Index Card Activities and Critical Thinking

 

First and foremost, I teach to change the world.  The hope that undergrids my efforts to help my students of American Sign Language (ASL) is that doing this will help them act toward each other, and toward ASL, with compassion, understanding, and fairness. But, I must admit, my attempts to increase the amount of love and social justice are never simple, never unambiguous.  What I think is democratic and respectful in my classroom, for example, can be experienced by the students as intimating and constraining.  The cultural, psychological, and political complexities of teaching ASL complicates all other educational ambitions.

I solicit "index card" reactions from my students to foster critical thinking and to create and maintain healthy democracy.  Critical thinking can be seen in the contexts of their personal relationships with ASL, learning to acquire and apply ASL, and academic participations.  Before examing how the "index card" reactions can be useful in the classroom, it is important to understand two central components of this activity.

• The "index card" activity is a productive and positive activity.  Students are actively engaged with critical thinking, learning to acquire and apply ASL.  They see themselves as creating and re-creating aspects of their personal lives.  They appreciate creativity, they are innovators, and they exude a sense that ASL is full of possibilities.

• The "index card" activity is a process, not an outcome. Students write to entail a continual questioning of learning how to acquire ASL.  This process causes them to question their previously trusted assumption about learning and acquisition.  Critical thinking is also triggered  by a joyful, pleasing, or fulfilling event--a "peak" experience.

The idea that students of ASL should place the acquisition of ASL at the center of their academic discourse is not new or original.  Learning ASL as a defining component of ASL acquisition has been practiced and conceptualized in all kinds of social movements, revolutions, and organizations.  The "index card" activity allows them to examine the learning task of acquiring and applying ASL, explore its multiple meaning.  Their questions or comments are also designed to temper their idealism and blunt their triumphalism in ASL acquisition and application.

:-)