Signs of Success

Like all good teachers, Chenelle Antonio wants to see her students succeed and thrive. When she sees the kids in her class struggling, she takes it to heart. And her students at the Danny Williams School for the Deaf face a unique set of challenges.

In Jamaica, approximately two percent of the population is deaf or hard of hearing like Chenelle’s students. Studies indicate these students often experience significant language challenges, which can delay their development of knowledge of concepts, vocabulary, and expressive skills. While they will naturally acquire a signed language, students can find learning English difficult because of these developmental delays.

The structure of written English and Jamaican Sign Language are different with each language having their own rules of syntax and grammar. And to make matters worse, there are no specific signs for common words like “is” and “are” in signed languages. This can make it challenging for deaf and hard-of-hearing students to translate signed language to written English.

Chenelle used to worry about her students, who were struggling to express themselves in writing. “At times, my experience was frustrating because after all the hard work and teaching, students would still not ‘get it,’” she said. “At times I felt disheartened and discouraged when I received jumbled sentences and mixed up thoughts.”

Recognizing that deaf and hard of hearing students’ learning needs were not being met, USAID and the Jamaica Association of the Deaf (JAD) joined forces in 2017 to give these children a chance to change their futures. Together, USAID and JAD developed a Jamaican Sign Language Grammar Curriculum, designed to teach Jamaican Sign Language as an independent subject in schools for the deaf, focusing in particular on students in grades 1–13.

To help teachers learn the best approaches to applying the curriculum, USAID and JAD held several intensive training sessions for teachers and deaf culture facilitators across eight schools. Conducted in 2018, these trainings helped teachers learn best practices for teaching the curriculum to their students, one of the more important being that teachers should always explain concepts in the natural language of the deaf and hard-of-hearing students — sign language. In addition, USAID and JAD provided resource kits, which included detailed lesson plans, classroom activities resources, and technological aids to each school.

Chenelle was one of the teachers who participated in the initial training sessions in 2018. After teaching the new beginner’s curriculum, she saw marked results in her students’ ability to recall content: 85 percent of her fifth grade students showed significant improvements in both their first and second language, and 71 percent mastered curriculum objectives.

She is excited about the progress so far: “Notable changes have been seen in the students’ vocabulary, communication, and written language… . Using subject and predicate has become natural for most students when communicating their thoughts. Where written language is concerned…students’ sentence structures are much better and their confidence is through the roof!”

Initial results from the program are encouraging. Approximately 63 percent of students who were in the pilot received a grade of 80 percent or higher on an English language test, a 45 percent increase over the 2018 baseline assessment.

“Jamaican Sign Language as a subject on its own helps students to develop a strong foundation on learning the basics of a language, which is needed to understand more complex structures of the English language,” Chenelle explains. She went on further to say that, in the long-term, these efforts will provide deaf and hard-of-hearing students with a solid educational foundation that will enable them to pursue tertiary level studies; currently, very few deaf and hard-of-hearing students progress beyond secondary school.

Perhaps Chenelle Antonio’s students are the initiative’s best ambassadors.

Nine-year-old Shimmoya Williams was a very weak writer before beginning the program. But she’s seeing progress with the new curriculum — and having fun along the way. She especially loves grammar activities, such as subject/predicate analysis activities that use a sentence structure mat on the classroom floor.

“I always pay attention to what the teacher is asking to ensure that I step on the correct answer on the mat,” Shimmoya says. “The Jamaican Sign Language class impacted me because I love the activities and we had to write every morning and now I love writing!”

Eleven-year-old Saphire Ennis, another of Chenelle ’s students, echoes Shimmoya’s joy: “I am now able to write, read, and express myself better. I am better at everything. I am now independent.”