trying to understand a language they cannot hear.
The instructor is Michael Ginter, an associate lecturer in rehabilitation psychology, who teaches UW-Madison's only American Sign Language course during summer sessions. Ginter, who has been deaf since birth, brings an interpreter to class on the first day to help plow through all the administrative stuff every instructor deals with at the beginning of the term. But at the end of that first period, he emphasizes the thrust of the course: tomorrow, and for the rest of the sessions, there will be no interpreter; the class will be completely immersive. No speaking, ever.
There, students gaze at their feet, the wall, or the backs of heads in front of them — not the professor. In that class, Professor Craig Werner's popular Black Music course, you don't even have to look up to hear the messages. The sounds of Stevie Wonder's “As,” a sweepingly melodic ode to the powers of everlasting love, fill the room, communicating deep messages through rhythm, harmony, and lyrics. Staring off and tapping your feet is almost compulsory.
Back in the smaller room, the approach is different. Here, there is no sound at all, yet plenty of communication. The instructor is up at the front of the room, sweeping his arms, scrunching his nose, and pointing. Students are watching intently, trying to understand a language they cannot hear.
The instructor is Michael Ginter, an associate lecturer in rehabilitation psychology, who teaches UW-Madison's only American Sign Language course during summer sessions. Ginter, who has been deaf since birth, brings an interpreter to class on the first day to help plow through all the administrative stuff every instructor deals with at the beginning of the term. But at the end of that first period, he emphasizes the thrust of the course: tomorrow, and for the rest of the sessions, there will be no interpreter; the class will be completely immersive. No speaking, ever.
American Sign Language is a complete language — everything that can be expressed through vocal language can be expressed visually. Just as Wonder, who is blind, communicates profoundly to the students down the hall without the benefit of visual cues, ASL offers more proof that communication can be dramatically adaptive.
This is hard for some students to accept at first. Unlike infants, who seem willing to mold their minds around many different kinds of communication, most students are accustomed to communicating predominantly through spoken or written words. They're set in their linguistic ways. Immersion techniques in languages such as Spanish still rely on somewhat universal voice inflection to ease comprehension; people know how to express anger in speech, no matter what the language. Teaching ASL to hearing people, however, starts from scratch.
On the second day of class, Ginter arrives a couple of minutes late. He points at the clock, and shows, slowly and clearly, the signs for “time,” “clock,” and “late.” He uses nonverbal gestures, such as a panicked expression when looking at the clock, to indicate the concept of lateness. These gestures prove an important tool for communication between deaf and hearing people. Students learn their first signs, and a vocabulary is born.
Ginter emphasizes the importance of precise technique by showing the class that one extra finger in the wrong place and “meet” becomes “intercourse.” But the students are surprised to find how much of learning ASL goes beyond learning signs.
This is hard for some students to accept at first. Unlike infants, who seem willing to mold their minds around many different kinds of communication, most students are accustomed to communicating predominantly through spoken or written words. They're set in their linguistic ways. Immersion techniques in languages such as Spanish still rely on somewhat universal voice inflection to ease comprehension; people know how to express anger in speech, no matter what the language. Teaching ASL to hearing people, however, starts from scratch.
On the second day of class, Ginter arrives a couple of minutes late. He points at the clock, and shows, slowly and clearly, the signs for “time,” “clock,” and “late.” He uses nonverbal gestures, such as a panicked expression when looking at the clock, to indicate the concept of lateness. These gestures prove an important tool for communication between deaf and hearing people. Students learn their first signs, and a vocabulary is born.
Ginter emphasizes the importance of precise technique by showing the class that one extra finger in the wrong place and “meet” becomes “intercourse.” But the students are surprised to find how much of learning ASL goes beyond learning signs.
Facial expressions account for about 70 percent of communication in ASL. To a casual observer, a heated ASL conversation can resemble Kabuki theater, where participants display one exaggerated expression after another. Understanding how to incorporate those emotions is one of the first hurdles beginning ASL students must overcome. In fact, Ginter explains that letting yourself go expressively and investing emotion into the communication are more important than vocabulary.
At the beginning, students' gestures come off forced and awkward, but slowly, they become smoother and more fluid. The hardest part, says Dawn Dugas, a senior majoring in communicative disorders, was “learning to make facial expressions that correspond to the type of information you are expressing ... we were told to concentrate on the person's face and not their hands, and I found that hard to do.”
The second major hurdle in learning ASL is accepting the broader cultural context surrounding the language. Just as Spanish serves as a language within several cultures, ASL serves as the language of the deaf culture. It doesn't supplement verbal languages; deaf communities communicate thoroughly using it exclusively.
“[An ideal ASL student] will have to be sensitive and respectful toward other languages and culture,” says Ginter. “If the [student] feels superior, then this person will have a difficult time learning another language.”
At the beginning, students' gestures come off forced and awkward, but slowly, they become smoother and more fluid. The hardest part, says Dawn Dugas, a senior majoring in communicative disorders, was “learning to make facial expressions that correspond to the type of information you are expressing ... we were told to concentrate on the person's face and not their hands, and I found that hard to do.”
The second major hurdle in learning ASL is accepting the broader cultural context surrounding the language. Just as Spanish serves as a language within several cultures, ASL serves as the language of the deaf culture. It doesn't supplement verbal languages; deaf communities communicate thoroughly using it exclusively.
“[An ideal ASL student] will have to be sensitive and respectful toward other languages and culture,” says Ginter. “If the [student] feels superior, then this person will have a difficult time learning another language.”
A video that Ginter shows early in the course illustrates what not to do. One scene depicts a hearing person trying to get a deaf coworker's attention by launching a pencil at his head. The class laughs, but Ginter looks back and shrugs, eyebrows raised, as if to say, “It looks ridiculous, but it happens.”
To give students experience in the norms of deaf culture, Ginter requires them to complete two interviews with deaf people and attend local deaf-community events. In addition to improving students' technique, these interactions help make the connection between language and culture.
“I think it is easy to think that there is something wrong with being deaf or to prefer, for instance, to give birth to a hearing child.” says Rahel Crouch, a senior in the class majoring in special education. “I do, however, think that more people should learn ASL and want to try to communicate with deaf people; it's reasonable for deaf people to feel united through the language of ASL.”
Although the class often draws students majoring in fields like special education, most don't take the class with the goal of adapting deaf people to a hearing world. Many, like Crouch, are interested in using ASL and other visual communication when working with special-education students. They see ASL as another adaptive form of communication that could lead to more effective teaching methods for special-needs students.
To give students experience in the norms of deaf culture, Ginter requires them to complete two interviews with deaf people and attend local deaf-community events. In addition to improving students' technique, these interactions help make the connection between language and culture.
“I think it is easy to think that there is something wrong with being deaf or to prefer, for instance, to give birth to a hearing child.” says Rahel Crouch, a senior in the class majoring in special education. “I do, however, think that more people should learn ASL and want to try to communicate with deaf people; it's reasonable for deaf people to feel united through the language of ASL.”
Although the class often draws students majoring in fields like special education, most don't take the class with the goal of adapting deaf people to a hearing world. Many, like Crouch, are interested in using ASL and other visual communication when working with special-education students. They see ASL as another adaptive form of communication that could lead to more effective teaching methods for special-needs students.
The summer course, however, is the only chance students have to get that exposure. Ginter hopes at some point the program can expand to include more-advanced courses in ASL and deaf culture, as are offered at UW-Milwaukee. Many people also feel that ASL's current classification under the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education doesn't make sense, since many deaf people don't see their condition as a handicap that needs rehabilitating. Some suggest a more fitting home might be within foreign-language instruction. (The course can be taken to fulfill the College of Letters and Science's foreign-language requirement.)
By the end of the semester, students come away with a new appreciation for the wholeness of deaf culture. “I've learned that hearing people should not force deaf people to speak the way hearing people speak, or make them act to conform to the ways of hearing people,” says Dugas.
“The most valuable thing I learned,” adds Crouch, “was that trying to communicate is [only] a step. Understanding deaf culture and being able to communicate, even in a limited fashion, is more effort than most [hearing] people offer.”
— Josh Orton x'04
By the end of the semester, students come away with a new appreciation for the wholeness of deaf culture. “I've learned that hearing people should not force deaf people to speak the way hearing people speak, or make them act to conform to the ways of hearing people,” says Dugas.
“The most valuable thing I learned,” adds Crouch, “was that trying to communicate is [only] a step. Understanding deaf culture and being able to communicate, even in a limited fashion, is more effort than most [hearing] people offer.”
— Josh Orton x'04
Class Note - Digital Discourse Political Science 999: Collaborative Leadership
If it weren't for Internet communities, Gray Davis might still be in office, and Howard Dean might not be running for one. That power of the Net to draw together physically disparate communities now has a name — open consulting — and a course at UW-Madison. Offered for the first time this fall, the course is the brainchild of business student Chris Lang, who wanted to apply the principles of successful Internet communities to real-world problem solving. Eighteen students divided into three teams, which built Internet-based public forums on such heady problems as social justice, global health, and world security. The sites pull together experts and other participants in an effort to trigger a virtual brainstorm that results, ideally, in practical suggestions that leaders at the highest levels of government and society can employ. “This is probably the most innovative use of Internet technology I've ever seen,” says political science Professor Katherine Cramer Walsh ‘94, one of four faculty guiding the course. “It's the front of a new wave of using the Internet for solving problems.”
— Michael Penn
— Michael Penn
Extra Credit
Professors Steve Ackerman and James Leary have teamed up to get students talking about the weather — and about how we talk about it. Ackerman, a weather scientist, and Leary, a folklore researcher, have launched Wisconsin Weather Stories, a year-long project to create a K–12 curriculum that integrates the scientific and socio-cultural aspects of weather. Students and teachers from four Wisconsin schools will work with UW undergrads to collect weather stories, fables, and lore that will form the basis of the new lessons.
Faculty in the Department of African Languages and Literature have begun a three-year project to reshape the way students learn languages like Swahili. Professor Magdalena Hauner is in the process of developing new online Swahili lessons that bring students closer to being immersed in the culture they're studying. The interactive programs will seek to improve students' listening skills while trying to recreate the feel of a village in east Africa, where more than fifty million Swahili speakers reside.
Graduate students in the business school's Applied Corporate Finance program will benefit from a $6.4 million gift from Albert “Ab” Nicholas ‘52, MBA'55 and $2 million from an anonymous donor. The grants give the program, which allows MBA students to analyze corporate finance problems in real-world settings and recommend solutions, a long-term funding source, enabling it to grow and to gain wider access to hardware and software used in industry.
Faculty in the Department of African Languages and Literature have begun a three-year project to reshape the way students learn languages like Swahili. Professor Magdalena Hauner is in the process of developing new online Swahili lessons that bring students closer to being immersed in the culture they're studying. The interactive programs will seek to improve students' listening skills while trying to recreate the feel of a village in east Africa, where more than fifty million Swahili speakers reside.
Graduate students in the business school's Applied Corporate Finance program will benefit from a $6.4 million gift from Albert “Ab” Nicholas ‘52, MBA'55 and $2 million from an anonymous donor. The grants give the program, which allows MBA students to analyze corporate finance problems in real-world settings and recommend solutions, a long-term funding source, enabling it to grow and to gain wider access to hardware and software used in industry.
