ASL Comic Strip
Storyboard Text
- Laurent Clerc
- This is where I fell into that fireplace when I was one year old and that is how I damaged my senses of hearing and smell!!
- Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
- Hii! Mr. Gallaudet
- Hello Alice!!
- I am going to Europe to learn more about Sign Language!!
- Hello!! I am from England too and I am deaf too and I also do sign Language!
- Where it All Began
- Hello!! I am from England and I am deaf and I do Sign Language
- He was born on December 26, 1785 in La Balme-les-Grottes, in southeastern France and when he was about one year old, he fell from his high chair into the kitchen fireplace and his senses of hearing and smell were damaged. His name sign is from the scar on his cheek. He was an educator of the deaf in Paris and returned with Gallaudet to the U.S. While him and Gallaudet were heading to America on a boat or ship, Clerc taught Gallaudet some signs.
- How Gallaudet Met Clerc
- Hey Gallaudet!! We are doing very good and you?
- Hey Cogswell! How are you doing? How is Alice doing?
- Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet is probably the most influential person in the history of ASL. Due to his neighbor's daughter being deaf, he sought a way for her to have an education. This involved going overseas to learn from the best about sign language at National Institute for Deaf-Mutes( the first of its kind in Europe). He took time away from his occupation as a minister in America to eventually minister to Alice and so many more. Gallaudet was thinking both for the present and the future for Americans who were and would eventually be deaf.
- Clerc and Gallaudet Head to America
- Woohoo!! We are going to America and we could probably win some money to establish the first school for the deaf
- Yesss we finally did it Gallaudet!!! Yes we did!! It was very nice to work with you too!
- ASL goes back hundred years ago. when America was not even a nation and it all started in a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts called Martha's Vineyard and some of the colonists from England settled there to live there at the end of the 17th Century and the people were deaf and carried a gene for deafness. By the mid-ninetheenth century, there was a large deaf population on the island and they all spoke sign language and it had developed very good through socializing with each other.
- The First School For The Deaf in America
- We did it Clerc!!! The First School For The Deaf in America!! It was very nice working with you all the way to this point
- Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was a neighbor of Mason Fitch Cogswell. Cogswell was interested in deaf education due to the deafness of his daughter, Alice and the fact that there was no schools for the deaf in the United States at that time. As his neighbor and friend, Gallaudet was very concerned for this situation. In due time, Gallaudet was sent by their supporters to travel to Europe to learn about the teaching methods for the deaf. Earlier, Cogswell had loaned him a treatise- the Theorie des Signes, written by Sicard. When Gallaudet was in London, he was introduced by a member of Parliament to Sicard himself. Sicard, in turn, Introduced Gallaudet to Clerc
- Hello! Nice to meet you Thomas. I am Laurent Clerc
- Hello! I am Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet Nice to meet you.
- Clerc and Gallaudet leave for America on a ship, Mary Augusta on June 18, 1816. The voyage lasts 52 days. They arrive in Hartford on August 22, 1816. From October 1816 to April 1817, they went to Boston, New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, and other places. They informed the public, communicated with prospective students, and interviewed with parents that have deaf children. They raised about $12,000 from the public and the Connecticut General Assembly added an additional $5,000 for the school.
- Yeah!! This is our goal to establish the first school for the deaf
- Laurent Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet established the First School For the Deaf in America on April 15,1817. When they opened the school, there was already 7 students who rented rooms and Alice Cogswell was the first to enroll in the school. The school was originally called the Connecticut Asylum at Hartford for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb. Gallaudet was the principal and Clerc, the head teacher. A year later, the school was filled with poor and uneducated students.
Over 30 Million Storyboards Created