There are quite a lot of language classes in Allen High School, but one that is often overlooked is the American Sign Language class. ASL is filled with students who work hard in order to learn the non-verbal language, with Cindy Bell as one of the teachers that teaches this type of language. 

Bell first found sign language when she was attending Richland Community College, but  the problem was that it was an evening class.

“I didn’t really know anyone who was deaf or anything, I just felt like I just really wanted to take that class, so even though it was an evening, I signed up for it and I fell in love with it.”

Since then, she has been working hard in teaching students this unique language, doing many things in the classrooms to make her teaching not only fun, but effective.

“I actually have a finger spelling warm-up that goes over finger spelling in numbers, and so everyday when they come to class, one of the students gets up and finger spells words to the other students and they write them down,” Bell said. ”So it’s giving them practice in both receptive practice where they watching someone sign and also signing it themselves and expressing what the words are in fingerspelling.” 

The language requires a lot of practice, but since the language is non-verbal, it has many advantages compared to any other language.

“There’s a lot of cool things you can do with sign language that you can’t do with a spoken language, you can speak to somebody through glass for instance or under the water,” Bell said. “Or if you are at the crowded stadium at the football game and you’re trying to talk to somebody who is up in the bleachers and you can’t yell that loud over everyone, you can actually sign and get somebody’s attention.” 

Bell’s students know this, and they take pride in enjoying learning the language and taking the class.

“We had quite a few students, we have had some students that really come in and you can just tell that they love ASL,” Bell said. They go out on their own and they learn how to sign songs and sign vocabulary that beyond what we’re doing in class at the time and that’s really fun as a teacher to see somebody love the language that much that they are willing to spend their non school time on it as well.” 

Taking the class also has some major academic benefits: the class will give you a language credit towards any college. Even if someone cannot take the class, there are many applications online and resources in the school that can be used to help people learn the language.

“One of my favorite ones is called https://www.lifeprint.com/,   run by Dr. Bill Vicars, he’s in California. I use a lot of his .gifs that he has online in class so kids can actually see since it’s a 3D language,” Bell said “It’s a little hard to tell it in print so I do like to include .gifs in my slide shows to help my students see them, but his websites are amazing. He even has lessons so you can do lesson one then lesson two then lesson three. It doesn’t match up to what we are doing in school, but I always suggest to people if you want to do things online that’s probably my source.”

And for the resources in the school she has an ASL club that any students can attend.

“There is an ASL club, so if somebody is really interested in ASL and just couldn’t work it into their schedule we are not exclusive to ASL students,” Bell said. “It’s usually easier for them because they have some background but we are happy to work with people who are not in ASL and have them join our club as well. We look forward to seeing anyone who’s interested in taking asl and we would love to have them in our classes.”