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Deaf for a day, a new activity, a new class, an experience. Deaf for a day is a challenge for the students in American Sign Language (ASL). It requires all students to wear earplugs in order to experience the trials and tribulations that deaf people must face every day. Students were also mandated to wear bracelets to indicate that they were deaf to the staff. Being deaf was a profoundly different experience from my usual ways of life, there were a couple of challenges on a spectrum.
Being “deaf” is a spectrum, from what you would think of as deaf, like not being able to hear at all, to just having hearing problems like an old man. I was closer to an old man without his hearing aids rather than being fully deaf, but it still did cause challenges. I had issues listening to my friends and my teachers, so I did have to lip-read quite a bit. It wasn’t exactly impossible to hear, but lip reading improved my chances of understanding what was happening instead of repeating “What?” until my feeble mind could fathom the topic at hand.
I was quite lucky that most of my teachers usually have a visual aid during their lessons. One of these was John Taft the U.S history teacher. His class was probably the easiest, for he puts everything he says on his PowerPoints with the ideas of utmost importance being underlined and bold. Some classes were interesting due to me being “deaf,” like Orchestra. It wasn’t that bad, due to music not really changing, no matter if I hear it all or not. Overall, the whole day wasn’t so bad, it was just different.
I wasn’t the only one to be deaf, after all, multiple periods of ASL were required to participate like Daniel Ellis (’25) who expressed his unusual experience.
“Hearing my own voice loudly made my brain tickle,” Ellis said.
The ASL class was in my opinion quite eerie. It was explained the day before that the whole class would be silent, with us only being able to speak in sign language. Though I wasn’t completely deaf the whole day, I felt deaf during that ASL class. I couldn’t hear what I had been hearing, such as the faint talking of classmates and teachers. I heard nothing. It was a very off-putting feeling no lights buzzing, no blasting air conditioning, no birds, no bugs and no footsteps. This put it into perspective for me, how deaf people live. The class as a whole was intriguing, we all gathered and spoke but said nothing. We talked about how our days had been going up to that point. It was an experience to all be able to speak about one thing we now knew more about. I thought the class as a whole was enlightening.
ASL student Abdelrahman Abouzeid (’25) highlighted his struggle throughout the day.
“[I] wish I didn’t have to leap towards people so I can hear them better,” Abouzeid said.
Deaf for a day had come to an end. I feel that it was a success, I think I experienced a mere fraction of what Deaf people experience, but it provided me a base to understand how Deaf people feel and do things. I believe more people should experience this, and they most likely will next year, when ASL teacher Jessie Dorsey begins another Deaf for a Day.
“The goals I had for Deaf for a Day were for students to experience a degree hearing loss firsthand,” Dorsey said. “So that they would have an empathetic perspective on deaf culture and personally understanding why learning ASL is so important.”
