When signing up for a foreign language at West High, students are given three options; French, Spanish and German. While the selections are relatively prominent languages, Kaitlyn Hall, a freshman and my little sister, found one option to be missing.

Hall was born with progressively worsening hearing loss, which left her in need of cochlear implants. While everyone else can converse with no trouble, Hall will occasionally mishear things or just not hear you in general. However, there is a solution; sign language.

Sign Language is a series of hand signals that have different meanings that are made for deaf and hard of hearing people in order to allow them to communicate. When Hall found out sign language was not an option at West , was upset. “I was a little frustrated about it because, well, sign language is kind of important to me and I really wanted to learn it. Then I just go and find out, oh, it’s not even being taught and I can’t take the class,” she said.

Sign language has never been taught in Waterloo Community School District. “To me, it is important to know sign language, even if I don’t know it, because I am you know, deaf. It’s helpful to have sign language be a class you can take or something everyone knows because it would make life so much easier. If my implants were to die in a public space and I don’t have batteries, being able to communicate with somebody would be very helpful,” Hall explained that when her cochlear implants die, she resorts to lip reading, a skill that is not always accurate due to everyone having different speech patterns. Sign language would be a good alternative because it is easier to understand in comparison to lip reading.

Sign language does not have to just be taught as a stand alone class. Hall shares that she believes it could be implemented and taught alongside English. With this implementation, “I think, if it was possible to do so, I think it would be a great idea to have sign language being taught alongside English. Then, it would just be so much easier for everybody to do stuff and not have to learn sign language later on in life,” she said.

The school system has taught us how to read, speak and write at a young age, a skill that is important and hard to forget. Since they are ingrained in our minds, it is safe to assume that if we teach sign language at a young age that we will not forget it any time soon.

A big problem with schools not offering sign language is that several colleges accept it as a foreign language. For it to be accepted as a foreign language, offering it in high schools would not be a setback; it will help students get into colleges, killing two birds with one stone.

Living with a deaf sibling taught me a few things, most importantly that even with a disability, they are the same as everyone else. With that being said, why Should they not have the right to communicate with us as well? In fact, countless colleges accept ASL as a foreign language. The question is no longer “if we should,” but rather “why do we not offer it already?”