So wonder where I’ve been? This pretty much sums it up.
EVERY spare moment of EVERY hour of EVERY day I’ve been writing letters, making phone calls and being an all-around bitch to get back something that was taken from me and my friends.

As many of you know, my new high school is a feeder school for twenty-five Deaf and Hard of Hearing students. Twenty-five students pulled out of their district to come to our school, virtually isolated from the majority of hearing students. While we currently have interpreters, the facts remain the same.

There was a language barrier.

When an ASL foreign language class was opened not for just the Deaf/HoH but for the hearing students as well, a series of classes made EXTRAORDINARY growth in learning and appreciating American Sign Language and Deaf Culture, and bridged the gap between those twenty-five students and the rest of the school.

There was a language barrier.
There was a language barrier and we broke it.

As of one week ago, our class has received news that our ASL program has been discontinued indefinitely. While two semesters are required by law, any class higher than that has lost its accreditation and will not be offered. When we asked, we were told that because of ASL’s simplicity, two SEMESTERS of American Sign Language is an ample amount of time to become fluent, unlike the six to seven YEARS offered to French and Spanish.

So what does this all mean?

We’ve been hit with discrimination. The fact is that not enough people know that American Sign Language is a REAL language with its own grammar and dialects. It’s not universal. And it’s currently used by hundreds of thousands of people. You’re not just going to ‘ pick up ’ sign language from occasional television any more than you will ‘ pick up ’ Mandarin Chinese from fortune cookies. The gap that we were bridging has once again been swung open.

We are doing EVERYTHING that we can to raise money. We’ve written about every famous rich person we can think of, including Obama and Oprah. xD We’ve contacted Lifetime to see if this is even a possible movie.


If you would like to help, raise awareness, donate, offer to be a business sponsor, please contact me IMMEDIATELY. We are especially looking for any business willing to raise awareness about this cause.

Don’t think you can do anything? Think again. We’ve got a Facebook group. ;D


The truth of the matter is that we're pressed for time. The county isn't giving us the information needed to make this work, because they don't want to spend the money on it. Just consider what you can do to help, and every little bit will do.

Thank you.

Mary-Katherine