Encourage Your Incarcerated Loved One to Learn Sign Language

When I took my plea for my federal indictment, I had to turn myself in and go to a federal holding facility to await sentencing. I was on a large indictment with 29 people, so I knew it was going to take a while. They don’t sort through security levels, so everyone is automatically put in maximum security. This means we were locked down in our housing units for 23 hours a day and could go outside for an hour if the weather permitted. While inside, you can go in the dayroom and watch TV, you can read, sleep, do a prison style workout in your cell, or you can sometimes take classes. I’m not much of a sleeper and TV doesn’t interest me much, so I pretty much bounced off the walls working out. However, when a class was offered, I was jumping up and down to get signed up for it.

I’m a college graduate and I spent a year in law school but that didn’t stop me for signing up for every single class including GED prep classes. I even took the pretests for fun. Yes, I am kind of a nerd. I have mad respect for those that go the GED route, those tests were no joke.

There was a sweet lady that ran the classes or “education” department at this facility. She mostly showed videos from the 80’s but it was worth it to get out of the unit and exercise some brain cells.

The lady retired and a new guy took over. He was much younger and had big ideas and offered more updated classes. He offered a sign language course and I was excited to sign up. I had never considered trying my hand at sign language. Ha ha get it! My dad sent me a study book that was helpful.

The classes were a lot of fun. He mostly taught out of a book and it was great. It’s not hard, but you must put some effort into it. Like anything you do with your body, it requires muscle memory and you need to practice getting good at it. The class was only once a week, but it was the highlight of my week. Little by little we got pretty good at it.

When the class was over, I still read the book but didn’t really have anyone to interact with. If you don’t use it, you will lose it, and fast.

My stay in federal holding was coming to an end, so I sent my sign language book home with my dad and mom. I thought about leaving it behind, but I thought I might need it again. You just never know when a sign language book might come in handy. Sorry I did it again.

When I got to this prison camp, I decided to continue my overachiever status and went straight to education to see about classes. There was nothing to sign up for, so I had to wait a few months before the next round of classes started.

I met this cool girl that had spent a lot of time learning sign language. I can’t remember how many years she had taken it in school, but she was pretty good. She could even do the Jackson 5 ABC song. I was so impressed. I found out that she would be teaching sign language on the next round of classes and I couldn’t wait to sign up.

I had my dad send my trusty old book back and I signed up to take the class. It turned out that she was teaching off photocopies from the book I had. Yes, once again, it sure came in handy. I really enjoyed the class and things were coming back pretty easy from what I had learned from before. About halfway through the course she started talking to me about teaching the class. She had plans to transfer to another prison and needed someone to take over for her. I had fallen in love with teaching fitness classes and found that teaching something really helps me to improve, so I said yes.

I will never forget the first day I had to teach. The class only had about 10 people, which was great because I was a wreck. One of my students was my coworker in the warehouse where I work during the day. She had been my guinea pig for the previous week. So, when I got nervous, I just focused on her and was able to pull it off. The course flew by and the next thing I knew they were talking to me about doing a sign language 2 class. Before my friend had left, she had put it together and so I agreed.

I’m now on my third session of teaching. Every time it’s the first day of class I get completely overwhelmed and think I’m an idiot for trying to teach something I am not that good at. My classes keep growing and now I have 20 students. I’m quick to let everyone know that I am going to teach out of a book and learn right along with them. This session has been a lot of fun and I am finally feeling more comfortable teaching.

I don’t want to be in prison, but I am so grateful for the things I am learning. I doubt I would have ever taken sign language in my life and I know I never would have had an opportunity to teach.

I encourage others to teach when given the opportunity. It is a blessing to help others learn. It’s also a blessing to be able to get this experience in a place where I don’t feel judged. The common theme of my life right now is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and to take every opportunity to learn new things. Learning and teaching sign language has been a great experience that I hope to continue, and I encourage others to try.