Making a Difference in Your Community : Leveling the Playing Field for Deaf Kids

The deaf can be so easily misunderstood, said Sylvia Rodriguez, a San Fernando mother whose 7-year-old son, David, is hearing-impaired.

While driving in her car, Rodriguez sometimes is afraid to communicate with her son in sign language, just in case the gestures might be mistaken as some obscure gang signal. When she brought David to a local park, he was picked on and hit because the other kids did not understand why he would not talk.

In trying to do something to create understanding between those who can hear and those who cannot, Rodriguez last year started the Mainstream Sports League, in which hearing-impaired children play softball, basketball, volleyball and other sports with hearing children. It is also a way for the San Fernando Valley’s small population of deaf children to get to know each other, she said.

“It builds up their self-esteem,” said Rodriguez, remembering the first organizational meeting she held at the Panorama City Recreation Center in the spring of 1993.

The deaf children who were among the small number of people attending the initial meeting recognized each other from other groups. “Their little hands started moving so fast,” she said.

Rodriguez’s organization is called the Mainstream Sports League because it strives to bring deaf children into the mainstream of athletics.

When Rodriguez started the league, she had about 32 children in the program--of about 150 deaf children in the Valley. The number has dwindled to a handful now, and Rodriguez said she needs parents to get more involved in the program to make it work.

She also needs volunteer coaches and sign-language interpreters. But the Mainstream Sports League is not just an athletic program, as other parents have learned. They also call Rodriguez to ask for help and advice.

“It’s a support group,” said Rodriguez.

Parents who do not get involved with their children through signing and other activities contribute to the breakdown of the family unit, she said.

Rodriguez is also starting a Spiritual Signing program through her church--the San Fernando Valley Christian Fellowship--so that she can tell Bible stories to deaf children using sign language.

She also hopes that programs such as hers will “help bring sign language out into the open.”

Rodriguez started to learn sign language in February, 1989, shortly after being told her son was deaf. She also has taught sign language to her 3-year-old daughter, Sara Lee, and the little girl is already helping to translate for her brother.

It is very much like the translating help that she sees occurring on the playing field between the deaf and hearing children in the Mainstream Sports League. “It’s truly bridging a gap,” she said.

To reach Rodriguez, call (818) 361-0035. The number is equipped with a telephone device for the deaf (TDD).

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Volunteers are needed at the Antelope Valley Community Arts Center in Palmdale to work as ushers and assist in the box office as well as with concession operations. Volunteers also are needed to learn to use sound and lighting equipment for the center, which opened in September. For more information call Cultural Arts and Theater Manager Dee McAllister or the volunteer director, Ed MacKenzie, at (805) 267-5684.

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Project Caring Strokes, which runs art workshops for children who areHIV-positive or have AIDS, needs volunteers to run weekly, individually tailored art workshops. Volunteers will help students create art that can be made into greeting cards and sold. Volunteers also are needed to help arrange exhibitions of the artwork and to help with fund-raising. Those interested should call Elizabeth Gorcey at (213) 931-5703.