The Embodied Classroom: Deaf Gain in Multimodal Composition and Digital Studies
The article I chose discussed how classrooms and schools should could benefit from utilizing embodies discourses and visual-spatial metaphors. Able bodied students today have seemingly perfected the means to communicate with minimal to zero effort in the class room today; shrugged shoulders, crossed arms, a perfect blank stare. But with this there is no means of actual interaction for the student as they’ve “perfected” this false attentiveness. This article is trying to move students in hearing classes from people in the audience to the performers on main stage, in other words getting them actually physically engaged. The article further explains “Deaf Gain”, an approach that deafness shouldn’t be looked at a ‘loss of hearing’ but rather deafness gives you something you gain and can learn from. It’s also important we use our bodies to the fullest of their ability, as in many deaf classrooms every piece of physical movement is a means of communication and every brow raise, shoulder shrug, hand signal carries meaning and a message. It’s also important to not only have such embodiment in a physical or compositional classroom setting but to have this be manifested in the digital classroom. Overall, we need to get back to our roots and be people again and this is especially necessary in the classrooms where the embodiment of culture can make our differences something we can learn from rather than be something that separates us.