The Cochrane Christian Academy is now home to Rocky View Schools' first fully deaf and signing student, and a group of teens from Bow Valley High School (BVHS) are making sure his classmates are well-versed in sign language. 

“It’s actually a really neat opportunity,” says Sheldon Betts, BVHS’s sign language teacher. “I've been chatting with Miss Vandenberg since the fall and my kids have been super excited to get to use it in a practical application and also to teach a bunch of conversational signs to his classmates, so they can interact more once we're gone.”

Grade 11 and 12 students took the day to spend time playing signing games and activities with grade one students.

Betts says the grade one class already has a great foundation in sign language. “They all have name signs, which is a really important part of Deaf culture. We started off with our introduction, my students have gotten named signs over the last couple of years as well.”

“They started off right at the very beginning by showing their name signs to the grade ones and they kind of had that instant bond.”

“Sign Language is really interesting and neat for a lot of reasons. One of them is so much variety. So it's been cool to see all the signing variations but it's always similar enough that you can still tell that's the sign that we're used to.” said Betts.

Richard Sampson, Assistant Principal for Cochrane Christian Academy says the entire school has really embraced bringing American Sign Language (ASL) into the hallways.

“It is probably the highlight of my year and one of the highlights of my career as an administrator is seeing how this entire culture has evolved to support him.”

“We are doing an ASL introductory course for our staff and 23 of 28 of our staff have signed up for it and are attending an ASL class for one student.”

"We've had parents approach us asking if we can do ASL classes for their students and we have grade seven kids that are learning ASL on their own to help support and make this child feel welcome.”