ASL Training

A huge thank you to two of our American Sign Language and Deaf Studies faculty, Mr. Nicholas Norman and Ms. Alene White. They provided an informative training to resource officers working in Memphis Shelby County Schools on how to interact with Deaf/Hard of Hearing students in the school system in mid-July. Over 40 officers were trained in best practices and provided with an ASL lesson to aid them in communicating with Deaf/Hard of Hearing students. The lesson included emergency related signs such as fire, evacuate, take cover, and more. The officers were also provided with additional resources created at the university such as “Best Practices when communicating with Deaf/Hard of Hearing individuals” and small cards with the ABCs printed on them. Nicholas and Alene considered the first training to be an amazing success. They are looking forward to providing more outreach in the coming year. They plan to provide a similar training to University of Memphis police officers this fall.

If you are interested in these trainings, please contact Nicholas Norman, 901-678-5829 or nnorman@memphis.edu.