More Missouri students signing up for sign language

American Sign Language teacher Charlotte Landrum calls on student Danae LeBaube to answer a question at Eureka High School on Dec. 16 during a review for upcoming final exams. Landrum asks her students to use sign language as much as possible in the class. (J.B. Forbes ~ St. Louis Post-Dispatch) [Click to enlarge]

ST. LOUIS -- Eureka High senior Jessi Weber credits a high school class with inspiring her to one day become an American Sign Language interpreter.

She works as a server at Pizza Hut, and has put her sign language to good use a couple of times with deaf customers. "I was hoping to get a good tip," she joked.

Sophomore Quaminisa Blue, 16, who has also taken classes in American Sign Language at Eureka, likes signing with her mom, who has picked it up as a hobby. They use sign language occasionally to communicate with deaf people at their church.

"Most people will talk about deaf people like they're different, like there's something wrong with them, and I don't think that's right," Blue said. "This helps show people they're no different than anyone else."

More students across Missouri are picking up those kinds of life and language lessons, thanks to a state law passed in 2005 that allows high school and college students to earn foreign language credit for taking American Sign Language. When the law passed, American Sign Language was scarcely taught in high schools in Missouri, with classes at as few as six school districts. This year, the courses are offered by at least 15 schools in 11 districts, including local districts like Rockwood, Brentwood and Fox. Rockwood and Fox added the courses after the law passed.

Eureka High student Danae LeBaube makes the sign for the word "lights" Dec. 16 in Charlotte Landrum's American Sign Language class. (J.B. Forbes ~ St. Louis Post-Dispatch) [Click to enlarge]

When the Rockwood district started a sign language pilot program at Eureka High in 2007, about 20 students enrolled. Now, the district offers classes at all four of its high schools, with about 320 students taking them.

Robert Headrick, coordinator of world language and English as a second language for the district, said many students have reasons for taking the courses that have nothing to do with earning foreign language credit. Students might have deaf friends or relatives or want to use it in a special education career.

"I'm pleased that maybe we've unearthed some children that would not have taken a foreign language," he said.

For the first time this school year, Fox School District in Jefferson County began offering American Sign Language at its two high schools. They added it not only because of the new law, but after realizing that current special education teachers already knew enough of the language to teach it.

"We've tried to add as many foreign languages as possible, and sign language is something we want our children to be exposed to," said Lorenzo Rizzi, an assistant superintendent. The district also offers Russian, Latin, German, French and Spanish.

The number of colleges and universities offering American Sign Language has risen and will continue to rise, partly because of interest from students beginning to take courses in high school, said Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association. Enrollment in universities rose nearly 30 percent between 2002 and 2006, and the group expects to see even bigger numbers in a report to be released in a few weeks.

Some of that interest comes from students wanting to go into special education or to make themselves more marketable in industries like law enforcement and social services. Students studying linguistics also like to learn sign language to help them understand how people acquire language, Feal said.

Charlotte Landrum, the sign language teacher at Eureka, worked as an interpreter for the Special School District for 16 years before starting at Eureka. Her past job experience exposed her to deaf people and deaf culture, and she often brings in deaf people to speak to her classes. Her students play games like "the human knot" and "the elephant game," group games played by deaf people that don't require signs or speech to communicate.

"You don't have to travel to a foreign country" to use American Sign Language, said Landrum. "You can find deaf people right here."

The language has its own grammar and rules, and one sign can mean several different words in English depending on the context, Landrum said.

Supporters of the 2005 law say the process of learning to sign is just as rigorous as learning a foreign tongue.

Recently, Landrum had her American Sign Language II class watch an instructional DVD that showed a woman signing trivia questions about presidents. Students watched as the woman explained in sign language how most presidential names are finger-spelled, but that Lincoln and Washington have their own signs. Some people use the sign for "nut" to refer to Jimmy Carter, the peanut lover, but not always, she signed.

For at least 11 years, sixth-graders at Brentwood Middle School have taken a semester-long class in American Sign Language. Though they can't get foreign language credit for the course, it still comes in useful since the school houses 10 deaf and hard-of-hearing students at part of a Special School District program. Several Brentwood students have gone on to become teachers or counselors for the deaf, and the district hopes to offer high school level sign language courses in the future, said sign language teacher Mary Gamache.

Rachel Ebner, 12, loves that her classmates at Brentwood Middle are learning to sign. Rachel, who is deaf, has a cochlear implant but also uses signing to communicate.

"When I first came here the first day, a lot of the hearing children didn't know any signs," Rachel said through an interpreter. "I've got a lot of friends, and a lot of my friends want to learn sign language."

If she and her hearing friends don't sign, they communicate by writing notes or fetching a school interpreter, she said. They also e-mail and text "a lot," Rachel adds, holding her palms upward and spreading her fingers apart.

Kate Gilmore, 11, a classmate of Rachel's, said she would have ordinarily left the deaf students in her class alone to live "in their own little bubble." But sign language class has changed her attitude.

"It shows me that they're pretty much just the same," she said, "but you just have to talk to them in a different way."