Kimberly Anderson

American Sign Language students from levels three and four volunteer monthly at Paws With A Cause.

Students from levels three and four of the American Sign Language classes leave campus with their ASL teacher, Kimberly Anderson, once a month to travel to Wayland, Michigan. There, they volunteer with Paws With A Cause, a non-profit organization that trains dogs for people with disabilities.

“I’ve been involved with Paws With A Cause for at least three years, but we didn’t start [going to volunteer] until last year,” Anderson said. “It used to be that I would have someone come in, bring their Paws dog, and show us examples [with the hearing dog].”

The organization trains dogs specifically to their person, so when they are training hearing dogs, those dogs go to their person’s house and train with them. The problem with this setup is that the trainers did not know any ASL, and Anderson wanted to help with that. Taking her students down to help the volunteers at Paws With A Cause was how she helped change things there.

“The biggest reason I wanted to go [volunteer at Paws With A Cause] was because when a woman came [to our class] to present about the hearing dogs, she said that no one at Paws knew [ASL],” Anderson said. 

Not only do the students’ visits impact the volunteers and their understanding of the language, but the students also get to create memories and watch the volunteers learning ASL to help others. Senior Sydney Boersma, who is an independent study student, has enjoyed going to Paws With A Cause and seeing the impact that her help has, knowing that the volunteers learning ASL help significantly when they are interacting with the people they are training the hearing dogs for.

“I obviously love going down and snuggling with the dogs,” Sydney said, “but honestly, it feels kinda great just to go down and know that I’m helping someone who might not have thought that [ASL] would have been a possibility for them to learn something.”

The volunteers at Paws With A Cause learning ASL are an important part of helping the Deaf community. To senior Claire Busch, who is also an independent study student, playing with the dogs is always a plus side, but helping the Deaf community is the bigger picture for the students in the ASL classes.

“[What’s cool to me] is knowing that we’re helping the Deaf community,” Claire said, “and also that we get to play with dogs.”

Teaching the volunteers ASL is not only important, but it has also been a ton of fun for the ASL students. Different games and activities are set up to help the volunteers understand the words and vocabulary more effectively.

“There was one day that we did kind of a game of telephone with all the people in the room for the volunteers when we were teaching them [ASL],” Sydney said. “That was really fun because you could see the moment it clicked with them, and then they showed the next person with the sign.”

Once a month, from second through fourth hour last year, the ASL classes would visit Paws With A Cause. Although the ASL classes themselves have yet to go to work with Paws With A Cause this year, the independent study students enjoy going down and helping out on their own time.

“[Sydney and I] have been down to Paws With A Cause because for independent study, we have to do volunteer hours,” Claire said. “We decided that one of these we would do is Paws With A Cause, because we wanted to continue with it.”

Learning ASL is not only beneficial for the volunteers to communicate with the people they are working with, but also to communicate with each other. Within the loud environment that the volunteers can be in, ASL is an easy way to communicate. It can also be easier when they are further away from each other, so that they don’t yell over each other and the background noise.

“I think with the signs that we were teaching them that there was a good amount of signs that they would use among staff members,” Sydney said, “which was really cool, because the kennels are really loud, so it’s not always possible to hear someone across the room if you’re trying to tell them about a specific thought.”