I have been flirting with the idea of tackling a doctoral program. I keep talking about it…I keep looking at programs…not really sure when flirtation becomes an obsession.

I still don’t know if I want to actually DO this. A doctorate is a mountain of work. I’m 61. I already have a master’s degree. I have a job I LOVE and I’m not looking. It’s not a huge payscale leap and I don’t want to leave my classroom. I don’t want to become an administrator or a professor or climb some professional ladder that I’m not even particularly interested in climbing. I really just have an itch to deeply study my wonderings.

I’m here because I want to broaden my view. I want to know what other educators are thinking about. I want to hear from people who know things I don’t know and have experiences I haven’t had. I want somebody to challenge my assumptions…to push back as I plough forward.

The more I wonder about teaching, the more things I want to know. And there is one question I can’t seem to tamp down…it keeps bubbling up.

I teach hearing teenagers ASL. They take it for a year…or two…or three…and then they graduate.

What the heck happens then? What happens to the ASL?

I mean really. What happens to it?

Of course I think about the obvious people. The kid who becomes an interpreter. The kid who becomes an ASL teacher or a teacher of Deaf students. Someone who keeps studying ASL in college.

But I think I might be even more curious about everybody else. What about the kid who becomes a nurse? An accountant? A mechanic? A parent? What about the person who hasn’t signed in 12 years and then one day suddenly has a Deaf coworker? And what about the person who says, “Oh yeah…I took ASL in high school. I don’t remember any of it.”

I want that person too. Maybe especially that person, because…do they really remember NOTHING?

Maybe they don’t. That’s certainly possible…and a little interesting.

But maybe they don’t remember how to sign very much and they DO remember something about Deaf culture. Maybe they understand why a Deaf person might request an interpreter. Maybe something they learned when they were 15 sits there quietly for years until life gives them a reason to reach for it again.

I don’t know…that’s the itch.

And before I get too carried away with the idea that I have stumbled upon some fascinating question nobody has ever thought to ask before…ha ha…I should probably find out what people have already asked.

Soooooo…I ordered some books.

I just handed Jeff Bezos 130 bucks for books, actually, because what teacher doesn’t hemorrhage money for the sake of bettering their work?

Russell Rosen’s Learning American Sign Language in High School: Motivation, Strategies, and Achievement is on its way to me, along with The Routledge Handbook of Sign Language Pedagogy.

I haven’t read them yet. They are literally in the mail while my credit card lies smoldering on the desk.

I have NO idea what I’m going to find in them, which is kind of exciting. Maybe researchers already know quite a bit about the things I’m wondering about. Maybe I’ll find questions I haven’t even considered. Maybe I’ll follow somebody’s references into a completely different body of research and disappear down there for a while.

I’ve already learned that there is a whole area of research around second-language attrition…basically, what happens to a language after someone stops studying or using it.

Attrition.

I didn’t even know that was a word I needed.

But I’m starting to realize that I may not be asking only about language retention.

I’m dancing around a much bigger question, one that sounds WAY too massive to research. Does learning ASL in high school eventually make any difference in the lives of Deaf people these students encounter? Could some of that impact be positive? Could some of it be negative? What would Deaf people say actually matters?

Because I can’t spend years studying what hearing people gained from learning ASL and never stop to ask whether any of it matters to the Deaf people they eventually encounter.

Maybe my former student says, “Taking ASL changed the way I think about Deaf people.”

Okay.

What would a Deaf person say?

I don’t know if those answers would match.

See what is happening here? I started with one question and now I have 47. 😂

Which, I suppose, is why I need to read.

I’m not doing a literature review. I am nowhere near doing a literature review. Right now I’m trying to figure out what literature I would need to review if I ever decided to do this for real. I need to read about hearing people learning ASL, teenagers learning ASL, language attrition, career pathways…and I absolutely need to read Deaf scholars who might make me look at my whole question differently.

I actually hope the reading messes with my question.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe I want to read until my question changes.

And if you’re an ASL teacher, Deaf scholar, language researcher, CTE person, doctoral student, former doctoral student, or just someone reading this thinking, Cori…you need to read ______…please tell me.

I’m still standing at the bottom of the mountain trying to decide whether I really want to climb it.

I’ve already spent about $130 on hiking gear…thanks Jeff.

Soooooo…now I wait for them to arrive.