My Most Memorable Teacher Ever!
I remember walking into my first day of American Sign Language 1 on my first day of sophomore year. I'm not sure why but I was expecting to see a tall, blonde woman who would be teaching my class. I also assumed she would have perfect hearing. Yet when I crossed the threshold into the classroom, I laid my eyes on Ms. Jody Lynn Tolley, a short, brunette woman. This wouldn’t be the last time I felt shocked in the next few years studying ASL.
The bell rang and she began to sign to us at a speed that seemed impossible to understand. She started pointing to each of us and different objects around the classroom in an effort to get us to respond. I panicked, thinking she was deaf and that I would fail the class because there was no way I could learn this language.
After about 5 minutes of the class staring wide-eyed at her with very little response, she put her hands in her pockets and began to speak to us in English. The first thing she told us was that she is hard of hearing. She has Meniere's disease, a disorder that affects the inner ear. She explained that the inner ear contains tubes filled with fluid called “labyrinths," and that the inner ear is responsible for your balance and hearing. This disorder often caused her vertigo (a sensation of spinning), hearing problems, and a ringing sound in her ears, things I had never even had to think about! In the space of an hour, I felt like my whole worldview had been disrupted.
Continuing, she informed us that this would not be an easy A. She explained that she expected us to do our best work every day that we were in her class. In addition, she told us that even though it would get tough sometimes she knew that each and every one of us could succeed in her class. While I found this to be true, she definitely wasn't wrong about the class being challenging.
She also told us that we were going to need to interact with actual Deaf people. The thought was paralyzing. I had no idea how to communicate a full sentence in ASL yet and she wanted me to go and have a full on conversation with someone fluent in the language?? No way! But I knew that there was no way I could get around having this experience, so after class I found a Deaf student at my school and we talked for a good 20 minutes. It was the most stressful 20 minutes I had ever experienced. However, I felt so much more confident in my abilities to succeed in class afterward.
A large part of her instructional focus was learning about the Deaf culture. We learned how different their interactions are from hearing culture. For example, it is considered very rude to walk in between 2 people having a conversation, but it isn't rude to walk up to someone and ask them if they've gained a lot of weight recently. The Deaf culture is very open about everything because they value communication and connectedness. As I became involved in this culture, I learned to value communication as well as to be open and accepting of another way to look at the world around me.
For the 3 years that I was in Ms. Tolley's classes, we went to ASL Competition. ASL Competition is a gathering of high schools across the state of Utah that come together to compete in categories including receptive, expressive, cinema, and art. My senior year, I competed in the Receptive category and took first place in the state! To compete, I was to watch a video with my competitors and answer a series of questions about what was talked about in the video. Whoever remembered the most and answered the most questions correctly won. Before I went into the room to compete, I told my teacher that I was really nervous. She told me that I was the best student she could have picked for this category and that she knew I could do it. Because of the connection of friendship and trust that we had built over the last few years, those simple words of encouragement gave me the confidence and assurance I needed to succeed.
Before graduation, Ms. Tolley sat those of us that had made it to ASL 3 down to have a little pep talk. She told us how proud she was of the progress we had made not only in the language, but in our characters as well. There was one sentence she said that still resonates with me. "Go out and make the world a better place." A couple of days later, the seniors all got together and wrote our hopes and dreams for our futures down on slips of paper, put them into balloons, and released them into the sky. Her inspiring invitation went in my balloon.
I credit Jody Lynn Tolley for much of who I am today. She taught me to value and develop qualities such as patience, confidence, extroversion, openness, acceptance, determination, and the desire to help others. She pushed her students to their limits of knowledge, creativity and confidence, driving us to become better. She expected so much from us on projects and performances that sometimes it seemed impossible to deliver. And yet, she always made sure that we succeeded both within and without the classroom. She always made sure to genuinely care about each of us, individually. This love made a huge difference in the motivation we had to complete the quality of work she expected, and continues to inspire her present and past students. I know, because to this day I still walk out my apartment door every morning with the determination to “go out and make the world a better place.”
