Follow Up on Towson Teaching

Remember how I mentioned that I taught a few classes at the HEAT Center, subbing for Laynie? It was an ASL level 1 class. Anyway, after class on Tuesday, Laynie asked if they wanted me to give them their final or watch a DVD of Laynie. One girl had asked if I could do it. It really is difficult to understand ASL in 2-D when you are just learning. Anyway, I laughed at one girl's response: Annie uses some different signs (fair point), and her deaf accent is sometimes hard to understand.

That was the girl I thought suspected I was hearing. Guess not!

I ended up giving them their final by showing a DVD of Laynie. Three or four people groaned, but majority rules. Apparently they did fine on it anyway.

So now I have to find a way to occupy my time, since I don't have any more 4-hour classes to teach. I think I will make some therapy materials for the fall. I just got two CDs with AVT-type stuff, and I hope they are good, because they were expensive. I was partially reimbursed by my agency, though. Anyway, I also have to go and buy posterboard for Laynie, so she can do some loser project for her Social Studies and Science Teaching class. Probably go to Borders, since I have been tearing through books lately. Go figure. And I wanna lay out! I'm whiter than white. And according to the axiom I heard often as a child: brown fat is better than white fat.

Teaching at Towson

Today I taught four classes at Towson University. Laynie was sick, so I subbed for her classes.

The topics I was teaching were BORING--where you live, what kind of housing, and transportation--so I spiced it up by emphasizing the importance of making comments on their partner's answers. Well, social language is mainly what I do for a living, so it should come as no surprise that I noticed a deficit immediately during the 8:00 class. Their conversations went like this: "You live where? Towson. You live where? Essex. You come school how? Walk. You come school how? Car." See why I had to teach them comments? I taught them comments like cool, oh, nice, far, close, poor you, wow, and really. It went fine, I guess. A lot of the students were punks, but Laynie had warned me that they would be. I think they were fairly well behaved for me.