American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program

5. ASL as Resource

47 ASL as Resource 5 A language is worth what those who speak it are worth. —Pierre Bourdieu The issue of public resources for supporting the learning of ASL by Deaf children is central to this book. Every aspect of our program—its hosting, duration, participants, and setting—was affected by the lack of financial and institutional support from governments and public bodies for teaching and learning ASL. Even with its new foundation grant for program leader training and program expansion, DCO faced obstacles to hosting its family ASL literacy program. Like the spoken-language ParentChild Mother Goose Program, the ASL program is intended to be run by two program leaders in a setting provided by a hosting agency or organization. Especially when program participants include hearing parents, the costs for hosting an ASL ParentChild Mother Goose Program include the fees for service of two trained, ASL-proficient program leaders and an ASL interpreter. There is no cost to parents for participating in either the spokenlanguage or ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose Program, so program expenses must be covered by a hosting agency. One potential hosting agency was the Ontario Early Years Centres. Under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services and funded by the Ontario government, the Ontario Early Years Centres are public sites for caregivers and children aged 0–6 to access early language and literacy programs and other resources (Ministry of Children & Youth Services, 2010). Jonathan had sent out letters to all Ontario Early Years Centre managers in the province asking if they were interested in hosting a program, which carried a cost of approximately $2,000, and received no positive response. Ontario Early Years Centres 48 Chapter 5 managers did, however, respond with significant interest to a second letter Jonathan sent out, in which DCO offered to pay the costs of hosting programs. DCO was therefore obliged to cover all costs of hosting programs at various locations in Ontario. This obligation meant that a smaller number of programs were held than was originally planned, and several newly trained program leaders lacked opportunities to use their skills. For our program at DSA, and for several others that he informed me about and that I saw advertised in flyers and emails, Jonathan as an organization employee was the only program leader. Although the Ministry of Children and Youth Services’ (2010) website claims that the Ontario Early Years Centres provide services to children with special needs, it appears that budgetary constraints have dictated that early ASL literacy resources are not widely available. The lack of resources for ASL parents and children also affected our program space at DSA. Whereas our first three program sessions were held in the main room of the building that houses DSA’s drop-in center, due to other events taking place at DSA, our program had moved to a much smaller room in the same building by the 4th week. The agency regularly rents out its space for private events such as weddings that are often unrelated to the Deaf community. Even when we returned to the larger room for the 6th and 8th weeks of our program, physical evidence of these private events remained. On one occasion, the room was crowded with various pieces of furniture from a recent event and on another occasion, folding chairs were stacked in a rear corner. During our 6th program session, the wooden floor was dirty from a recent, private event and there was a brief upset when it appeared that Charlie had swallowed some debris. A further obstacle DCO faced related to finding participants for the ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose Program. Even after the organization contacted several Ontario Early Years Centres and made arrangements to hold programs, center staff had to cancel some programs due to low numbers of registrants. For ASL as Resource 49 example, during the course of our program at DSA it was announced that Julia, who is also a trained program leader, would be leading her own program in an eastern Ontario town, but there were not enough registrants. The widespread prohibition that AVT practitioners placed on Deaf children’s learning of ASL meant that a main target population for both my study and the program—Deaf children and hearing parents—was difficult to access. In addition, the numbers of Deaf parents with hearing or Deaf children who may also be interested in attending a program...