On Thursday, March 30th, the ASL Club held an event inviting high school students from Lexington School for the Deaf to come to Molloy, meet our students, and play games! Moderators of the club Dana McMenamin ‘09 and Henry Ventura ‘05 ran the event to “allow students the opportunity to use the ASL skills they have learned throughout the school year, as well as foster relationships between deaf and hearing students.”
Dana and Henry are also the directors of Deaf Camp, held in Esopus every summer. Dana shared, “Several of the deaf and hearing students have met each other before from volunteering at camp last summer, and the event encouraged other students to apply this year by igniting their desire to learn more sign language!” Dana currently works at Lexington as a Speech Language Pathologist, and Henry previously worked there as a mental health counselor. He now works as a mental health counselor for the DOE with deaf and hard of hearing students.
At the event on Thursday, students played an ASL handshape game, where someone picks a handshape and then everyone goes around the circle taking turns identifying a sign with that handshape. The winners of the game won Molloy apparel! Another game was telephone, in which participants formed a sentence in ASL and passed it along, alternating between deaf and hearing students. Dana exclaimed, “We watched to see the differences between the initial message and the message that ended up being received by the last person. It provided many belly laughs among the students!” The event was such a success that the Lexington students requested to come back again!
Both moderators share, “We hope this is the start of a great relationship with the Lexington school so our students can build relationships among themselves and expand their skills!”