Sharon Staehle

Assistant Professor of American Sign Language

Staehle believes that students majoring in American Sign Language (ASL) need to interact with deaf people.

“I was born deaf and I am here for [students] to take advantage,” said Staehle. “I can share things firsthand—be a liaison between the deaf community and students.”

Staehle teaches courses aimed at “building ASL comprehension and production skills” and those meant to foster an “understanding of ASL as part of literature, culture and history.” Those courses are taken by ASL and ASL-English Interpreting majors alike.

“Students must have ASL skills and deaf culture knowledge before they can pursue advanced interpreting courses,” explained Staehle.

Staehle’s approach to teaching ASL is “direct.”

“We use sign first,” said Staehle. “I demonstrate each sign to the class and students are expected to copy each sign with me for some time. Then, students work in pairs, demonstrating signs with each other while I check them in class to make sure that they use the correct sign productions.”

Staehle’s students keep journals, “which are just between me and them, and I write my comments. They ask a lot of questions and we often discuss things through e-mail. There’s also an interpreter, and my door is always open.”

Staehle has served as a deaf-blind interpreter for more than 25 years. She relates her experience as such when teaching deaf culture.

“Tactile—hands on hands—is the favored approach,” said Staehle, who is not the only deaf ASL faculty member. Professor of American Sign Language Dorothy Wilkins is also deaf. She and Staehle work collaboratively on ASL courses “to develop a spiral approach in building ASL skills as a part of language development,” said Staehle. They have discussed taking turns teaching certain courses such as Linguistics of American Sign Language (taught in ASL) in the near future.

“Word order is one difference between English and ASL,” said Staehle, who added that the ASL program hosts a deaf culture speaker series every year. The year before last, a deaf student was enrolled at the College and Staehle hopes more deaf students enroll in the future.