This blog is for all of my local friends who are interested in improving their sign language skills and for my friends who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Interpreters who might want to spend time with those of us who want to improve our sign language skills. Anyone else can read this too, but you will probably be bored!
About 4 or 5 years ago, a group of us were taking classes together in ASL and Interpreting. We knew we needed more work than we were getting in our classes, and some of us were never able to finish all of the classes we would have wanted to take because they are not available near here. So, we started teaching ourselves! We planned our own curriculum using lots of books, videos, and DVDs that we already had or that we could purchase. We met every Monday night, and then over the years we have done some other fun things, like travel together to Florida for an ASL Silent Weekend, taking workshops together locally and in Richmond, and we even had our own weekend retreat.
We had to name ourselves! We had started meeting at a coffee shop, so we liked the Acronym "JAVAS." But then we had to come up with words to go with the letters! We spent one whole session trying to come up with our name, I think! Here is what we came up with:
Jubilantly
Aspiring
Virginia
ASL
Signers
We kept our group together, just the 4 of us, although we loved getting together with others from time to time. Sometimes we would have a workshop within our own group, inviting an interpreter or a Deaf individual to teach us. Sometimes we decided to go out for dinner to celebrate a birthday or something and others came with us. When we interpreted the production of "Scrooge" here in Roanoke, we were thrilled to have some others join us.
But, for the most part, it has been the 4 of us. Gina, Laura, Jennifer, Donna, all various ages, with various jobs and experiences. But all of us have a common goal - to become Sign Language Interpreters, to be the best at that we can be, and along with that, to constantly improve our ASL skills so that we can interact with the Deaf community who have become our friends and mentors.
After all these years, JAVAS as we have known it is has come to an end. One of us is moving out of the state, and another is going back to school and doing other various things that will prevent her from being a JAVAS regular.
Gina and I thought about what to do - just end JAVAS and spend whatever time we can practicing together? We already go to as many of the local Deaf events as we can - Silent Dinners, Deaf Chat Coffees, HANDS, etc. But we still need more - we still need to focus our studies on particular aspects of ASL and interpreting.
So, we decided to keep JAVAS, but change it a lot! We want to expand! We are inviting any of you who would like to come, either regularly or once in awhile, to come and meet us! We meet at the Barnes and Noble Tanglewood in the cafe on Monday nights from 7:00 to 9:00. We will do different things from week to week, depending on who shows up and what we have planned for that week. Some weeks we might just chat with each other. Some weeks we might move ahead on the curriculum we are using, which, right now involves putting English paragraphs into ASL and signing them. Or we might focus on fingerspelling practice. Or review ASL vocabulary. Or play sign language games. Whatever.
We will be VOICE - OFF with each other from the time we enter Barnes and Noble. We even have a jar to put dimes in for every time we forget and use our voices! We hope to NOT collect enough money for anything big! Maybe we can buy coffee or something for each other with that money sometime!
So, we are suggesting that if you want to come join us, you are at least at a level of ASL that would be equivalent to ASL 5 or 6. The various curriculum we use are all from classes that are at those levels. If you want to come, but aren't at that level, that is fine, and you can join in with what you can, or maybe we will practice our voicing on those nights, in which case, for the person voicing, we waive the voice-off rule. But we will always be signing at the level of an ASL 5 or 6 student, or above, not teaching the basics.
We want others to join us! We want other students, interpreters, and our Deaf and Hard of Hearing friends to come and practice with us!
We will be in the cafe at Barnes and Noble Tanglewood at 7:00 every Monday night. My suggestion is that you check my Facebook page first in case something prevents both of us from coming - bad weather, illness, or something. That happens occasionally, but not often.
We are starting up this coming Monday night, July 12th. We are looking forward to seeing who can come and join us as we continue JAVAS in a new way!
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