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A light skinned woman wearing a black jacket “OPHS” Staff logo on left side. Hair is tied back. The video is set up to a faster speed so the woman’s pacing with Sign Language is faster than typical.
This is to support the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching and California Language Teachers Association as an ASL Teacher and Advocate.
“Hello! My name is Deanne Bray. I was born and mostly raised here in California. I teach ASL at high school level for 7 years now even though I have taught many years in different places in Arizona and California. I’ve worked here for 7 years. Before I worked here, I went to MA Sign Language Education at Gallaudet University. I’m grateful for their support in guiding me to assess and to improve my ASL skills. I also became a stronger advocate, a language advocate. Thanks to the program at Gallaudet. My journeys and experiences led me to commit to protect and preserve American Sign Language. In the past, I’ve been in a bubble and felt isolated until one day the World Language Department here (Chinese, Spanish, and French) decided to burst that bubble. They helped me understand that we even though we all are different but we are similar as language minorities. We all have a vision and responsibilies to teach/guide different ways for our children to learn and become SENSITIVE to different cultures. We also guide the students to understand how to CONNECT with people from all over the world with different communication strategies.
One day the World Language Department notified me about a local one-day conference provided by CLTA, California Language Teacher Association. They tend to have conferences for both World Language and Heritage Language Teachers. We go to different workshops and do some networking locally (within our counties). I have never heard of CLTA and was only aware of ACTFL and ASTA. For the last 2 years, many opportunities were created! I made noise to my Deaf colleagues and ASL teachers. Many of them were unaware of CLTA (and SWCOLT), very few knew but not many! There weren’t any ASL workshops nor ASL teachers. Perhaps there were but rarely do we see them. It’s now time for ASL teachers to become more and more VISIBLE. Start having dialogues with other World language teachers/Heritage language teachers and shift some positive perspectives by learning from each other. This is an opportunity! The time is now… Join u