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OU DAILY
Adjunct professor Gary Davis teaches an American Sign Language class in Collings Hall Nov. 7. Davis is teaching one of OU’s first ASL courses.
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LENDING A HAND OU professors bring new ASL classes to campus
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n Tu e s d ay s a n d Fridays in Collings Hall 223, an entire class period goes by without a single word spoken. The classroom is completely quiet — at no point do the students speak out loud to professor Gary Davis, and he doesn’t speak out loud to them. That’s because Davis is deaf and is teaching his students sign language. The silence is only ever broken by students’ laughter — usually when Davis pokes fun at a student’s sloppy use of a sign and shows the student the correct sign, much like a Spanish professor correcting the pronunciation of a word. Davis, an adjunct professor, is teaching one of the first American Sign Language courses offered at OU — a program administrators have pursued for many years that finally came to fruition fall 2017. “ D on’t b e intimidate d by the silence and all the signing,” Davis said through a translator. “If students are depending on your skills, they’ll ignore the receptive skills that they need and they’ll depend strictly on the sound, and won’t develop the skills needed to understand the signs that are being utilized.” Davis, who will start as a full time professor at OU in January, is teaching students more than simply how to articulate language with their hands — he’s teaching students about the culture of the deaf community.
NICK HAZELRIGG • @NICKHAZELRIGG Davis said it doesn’t take long for students to catch on to the nuances of sign language. Philip Johnson, academic adviser for elementary and special education in the College of Education who has pushed for ASL classes to be brought to OU since 2010, said OU was previously the only school in the Big 12 not offering ASL. One of Davis’ students, special education junior Brittany Anderson, said she’s already capable of holding conversations with members of the deaf community when she attends events for the class. “I was actually surprised I was able to hold a conversation with somebody after only 11 weeks in the class,” Anderson said. “I was scared at first, but the teacher is really nice and accommodating. He’s really sweet and he’s always there to help with whatever we need.” In Davis’ curriculum, he focuses on developing the student’s eye for reading facial expressions, which he said are incredibly important to understanding sign language. “I have several sections where we talk about facial expressions, what they mean and what those words mean with them. We start with basic words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and what facial expressions go with simple phrases,” Davis said. “For example, when you use the word ‘why,’ your eyebrows naturally tend to furrow and when they do that, that is important in the sign language process.”
The Department of Educational Psychology offers ASL courses to interested students, filling what Johnson said has been a growing desire among students. Bringing ASL courses to OU has been a dream of Johnson’s since he started at the university in 2010, and he has worked with other faculty to shape a curriculum and plan the class. Johnson said the program is incredibly popular, with extremely long waiting lists for each section filling up as soon is it became an option. Johnson said the college offers four sections of ASL, and each class has roughly 20 to 25 students in each section.
“If students are depending on your skills, they’ll ignore the receptive skills that they need and they’ll depend strictly on the sound, and won’t develop the skills needed to understand the signs that are being utilized.” GARY DAVIS, SIGN LANGUAGE PROFESSOR
“Even as an admissions officer, I would receive quite a few inquiries as to whether or not OU offered sign language as a world language,” Johnson said. “My top priority for special
education — not only to secure its notoriety but to also provide it with avenues for future programs — was to see the implementation of American Sign Language.” Johnson said finding instructors such as Davis is incredibly important to the continuation of the program. Before class starts, Jo h n s o n a p p ro a c h e s D av i s and uses the knowledge he has picked up through observing OU’s ASL classes to ask, “How are you doing?” in sign language. “Not many people know that sign language is recognized as one of the top five languages utilized in the United States today,” Johnson said. “With it being a top five language, and it not being offered at OU, that’s what I saw as a disconnect.” Davis said ASL classes make members of the deaf community feel more comfortable at the university. “I’ve been teaching for about 16 years,” Davis said. “The first time I went into a regular setting, I did feel extremely isolated and it was somewhat intimidating, but as I began to teach sign language classes, I felt this sense of inclusion, this sense of community and a willingness to work and communicate with one another.” Nancy Marchand-Martella, cha i r o f t h e D e pa r t m e nt o f Educational Psychology, said members of the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education will be undergoing basic instruction for ASL as well in order
to help accommodate new professors for the program. “I want Gary to do trainings for our departments and our college because he’s our colleague. I want for us to be able to have conversations with him,” Marchand-Martella said. “We’re all going to be trained in sign and we’re all really excited about it. For me that specifies what this college is all about — being inclusive.” Marchand-Martella said she and Johnson worked closely with the deaf community in the creation of the course, to help focus the course on the culture surrounding ASL. “Sure, we’re teaching signing, but we’re also teaching culture. In order to teach about the culture we wanted the best experts who live and breathe the culture to impart that on the students,” Marchand-Martella said. “I feel very strongly about the model we have.” Marchand-Martella said the recently created American Sign Language Club on campus already has roughly 80 members, which Johnson said was important to help students understand deaf culture. “We recognize that every language comes from a culture, and for us to teach a culture without teaching the language is detrimental to both culture and language,” Johnson said. “So to be
see ASL Page 4
Local music, dance staple remembered Family, friends look back on life of former Norman musician SUPRIYA SRIDHAR @supriyasridhar
Thomas Young rubs his beard while standing outside The Deli on Campus Corner. He remembers his late friend, musician Boyd Littell. He smiles at the thought of filling
in with one of Boyd’s Norman-area bands and how Boyd would sit next to him at rehearsals and tell him if he was playing a song right. “Whether he wanted to be an educator or not,” said Young of the musician and former OU School of Dance employee, “he most definitely was to a lot of people.” Littell died after a bike crash last week in Portland at age 40. Communities of musicians and dancers in Oklahoma and Oregon were staggered by the loss of Littell, who lived with the belief that less
is more — whether in stripping down music to its essential elements, never getting a driver’s license or simply tucking his jeans into his socks to keep his pant leg out of his bike chain wherever he rode. In Portland, dozens turned out Nov. 5, the night after his death, for a vigil in Colonel Summers Park, the site of his crash. Back in Norman, family and friends hope more will turn out Nov. 24 for a wake at The Deli, a site of some of his early musical ascents.
TRADING CDS Boyd grew up in a house full of music, with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Frank Zappa filling his ears. He and his two older siblings traded music the way some kids traded Halloween candy, consuming as much as possible. As they got older, Littell took the lead. He would introduce them to new music and artists, recognizing his siblings’ and friends’ musical tastes. But Littell could play,
too. He began to hone what would become his life’s craft in both garage bands and the Norman High marching band, where he was a percussionist, before graduating in 1995. “You’d just hand him an instrument and within five minutes he’s got it figured out,” said Susan Greer, Boyd’s older sister, who is director of alumni outreach at OU’s College of Education. see BOYD Page 4