Lisa Goochee, Communications & Outreach

Students in Toni's class sign above, "Pleased to meet you!" This class is learning American Sign Language (ASL) in their effort to be a more aware and inclusive classroom community as well as celebrating the sheer fun of signing!

This is a project with a long-standing Peninsula history started with a collaboration between Teachers Eliza and Graceann with Fiesta Gardens in San Mateo, a local public school. The teacher at Fiesta Gardens, Judy Martin, taught deaf students, and she was also parent at Peninsula. Eventually they stopped having a deaf program at that school, and Judy retired, so unfortunately, we had to stop.

In a regular year, we would put on a whole play in both spoken English and ASL. This year, we are making a video of the alphabet. Each student will sign a letter like "P is for pink penguins and purple porcupines eating pizza” to share with other classes and our families.