Waterford High School began offering an American Sign Language course in 2022. This current year ASL is being taught and will take the Seal of Biliteracy in March. In the year 2025-26, ASL will be taught and run with two sections. Last year 48 students were on a waitlist to take ASL one. This year 18 students had the ability to take ASL level two.
ASL has a very enthusiastic teacher, Mr. Nathan Wheeler.
Mr. Wheeler wanted to teach ASL because it was a language that was visual and not spoken, offering a different style for students. He started an ASL program in 2014 at Norwich Free Academy, as well as taught a class at Three River Community College.
He said, “When learning at UVM, I was able to immerse myself in the greater Burlington Deaf community, engage with native signers, and experience the culture firsthand through local Deaf events.”
He went to the University of Vermont where he minored in special education with a focus on ASL. Burlington, Vermont has a large deaf population and he would attend deaf events to practice his signing.
Many students in ASL would recommend the class to peers who want to make a difference.
Various students interact with family and friends using ASL. One student in her second year of ASL, Cassandra Soucy uses ASL daily. Sofia Fioravanti’s uncle is an interpreter, and her mom also knows ASL. Mr. Wheeler has a family friend who is Deaf and her daughter is a CODA, which is a child of a deaf adult.
Taking ASL in high school can be helpful for college.
Mr. Wheeler said, “It opens doors to career paths in communication, speech pathology and ASL interpreting” He commented, “Many colleges also offer ASL as a language.”
Students taking ASL now have said where they see themselves using ASL in the future.
Cassandra Soucy said that while in the workplace environment, busier areas, and stores she could see herself using sign language with customers and fellow coworkers.
Sofia Fioravanti wants to go into ASL when in college. She said, “It’s helpful in theater communication, when we are backstage can’t hear. It’s also helpful to communicate when we can’t talk out loud, and you can guess signs.”
Liliana Bordner says she sees herself becoming more fluent and being able to sign to deaf people. She took a train to Boston with her brother and saw college students signing to each other so she started signing back to them.
Cassandra Soucy had a Deaf customer at her job that she had to communicate with to be able to speak tothem. Cassandra says, “It’s very uncommon to see someone knowing ASL, so when someone knows it’s a relief”
Sofia Fioravanti has had various conversations having to use ASL to communicate.
What motivated Cassandra to take ASL as her language in high school was that “Spanish is easy and ASL isn’t as common to see. It’s interesting to communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing.”
Liliana was struggling to learn a speaking language so, “sign language looked amazing and unique, I picked up on it very easily and quickly became good at it.” Lilana continues, “It is hard for people to learn because it is non-verbal, but I prefer it because I have such a hard time speaking a language.”
Some of the most challenging things in ASL are sentence structure when trying to communicate, facial expressions, mouth morphemes, and remembering signs when communicating.
While there are challenging aspects, there are resources and tools that can help. Some things are in-class learning with Mr. Wheeler and websites like Pocket Sign and True+Way ASL, which students find to be fun and easy to use.
Liliana Bordner says, “I definitely think ASL is worth learning. It’s important because, for all the years, the Deaf community has not been able to understand us. People in the Deaf community need that sense of not having to never understand hearing people.”
Mr. Wheeler says it is a language that is growing. He believes it is becoming more public, seeing interpreters on the TV as well as having Deaf characters become more common in movies and shows. He also says that “it’s the most modern language, that is only 100 years old.”
American Sign Language is a powerful language that can bring people together. The people who learn sign language make it easier to communicate and be brought together.
