It was majorly uncomfortable to sit there in silence with twenty other students. No one knew each other, which is fine, but this was a different kind of silence. It was like none of us really knew how to proceed.
We sat there as he set up the computer. We sat there as he pulled the projector screen down. We sat there as he turned the screen on. The syllabus popped up, and we were still silent.
He looked up from his screen at us and put his right hand near his forehead. His palm was facing his left shoulder, and his thumb crossed his palm. He pulled the hand away from his head by extending his elbow, and it was at that moment that one of the two translators perked up to say, "Hello!"
Through the translators, we learned his name and where he was from. We learned his wife is also deaf and he has two children, both boys. He signed, the translators talked, and we watched and listened. He told us about what he did before becoming a professor, and ended with the "although I liked what I was doing, I always knew I had the heart of a teacher."
He told us about how he attended a Catholic school run by nuns in the seventies for deaf children. The nuns were so focused on trying to teach the deaf children on speaking and reading lips that American Sign Language was neglected. To the nuns, if you couldn't speak, you couldn't communicate, and if you couldn't communicate, you're pretty worthless at the societal level.
Hearing the nun story had my eyes welling. I couldn't comprehend that kind of hate. I still cannot comprehend that kind of hate. I will never be able to comprehend that kind of hate. Because for me, something sparked in that classroom. For me, a new kind of love was forming. I could see through my professor the entire deaf and hard of hearing community, which I had not been previously exposed to. I wanted to communicate with them, I wanted to learn from them.
A deaf person cannot go to any normal place without a translator. They cannot go to the doctor or the bank. They cannot communicate with the cashier at the grocery store or the server at a restaurant. It can take up to two weeks sometimes, even in metropolitan areas, to get a translator to accompany someone. I thought to myself that if I could be another person who understood American Sign Language, then I could be another resource to an entire community that is often left behind.
Why are the deaf left in the dark? They have just as much to offer about politics and religion and and science and philosophy and love as any other person. It's a different perspective, and it wouldn't hurt anyone to open up for even a minute, to just pay attention to, to attempt to understand something outside your generally narrow world view.
Learning even the most basic of signs could help you take away that helpless feeling from a deaf person in a fully-hearing world. And I would fully encourage every single person to do so.