Instead, the teacher - an interpreter - uses her hands to make signs to the eighth-grader, who looks moderately confused. The student has no idea the wind makes noise and cannot imagine what kind of sound it would make if she could hear it.

Crystal Pratt, 15, has been deaf all her life.

As Pratt looks at the front page of a newspaper with her interpreter, Sarah Brown, she picks an article to read as part of her daily language lesson. Pratt points to the headline “Whiteout blankets Northeast” and begins reading the story by signing each word to Brown. The article starts ... “The howling wind ...”

Pratt wrinkles her eyebrows. The only thing she knows about the wind is that it blows her shoulder-length hair. She does not know that the wind also makes a noise.

Brown explains the noise in Pratt’s first language, American Sign Language. A few weeks earlier when Brown told Pratt that water makes noise when it flows from the faucet into the sink, Pratt was amazed. “She said, ‘Really?’ ” Brown said while signing to Pratt. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, everything makes sound.’ ”

Reading the newspaper with Brown is the only way Pratt keeps up on current events. She does not hear about news stories in passing, like most people, and her parents do not know sign language, so she must wait for someone to make a point to tell her about current events.

When the school bell rings telling students that it is time to go to their next class, Pratt does not jump up like most students. She waits for a sign from Brown that the bell is ringing, gathers her belongings and heads to her next class.

Pratt joins the crowd of students in the hallway. Brown is sure to give Pratt freedom while she is in the halls so she can learn to take care of herself and have room to be a teenager. Brown will see Pratt in her next class.

Pratt heads toward teacher Morgan Hensley’s science class. As soon as Pratt walks through the door, her friend Tabitha Graham is signing to her in a rusty form of sign language. “What?” Pratt mouths and shakes her head. Graham wants Pratt to sit in the desk next to her.

Pratt takes her seat next to her friend while other students in the class talk to one another. The students take a few minutes to settle down before Brown and Hensley start the class’ once-a-week American Sign Language lesson that was inspired by Pratt.

Brown and Hensley have been teaching the students basic sign language to help them better communicate with their hearing-impaired classmate.

This day the students are playing a game for their sign language lesson. They sit in two groups on opposite sides of the room while Brown and Hensley stand at the front of the classroom with a tub of candy.

The teachers sign to the class, asking the students what the signs mean and how to make the signs for certain words. The students who answer correctly get candy rewards.

“What is the sign for learn?” Hensley asks the students, while Brown signs the question to Pratt.

A few students raise their hands.

Hensley calls on an eager student who places his fingertips of his right hand on the palm of his left hand and then moves his right hand from his left hand to his forehead. The sign is correct.

“You take the information from the book and put it in your head,” Hensley says as a way to help the students remember the sign.

Pratt watches her classmates. She likes that they are learning her language. “I was excited” when they first started practicing sign language, Pratt says, quickly signing with her hands. “Their signing skills are getting better.”

Pratt is the only deaf student at the middle and high school this year and one of eight hearing-impaired students in the Southwestern Jefferson County School Corp.

In most of her classes at the middle school, Pratt cannot talk with other students. But in the English and math classes that she takes at the elementary school with other hearing impaired students, Pratt is able to communicate with all the other children and teachers in her class. In her English and math classes the teachers and students do not speak, they only sign.

Hensley asks the class, “What is the sign for book?”

Pratt, who started learning American Sign Language when she was 5, raises her hand and Brown points to her. Pratt starts with her hands in a prayer-like position, then she opens them as one would a book.

“She’s going to get them every time,” Quentin Smith, one of Pratt’s classmates, says.

Pratt’s answer is correct, and she reaches out to catch a fun-sized bag of Skittles. The candies make a smacking sound as they land in her hands.

By Jenny Jones
Photo credits go to The Madison Courier