For nearly a decade now, Rachel Coleman has been bridging the worlds of the Deaf and hearing with the Silly Pizza Song. Now a Deaf couple in San Francisco are using actual pizza to do the same thing!

Read more about Melody and Russell Stein and their Mission District restaurant, Mozzeria in this recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mozzeria employees use ASL to communicate

Deaf couple launch pizza place in the Mission

Paolo Lucchesi, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 5, 2012

As at most new and noteworthy restaurants in San Francisco’s Mission District, there’s a full house during the dinner rush at Mozzeria, a month-old Italian restaurant and pizzeria.

Every one of the 45 or so seats is full. There’s a slight hint of smoke in the air, thanks to the huge wood-fired oven in the middle of the narrow dining room. Music is playing, but the din is noticeably muted.

A waitress carrying two full plates meanders through the crowd, stopping short of a standing patron blocking her path. With both hands full, she can’t tap him on the shoulder. And before sidestepping and successfully swiveling by, she can’t ask him to move, because the diner is deaf. And so is she. Continue Reading »

This post is by Joanna Smith of Surprise, AZ and is part of our Making a Difference series.

My family and I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game the other weekend in Phoenix.  At the end of the game we went down to meet the players.  I saw a mom and her approx. 8 year old boy signing to each other (way faster than I could even understand).  It appeared that they were both deaf.  I pointed them out to my 12 year old daughter (who learned to sign from Signing Time over the past four years).   I told her to go sign to him.  She was immediately nervous, but when I pointed out that she knew how to sign, “Did you like the basketball game?”, she wanted to try it out. She approached him and got his attention from a little ways away.

She signed to him,  “Did you like the basketball game?”
He looked completely shocked and signed back, “Yes.”
“Me too!” she replied.

The mom saw him sign to someone else and turned around to see who it was.  I smiled and waved at her and we left.   My daughter and I were so excited from this experience.  She had just had a conversation (brief as it was) with a stranger in a foreign language.  He probably didn’t even know about Signing Time.  It was a great witness to me that what I have been teaching my children for the past four years is a REAL LANGUAGE!!!

Due to our experience with Signing Time, an opportunity was created for my daughter to “talk” with someone with her hands.  It was AWESOME!!  There is a deaf lady that works as Target in our town.  I want to take all of my kids there to practice their signing with her.  I bet she would love it.

Michelle Francis, a teacher in Layton, Utah, posted this video  to the Signing Time Facebook page the other day and asked if we recognized the song her students were singing – and signing – in the video. Do you recognize it? (Hint: It’s a really “silly” song!)

Michelle is making a difference in her students lives with the help of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that helps teachers get donations for specific classroom resources. She asked for – and got – an amazing collection of Signing Time materials, including most of the Series 1 DVDs, all of the Series 2 DVDs, the Practice Time DVDs and get this, the Classroom Edition, too!

Here’s the letter that Michelle sent to her donors after she received the Classroom Edition:

This project was my dream project. In the weeks since I’ve received the Signing Time Classroom Edition and the other movies, I have been impressed with how much the 125 students in 2nd grade are able to remember from week to week. When I come into their classroom, they know they are going to be learning something fun.
I watched as one little boy was signing to another little boy across the lunchroom to see if he had remembered a ball for recess. Instead of resorting to yelling, they used their newly taught signs to ask questions. The games, activities, and flash cards are so helpful in helping my students learn and remember the signs.

So far this year, we’ve learned about eating, drinking, and basic food. We’ve also learned fruits and vegetables. The goal is to have them learn emotions, colors, days of the week, family words, school words, and a lot more. At the rate they are learning, we will have time to get through all of these.

Thank you, I honestly was struggling to come up with fun, meaningful activities to support their learning in sign language.

With gratitude,
Mrs. F.

We are sending Michelle a $25 SigningTime.com gift card to thank her for making a difference with Signing Time. We invite you to share your Making a Difference story. If we publish your story, we’ll send you a gift card, too!

P.S. Did you guess the song? It’s the Silly Pizza Song from Vol. 3 DVD: Everyday Signs!

Making a Difference

Many of you are using Signing Time products to improve the quality of life for children and families in your community. We LOVE hearing about all the amazing volunteer work and community service projects you are doing to “pay it forward!” You inspired us to create a monthly blog post called “Making a Difference” so we can share your stories with other signing families.

Send us your story about your community project! If it is chosen for the blog, you’ll receive a $25 gift card* to be used at www.signingtime.com.

How to submit your story

1.   Take photos of your community service event or project in action

2.   Attach the photos to an email addressed to makingadifference@signingtime.com

3.   Describe your project in the body of the email.

4.   Add your name, address and phone number – and hit send!

*Signing Time Academy Instructors are encouraged to submit their stories, but are not eligible for the gift card.

By Derek Brown – AKA Alex’s dad, Leah’s Uncle

I chose to run a half marathon because I am in fantastic shape, I knew it would be easy, and I thought it would be a pleasurable experience.  Well, not really.  Actually, I chose to do it because my 11-year-old, Alex, decided to do it and asked me if I was up to doing it   with him.  What would you do?

Now, just a bit of friendly advice here:  if you are going to run a half marathon, there is the way to do it, and then, of course, there is the way not to do it.  Alex did it the way it is supposed to be done.  And I, of course, chose the road less traveled (pun intended).

Here is how Alex prepared:  He trained for several months with a kids’ running group.  He ran three days a week with them, starting with just a few miles a day, and later worked up to the point where he was running 6-8 miles in a day, several times a week.  He trained, conditioned, and even did the obligatory “carb-load” the day before the marathon.  He was fit, rested, and ready to go the morning of the marathon.

Now for my pre-marathon training schedule.  It consisted of energy performance drinks (Diet Coke), finger exercises (returning hundreds of e-mails daily), regular stretching exercises (standing up occasionally at my desk), and the lifting heavy objects (like stacks of paper on and off the desk.)

Actually, Alex and I did have one thing in common:  when the race was about to begin we both felt great!  We started running with Team Coleman/Strong Enough, and I lost track of Alex after the first mile or so.  I started to look behind me, scanning the crowd to see if I could spot Alex someplace in the mass of people immediately behind me.  Several of our Team Coleman/Strong Enough teammates asked me who I was looking for.  I replied, “I’ve lost Alex. I don’t see him.”  They all started laughing and said, “If you want to see him, why don’t you quit looking behind you!”  Apparently, Alex was way ahead of me within the first mile or so, and that never changed.

Alex, of course, has a kind heart, and at one point he waited for me to catch up to him and then we ran together for a while.  Within a short period of time he was way ahead of me again, but he then waited up for me.  After the third time doing this, he said “Dad, do you mind if I just kinda keep on going?”  (Translation:  “Dad, you are a major drag here.  How am I supposed to run a serious half-marathon when I’m pulling an out-of-shape lawyer behind me?  Seriously, man, be sure to hydrate, call a cab if you pass out, and I’ll see you at the finish line.  That is, if you make it.”)

That was about mile three.  From that point on, as I was jogging, I saw a lot of people along the route that I recognized.  They all shouted, almost word-for-word, the same thing:  “Good job!  Did you know that Alex is waaaaaay up there ahead of you?  Did you know that?  Like, waaaaaaay ahead of you!”  My response was always “Yeah, isn’t he amazing?”  (Translation:  “Man, you’re slow.  Your 11-year-old son is completely dusting you.  Seriously, pick up the pace.”  Translation of my response:  “Thanks for telling me something I didn’t already know.  Wow, I feel so much better now.  Except that my ankles are still screaming at me, my knees are still pounding, and I would give anything if I could just do something so much more enjoyable, like have a cavity filled or get a root canal.”)

When I hobbled across the finish line, Alex was there waiting to greet me, with a big smile on his face.  “Good job, Dad!” he said.  In the end, he finished about ten minutes ahead of me, and got a bronze medal for his age group.    It was so rewarding, however, to see so many Signing Time fans and friends at the finish line.  Leah looked fantastic, Lucy had just been on her first half-marathon, and Rachel and Aaron looked like they had just warmed up and were ready for a real run.  Alex then proceeded to spend the rest of his day playing with Leah, running around, and doing what kids do (as I tried to recover on the sofa).

The next morning as I got out of bed, my ankles and knees refused to work, and notwithstanding my Advil, I could hardly walk straight.  And stairs?  Forget about it.  There was no going up or down stairs.  For the next few days I walked as though I had just added about 50 years onto my body.  Seeing my condition, Alex assured me that he, too, was sore.  (I didn’t buy it, of course.)  In the end, it took several days for people to stop asking “Hey, what happened?  Why are you walking funny?”

So, the real question:  would I be crazy enough to do it all over again?  Absolutely!  (Next time, however, I will follow Alex’s training schedule to prepare.)