ASL 3705

Guest Speaker/Visitor Paper

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April 16^th, 2008

Guest Speaker/Visitor Paper

I thought the guest speaker, John Egbert was absolutely amazing!  I personally felt that he kept the audiences attention the whole entire time, which is obviously really important when speaking to people.  When John started talking about his life, and when he was growing up in Mississippi, I instantly felt how passionate he was about being Deaf and the Deaf culture in general.  He really made people know that he had a “normal” life, just like people who are of the hearing culture.

There wasn’t really anything about the speaker that I didn’t like.  He kept my attention the whole entire time and in fact made me feel very passionate about some of the things he was talking about.  I never really put much thought into the idea of Deaf babies not being able to use American Sign Language.  After John talked about it, I completely understood it though.   It got me to thinking about my other Deaf Education classes and what I have heard in them, and I realized that I have kind of been “taught” to push for something other than ASL for really young Deaf children.  This concerned me as there is a big push for hearing babies to learn American Sign Language.  Why can hearing babies learn ASL but it sort of frowned upon by other people, like the Alexander Graham Bell Association, to teach Deaf babies American Sign Langauge?  

I have been to other Deaf events, such as panels, tours, and plays before, but they weren’t quite like this one.  When I had to go to the other events, I felt the need to jot down little notes to help me remember things.  Don’t get me wrong, I thought all of them were very interesting, but I just felt differently about this one.  Even though I took notes when John was speaking, I didn’t really feel the need to.  When I came back to write this paper a week later, I felt like I had just heard him speak that day.  Everything was fresh in my head and I still felt as passionate about him speaking as I did before.  I thought that was a great feeling because it really allowed me to get information about Deaf culture, in a completely different perspective.  

I am very excited for the protest in Milwaukee in June.  I am definitely going to try and get down there to help protest.  Listening to John talk about the protest made feelings arise in me that made me want to help in anyway that I could.

I definitely think you should have John speak in every Deaf culture class that you have from this point forward.  I’m not sure if it is something you have done in the past, but I think it was really interesting to get his perspective on life, and hear him talk about things that he is really passionate about.  I think I learned a lot about the Deaf culture and how they are finally taking a stand on issues against them as a whole.  I think this is great as the Deaf culture is no different than any other culture and deserves to be treated equally.      

Posted on April 18th, 2008 by egbertpress
Filed under: Uncategorized