Now a state champion, a Ferris junior had no concept of her ‘deaf culture’ before taking an ASL class

With the aid of her twisting, beaming face and unyielding eye contact, Bethany Hultz’s hands tell stories.

The Ferris teacher of American Sign Language learned to sign in fifth grade while experiencing progressive hearing loss. Now deaf, she finds ASL to be a much more expressive, creative and visual way to communicate than speaking in English.

“I feel like it is my heart language,” Hultz said through an interpreter. “I was raised and exposed mostly to English, and I love to read. I like to write. I like all of that, but ASL is where I feel at home and where I feel like I can fully express myself.”

Hultz led a team of five students to the statewide ASL competition in Ellensburg on April 19 for the first time in the school’s history. The five Saxons returned to Spokane well-decorated; the team collectively placed second in the state for its combined scores in four testing and performance areas. Freshman Sophia Sivo placed second among alternates. In the expressive competition that has to do with telling a story based on a random image, freshman Kayla Paulus secured third place.

Junior Grace Oakley earned the top award in the competition for the highest combined scores, as well as first place in the expressive category and second in a written test on grammar, interpreting, history and deaf culture.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that ASL is fully its own language. It’s not signed English; it has its own grammar structure and culture, and that’s been super cool to learn about,” said Junior Charlotte Thomsen, on the winning ASL team and in Hultz’s most advanced ASL class. “We’ve been fully an immersive classroom, fully signing, so we’ve gotten good exposure to that culture and history.”

The team is mixed in its connection to deaf culture. Thomsen is hearing but passionate about the language since she took her first ASL class three years ago.

Paulus is also hearing, but she’s “CODA,” or a “Child of Deaf Adults.” Both her parents are deaf, and she signed before she learned to speak English.

“To me, it just really felt normal; it’s just like having your parents speak Spanish or any other language,” Paulus said. “I always had to interpret for them, like I was always ordering at drive-thrus or when they would go to the doctor.”

Though she can discern sounds to communicate in English, Oakley is hard of hearing. She lives with two types of hearing loss that have progressed over the years, she said.

As a toddler, she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, in which her bones fuse together, leaving her with conductive hearing loss, compounded by dying cilia on her cochlea preventing sound frequencies from reaching her inner ear.

Hultz is deaf, though she can hear some low frequencies and can speak in English and read lips when necessary. She had progressive hearing loss and learned to sign after enrolling in a completely immersive school for deaf kids.

“Signing is very important for me. ASL is very important, that’s how I access communication and language,” she said through an interpreter.

Until Hultz’s ASL class a few years ago, Oakley never considered that her hearing loss could connect her to an entire culture of those who share her experience: difficulty distinguishing between an ‘S’ and a ‘T’ sound, trouble shaping her mouth to pronounce some words, asking people to repeat themselves, or what she called the “deaf nod”: “where you have no idea what someone said, but you just nod, because you’re done trying to figure it out,” she laughed.

“I didn’t know deaf culture was a thing,” Oakley said. “And then I got into it, and it kind of felt like it really explained a lot of the things I struggled with growing up.”

A reflection of Oakley’s integration into her culture, Hultz recently gave Oakley her “sign name,” a specific sign personal to someone used to refer to them in ASL. Oakley’s is the sign for her initials: “G” circling into an “O,” which mirrors the circling motion in the sign for “busy” or “on the go.”

“My schedule is insane,” Oakley explained her sign name.

“It’s given to you by a deaf person; it’s like a symbol that you’re involved in the deaf community,” Oakley said. “You’re involved enough, you respect the culture, you are really passionate about it,” and your sign name is a symbol of that.”

Hultz’s sign name includes the sign for her last initial in a twisting motion by her face to illustrate her bouncy curly hair.

Her most advanced ASL class, ASL three, includes around a dozen students, a little less than half who are deaf or hard of hearing.

On Monday morning while chatter emanates from other rooms in Ferris’ halls, Hultz’s is completely silent save for the layered sounds of hands brushing together and frequent bursts of laughter. Students sit on the floor in small groups, rapidly signing and twisting their faces in exaggerated expressions to match the stories they tell with their hands.

They’re playing a language game, trying to think up as many signs as possible to match a motion Hultz gives.

Any emotional context missed through the lack of voice intonation is completely made up for by students’ bright faces, almost mesmerizing as they quickly pucker their lips, scrunch their eyebrows and widen or squint their eyes along with their dexterous hands.

Facial expressions are integral to communicating in ASL, eyebrow position may mark the difference between a question or a delighted exclamation when paired with the same sign. Widening of the eyes could modify a sign between “smart” and “really smart,” Oakley explained. Similar movements mean different things depending on the signer’s face.

Eye contact is also critical – one of Hultz’s beginner assignments is five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact with a peer. While initially awkward at first, it quickly breaks down barriers for kids, Hultz signed.

“You have to keep the eye contact, otherwise, you lose half of the whole language, lose half the signs,” Oakley said.

Thomsen noticed while learning ASL, it made her a more effective communicator in English, better at eye contact and more expressive while speaking.

“You have to really fully be present in the conversations, and we’re kind of losing that with technology and things these days, like checking your phone or whatever,” Thomsen said.

Hultz became Ferris’ ASL teacher two years ago, transitioning from a teacher of the deaf at Ferris.

Her classroom is a “deaf space,” she explained through signing. Each of her ASL classes is completely immersive: She only speaks in English when she really needs to get her point across with beginners, who can communicate with whiteboards if their hands aren’t doing the trick.

“It means voices off, hands up the entire time,” Hultz said through an interpreter.

Posters in her classroom remind visitors to keep the space “deaf-friendly” by making sure students stay in each other’s line of sight and keep communication visual.

Her chairs are arranged in a ring around the room so that students can see their peers and their hands at all times.

“We have a shared language we can fully access,” Hultz sad through an interpreter, referring to ASL. “I always say, if you don’t know sign, you can learn to sign; deaf people cannot learn to hear.”

An interpreter visits weekly for her advisory period that includes non-ASL students, though she speaks to them in English.

Slowly but surely, ASL is spreading around Ferris. There are 327 students who are deaf or hard of hearing in Spokane Public Schools identified through annual hearing tests, 29 of them at Ferris. The use of ASL spreads well beyond them.

In the cafeteria, deaf and hearing students share tables together using ASL- and laughter to communicate. Kids will offer Hultz a sign in greeting as they see her between classes. Another strikes up a conversation with Hultz in the hallway, asking about a project in her advisory class. Kids will stand at opposite ends of a room and sign to communicate rather than yelling.

The increasing proliferation of the language and culture around Ferris is encouraging to Oakley and Hultz, who hope more people can learn to speak with their deaf and hard-of-hearing peers.

“All day they’re around kids who have no idea how to sign, no idea how to communicate with them, so it becomes very isolating,” Oakley said.

Oakley’s parents are both hearing and it’s extra motivation for her to improve her proficiency to communicate with more people in her culture.

“That could be a big challenge for a lot of deaf kids growing up, which I think is why this class is so cool, because it gives all those kids a chance,” Oakley said. “And not all of them grew up without the language and the culture and everything, but it kind of gives them that opportunity to have everyone that they can sign with.”

While it may not be the case in public or other “hearing spaces,” signing in Ferris doesn’t get a second glance from hearing folks in the hallways of their school.

“It’s become the new normal here at Ferris,” Oakley said.

Elena Perry can be reached at (509) 459-5270 or by email at elenap@spokesman.com.

Editor’s note: This story has been changed to clarify teammate Sophia Sivo’s ranking in the ASL state competition.