FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Signing Up to Learn a Language

Upbeat calypso-style music echoed in the classroom. Using only their hands, the roomful of students sang a song.

Through song, games and poems, 20 fourth- and fifth-grade students at Roch Courreges Elementary School learned American sign language so they can communicate with people who cannot hear.

“If I meet any deaf people, now I can talk to them,” said fourth-grader Rachael Scheppele, 9.

Her older sister, Julie, 11, said she also wanted to participate in the class “in case I meet somebody who is deaf.”

For the past seven Mondays after school, the students gathered to learn conversational signing. The course, which ended this week, was taught by parent Susanne Seiden, who teaches remedial math and English at Cerritos Community College to people who cannot hear.

Seiden, who also teaches sign language to college students who can hear, said she agreed to instruct the elementary students because of the importance of them knowing firsthand the challenges deaf people face.

“The more people we have out there signing, the more we accomplish our goals with the American Disabilities Act,” said Seiden, whose two sons, Joey, 10, and Kenny, 7, attend the elementary school. “The children are learning and gaining, but so is the community.”

Seiden, 38, said the school’s parent-teacher organization approached her to teach the students as an after-school enrichment program. A $20 fee was charged to cover the cost of the textbook and other materials and to encourage only those students serious about learning to participate.

The students learned words such as bird, baby, animal, water, and how to put together simple sentences.

But more importantly, Seiden said her young pupils gained valuable insights about people who cannot hear like them.

“I taught some understanding of the hearing-impaired. . . . It’s a whole separate culture,” Seiden said. “The more we teach acceptance of others who are different, the more cooperation we have among different groups of people.”

Her hope, she said, is to ensure the students are “comfortable and not afraid” if they encounter a person who cannot hear.

Seiden explained that American sign language is not “English on the hands.”

“It has its own syntax and idioms. It’s a conceptual language. And, it’s like learning another language.”

PTA Co-President Patty Berger, whose fourth-grade daughter, Katie, 9, took the class, said she encouraged her because “this is just another career option she might want to seek in the future.”

Others, such as fifth-grader Troy Keel, 11, enrolled so he could better communicate with his 15-year-old sister, who has a hearing loss.

“It was important for me to try and learn it. My sister would break down and cry because she couldn’t communicate,” Troy said. “It’s hard to be able to live without being able to communicate.”