Connecting with the community
New Mexico School for the Deaf program helps students develop hands-on, social skills at Railyard
Antonio Lopez stood with a shovel in his hand as he paused for a brief break from all the toil, the autumn sun beating down upon his uncovered head in the Santa Fe Railyard. A broad smile formed on the New Mexico School for the Deaf 10th-grader’s face as he returned to the task at hand: shoveling compost to enrich the Railyard’s garden.
He knew he was doing more than just helping the garden grow. He was learning to interact with his community and boosting his own self-esteem as well.
“I feel more confident,” Lopez said in sign language through interpreter Claudia Mansilla. “I know what to do and enjoy the hard work. I enjoy gardening now, and going to the [Farmer’s] market. We have to connect to people without using interpreters.”
And that makes Lopez’s teacher, Daniel Timlen, whose job it is to help his students acquire work and communication skills, happy.
“Antonio is more proud of himself,” Timlen said through Mansilla. “At first he did not want to approach the market vendors at all, he was, ‘no, no, no,’ but you can actually see him growing from, ‘I cannot do this,’ to, ‘Yes, I can.’ “That means a lot to me as a teacher.” Timlen, a student transition instructor, oversees the school’s Community Give Back class, designed to teach and promote social interaction skills that will help students learn job skills that they can take back to their home communities. Students work in a variety of Santa Fe-based environments, and this particular one entails a partnership with the Railyard Park Conservancy.
Each Tuesday, the students join up at the park, collect leftover vegetables from the vendors at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, wheel them over to the Railyard garden, and then dice them up into compost for use on the Railyard’s trees and bushes.
“It gets kids out of the classroom and into the work environment where they get to deal with people who have their own businesses,” said Christy Lee Downs, executive director of the Railyard Park Conservancy. “It’s an educational tool for them, we get some work done in the park and they get to interact with the vendors at the market.”
And beyond focusing on improving speech and language skills for deaf and hard-of-hearing students at the school, located on Cerrillos Road, the program helps improve both their social skills and quality of life, Timlen said.
To that end, the school, which was founded in 1887 and serves some 600 students statewide, offers a number of such programs, including an on-campus Independent Living Skills set-up in which students learn how to pay rent, take care of their living quarters and cook.
And, by getting them out into the community at large, their presence helps those who do not know American Sign Language learn how to connect with them. Sometimes that’s as simple as the students carrying signs to communicate who they are and what they want, and vendors responding with more hand gestures than usual, Lopez said.
Timlen said he has noticed that some of those vendors have learned simple sign language gestures, including “nice to meet you,” and “thank you.”
“Even the exchange of money and math is a way for them to learn about the market,” said vendor Liz Sullivan. “They give to us too. They are so warm and friendly.”
Vendor Naomi Cantor agreed, saying the Community Gives Back class allows for “a beautiful inclusion within our community that works toward something beneficial for both sides.”
New Mexico School for the Deaf student Vergena Chee, a senior, said that sense of inclusion makes others more familiar with the students from the school as well.
“A lot of people walk by here when we work, and it’s nice to see how they get more comfortable communicating with us,” she said.
The students will continue the program through mid-December, when the market closes for the winter.