Sharing by Shawn Low
December 31st, 2009
Hi there!
My name is Shawn Low and I received my NYAA Gold Award in 2004. At present, I am a third-year student at Harvard College majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology. I am concurrently pursuing a teaching certification in science through the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE) as part of a joint program between the college and the GSE.
My college experience in the United States has been as colorful as it has been exciting. But, rather than bore you with a laundry list of my activities, I wish to share on one aspect of my time here that I have found particularly meaningful - community service.
In my spare time, I am a volunteer with the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Allston - a short 10 min bus ride away from campus. Horace Mann is the oldest public day school in the United States for Deaf students. The school traces its founding to nearly a century and a half ago, and was associated with historical figures such as Helen Keller and Alexander Graham Bell.
At the school, I am involved in an innovative project in vocational training called Scanworks. Modeled as a ‘business within the classroom’, Scanworks aims to equip Deaf students with digital imaging skills while allowing them to make some pocket money through the profits generated. Students are taught on-the-job and previous clients have included institutions like the Boston Teachers Union and the Allston-Brighton Museum. My role in this project has been two-fold, first as a mentor to these students, and then to advise the students on the operational aspects of the business.
Communication was (and in some sense still is) an issue I had to grapple with right from the start. Coming from Singapore, I am not fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). My knowledge of ASL is limited to those signs shared between the sign language system in Singapore and ASL. Unsurprisingly, when I first started, I felt like much like a duck out of water. I had all these ideas that I wanted to implement with the students, but being new and not knowing the language well were two large impediments.
The new is at once both a challenge and a promise. One thing that I have learnt through the NYAA programme and through my own experience with GAHA is that teething issues are extremely common whenever something new is put in place. It could be a new relationship between people, a new way of doing things, or even a new project altogether. However, this does not imply that one should give up. It just means that more time needs to be devoted to analyze these issues carefully. What I find keeps me going in tough times like that is the promise that an idea holds or what I want to see happen. I find great excitement in this sense of possibility.
Over time, I made an effort to pick up ASL signs relevant to the business. I tried to make use of more non-verbal cues to interact with the students. Instead of shrinking away from them, I forced myself to confront the language barrier. Sure, there were times when it became awkward and we needed to call an interpreter in. However, even as there were difficulties in communicating our ideas, the mutual sense of trust and sincerity was never once questioned. Both sides were willing to make this work. And sure enough, things did progress much faster after those initial weeks.
I have been with Scanworks for nearly one and a half years now and I am happy to say that the business now has a systematic workflow for all incoming and outgoing jobs. I helped to develop a system of accounting for all new jobs to ensure a high level of quality control. In fact, the students themselves saw the value of having a proper system in place to organize work especially when the work orders started to pile up. Personally, if they were able to recognize the value of systems in organizing work, at least half of the class objectives would have already been achieved - for they would then bring that same mindset and apply it in whatever field they may endeavor.
Volunteering with Scanworks has been a meaningful way for me to spend part of my mornings each week. I think it is an interesting model of education that is quite unlike anything that I have seen in Singapore. Nonetheless, regardless of how novel or revolutionary this concept may be, I still find in it the same ingredients that make any successful project - hard work, ingenuity and resilience.
Entry Filed under: Feature: GAHA Member, Global Connect
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