Pairing Up and Practicing
sooo. we've done a lot of talking about signs, watching me do signs, thinking about your face while doing signs. today's different. today's the one where i pair you up and make you actually use this stuff on another human being.
i know some of you just felt your stomach drop a little. that's normal. that's the whole reason we're doing it.
why pairing up matters more than practicing alone
here's my honest opinion, and i'll die on this hill: you can drill a sign in your bathroom mirror a hundred times and still freeze the first time a real person signs it back at you. i've watched it happen. i've been it happening.
first sign i ever learned on purpose was "bathroom." there was a kid at sunrise who needed it and i just stood there blank, useless, badge-less. went home that night and drilled it in the mirror like an absolute idiot, over and over, getting the handshape clean. felt great. felt ready.
next day the kid signed something back at me that wasn't bathroom at all and my brain just.. left the building. all that mirror practice and i still froze, because a mirror never signs back. a person does.
that's why we pair up. mirrors don't talk back. your neighbor does.
how we're doing it today
partner up with the person next to you. if you came alone, i'm gonna pair you with somebody, don't hide in the back hoping i forget you exist, i will find you.
here's the drill:
round one. partner a signs one of our six — bathroom, help, wait, okay, thank you, i'm sorry — nice and slow. partner b just receives it. doesn't sign back yet. just watches, reads it, says out loud what they think they saw. then swap.
round two. same six signs, but now you respond. partner a signs "help," partner b signs back "okay" or "wait," whatever fits. keep it slow. we talked about slow being faster a couple lessons back and today's the day that actually gets tested. rushing through this to look smooth just means you'll both end up guessing.
round three. i'll call out a little scenario — "your partner looks upset, check on them" — and you improvise with what you've got. this is where your face has to show up too. remember, your face is grammar, not decoration. if you sign "okay" with a flat, bored face, it reads like a question you don't care about the answer to.
practical stuff for doing this at home
you don't need a class to keep pairing up. this works with:
- your kid at the dinner table
- your spouse while you're both stuck in a waiting room
- a coworker on a slow afternoon
couple of ground rules that'll save you some grief:
go first, badly. somebody has to break the ice and it might as well be you. sign something wrong on purpose if you have to, we've already practiced that. it lowers the temperature for whoever you're with.
don't correct mid-sentence. let your partner finish the whole thing before you jump in with "actually it's like this." nothing kills momentum faster than getting fixed three signs into your first attempt.
slow down when you get nervous, not fast. everybody's instinct under pressure is to speed up, like getting through it quicker makes it less embarrassing. wrong direction. slow down instead.
expect a little failure and let it be funny instead of awful. you will misread each other. you'll sign the wrong thing. somebody's gonna sign "fine" when they meant something else entirely and if you've been in this class a few weeks you know exactly what story i'm referencing there. it happens to everybody, including me, including your instructor, at church, in public, more than once.
one small warning
if you're practicing with somebody who's actually deaf or hard of hearing — not just another beginner from this class — go slower than you think you need to and don't guess wildly if you miss something. it's fine to ask them to repeat a sign slower. that's not rude, that's just how this works. guessing and nodding along like you understood when you didn't is the actual rude move.
before next time
find one person this week — kid, spouse, coworker, doesn't matter — and get through all six signs with them out loud, no mirror allowed. tell me next class how bad round one went. i promise mine was worse.
~terry