Getting Deaf People Interested in Earth Science

NASA has always been a big proponent on helping deaf and hard of hearing students get interested in Earth Science. They go out of their way to help teachers and students from elementary schools to colleges such as Gallaudet University by getting them interested in Earth Science. NASA provides materials such as Earth science captioned videos for classrooms. Or NASA may sponsor science field trips so students can see how the earth system works in such fields as geology, vulcanology (yes, that word does exist), or atmospheric science (“climate”). NASA continuously challenge students to try and excel in school, especially in Earth science. Who knows when one day NASA will have the first ever Deaf/deaf/hh astronaut?

From NASA’s “Signs of Science”:

"Deaf students often do not have good English language skills, so reading is not an automatic alternative to oral explanations," said Ellsworth, a science teacher at Gallaudet University's Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, D.C. "We use sign language and plenty of visuals to teach concepts." Difficulties can arise because their first language -- American Sign Language -- is not a direct translation of English. Sign language has its own structure, grammar and other rules. So, reading English can be a bit like reading a foreign language.

For Earth science, whether students prefer ASL, PSE, SimCom, oral or voice, it doesn’t matter. What matters is to get these students interested in Earth science early on in an environment that they are most comfortable in. Nowadays there are more deaf and hard of hearing professionals that deal with Earth science but the number of them still remains small. I am one of them of the professionals that deal with Earth science. Earth science is an exciting field to be and it is full of discovery. I learn new things almost daily while researching and reading scientific journals in my line of work.

But if you had done your research you'd notice question that there are so few deaf/hh professionals in the field of Earth science. And why is that? And what can you do to help students get interested in Earth science so that they, too, may want to have a career in one of the many fields of Earth science?