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3/17/2021 ‘Outside, Inside’ Is a Time Capsule That Helps Kids and Adults Reflect on Pandemic Life - MindShift
Why Deaf Students Need Access to ASL Stories During

Distance Learning
By Kara Newhouse Aug 31, 2020
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For Melissa Malzkuhn, the best part of creating storybook apps in American Sign Language
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and English is seeing children’s reactions. “They retell the stories, or they pick up a sign or
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57503/outside-inside-is-a-time-capsule-that-helps-kids-and-adults-reflect-on-pandemic-life 1/11
phrase, or they repeat something they find funny. It's incredible, always incredible and
uplifting when you see kids learning, absorbing and enjoying,” she said.
Malzkuhn is the founder and creative director of Gallaudet University’s Motion Light Lab.
Since 2013 her team has worked with Deaf storytellers and artists to create bilingual stories
for their VL2 ASL Storybook Apps. Exposure to stories in ASL is essential for young Deaf
students, she said. “ASL is their natural visual language, and they learn swiftly. You can see
the foundations being built.”
But with schools across the country closed amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Deaf children have
less access to such stories. About 73% of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children live in homes
where family members do not regularly sign, according to a 2014 national survey by Gallaudet
University. And according to Malzkuhn, many online educational resources being
recommended to families right now are dependent on audio. Even when captions or
transcriptions are available, Deaf children who are learning to read are unable to use those
resources. “They need ASL access, and strong ASL models to develop literacy skills. With
strong ASL skills, it bridges right into learning how to read and write,” Malzkuhn said.
That’s why, as schools across the country moved to distance learning in March, her team
opened free access to their storybook apps. They weren’t alone in their efforts. Educators and
advocates across the Deaf community have curated lessons, created storytime videos and
organized events to support Deaf students’ literacy. “It's been fantastic seeing how the Deaf
community has rallied together through this, with our creativity, storytelling and our sense of
community accountability for all Deaf children,” Malzkuhn said.
Here are six ASL resources to help Deaf students engage with books and storytelling during
distance learning.
ASL Literacy Activities from the Motion Light Lab
In addition to making one of the VL2 Storybook Apps available for free each week, Malzkuhn’s
team responded to COVID-19 school closures by launching a website full of related resources.
ASL Literacy Activities includes daily ASL literacy lessons, games, a sample schedule for Deaf
education at home and other materials.
#OperationASLStorytime
With
you a majority
disable them. of schools closed for the rest of the year, online read-alouds have become a
popular literacy tool among educators and authors themselves. In mid-March actor
Shoshannah
I Accept Stern, who plays Dr. Riley on Grey’s Anatomy, encouraged her social media
followers to create and share ASL storytime videos using the hashtag
#OperationASLStorytime. Stern shared a video of herself signing “Where the Wild Things
Are” by Maurice Sendak. Dozens of signers have followed her lead on Instagram and YouTube.
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Where the Wild Things Are #OperationASLStorytime
ASL Storytimes by Black and Brown Deaf People
While #OperationASLStorytime has broadened linguistic access to virtual storytimes, most of

the stories have been signed by white people. It’s important for Black and Brown Deaf
students to see themselves reflected in the signers and the books, said Victorica Monroe,
founder of the nonprofit Transformative Deaf Education. TDE’s website spotlights ASL
storytimes that offer that representation, such as Monroe’s translations of “I Don’t Want to Go
We
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Sleep” to recognize
and your preferences
“My Princess Boy.”and TDEto analyze tra cpartnered
has also on our website. To learn
with more about
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ASLized,
sponsor
you Deaf people of color to submit original ASL stories for the ASLized library.
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ASL Book Time: I Don't Want To Go To Sleep
Boston University’s Deaf Education Library
Boston University’s Deaf Education Library pulls together lessons and other teaching for
multiple academic subjects, all in ASL and English. BU faculty and students crowdsourced the
collection from across the internet in response to a call to action from Aiken Bottoms, a BU
alumnus who teaches kindergarten at a Deaf school.
ASL Campﬁre Stories
Since March, families with Deaf children have gathered weekly for “ASL Campfire Stories”
events on Zoom with tents, sleeping bags and all. Unlike the #OperationASLStorytime videos,
which are akin to read-alouds with readers signing English books, the campfire events feature
master storytellers performing “in the purity of ASL,” according to the organizers, Adele Ann
Eberwein and Elvis Zornoza. “Many of you probably huddled around the campfires sharing
stories, some people in Deaf clubs shared stories, and/or some told Deaf jokes. This is ASL
STORYTELLING. … Similar to oral tradition, it is important for ASL Storytelling to be
cherished for children to develop a variety of literacy skills,” they said in an Instagram video.
Everywhere Book Fest

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authors teamed up to organize Everywhere Book Fest, a virtual book festival held on May 1
and 2. All of the sessions that were recorded live included ASL interpretation and are archived
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on the festival’s YouTube page. Some of the pre-recorded sessions did not include ASL
interpretation. The schedule featured bestselling authors and diverse subjects, such as a panel
on immigrant stories in middle grade novels, a picture book draw-off and a session on the
future of superhero stories.
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‘Outside, Inside’ Is a Time Capsule That Helps Kids

and Adults Reﬂect on Pandemic Life
By Kara Newhouse Mar 15
Save Article
A page from the children's book "Outside, Inside" by LeUyen Pham about life during the pandemic. (Courtesy of LeUyen Pham)
Children’s
you book creator LeUyen Pham remembers the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic
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as a time of contrasts and confusion.

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With her husband and kids at home, the house was suddenly loud all the time, while Los
Angeles was abnormally quiet. Unanswerable questions swirled everywhere. “We were all
walking around in a weird fog,” said Pham. “We were all nervous. We were all scared. Was it
just the flu? Was it something bigger than the flu? Were we all going to die? We just didn’t
know.”
So Pham did what authors do. She wrote.
At first she wrote without a plan, observing what she saw in her neighborhood and in the
world. Soon, a pattern emerged. A juxtaposition between what was happening outside and
inside, both literally and figuratively. It was almost like a nursery rhyme, said Pham, who has
illustrated more than 100 books and was a 2020 Caldecott honoree.
Within months, she turned her jotted-down ideas into the text and art for Outside, Inside, a
picture book published in January. The book never says words like “coronavirus” or
“quarantine,” yet through digitally illustrated scenes of families, workers and neighborhoods
pulled from real life in 2020, it’s a literary time capsule that can help kids and adults reflect on
their experiences during the pandemic.
Pages from the children's book "Outside, Inside" by LeUyen Pham about life during the pandemic. (Courtesy of LeUyen Pham)
That’s something sorely needed right now, according Kass Minor, a former special education
teacher who works with districts around the country to improve teaching and learning. Minor
said she worries that the ongoing task of keeping people safe from COVID-19 has edged out
space for meaningful conversations about the past year.
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“I’m worried because I feel like we are teaching children to hold it in and to ignore what
happened,” Minor said. “500,000 people died. That's real, and we’ve got to talk about it.”
To help teachers open those conversations, Minor teamed up with Pham to create a “teaching
bundle” with a read-aloud guide and hands-on activities to accompany Outside, Inside. The
pair also will discuss the picture book and how to connect it to curriculum during a webinar
hosted by the Author Village.
Outside, Inside does not follow one main character but weaves a collective narrative of a
period when everyone all over the world “just went inside, shut their doors, and waited.” At
the same time, it reflects how differently people experienced the pandemic based on their jobs,
locations and other circumstances. Its pages present a mosaic of towns, windows, kitchen and
homes through which a reader can glimpse these varied lives.
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One spread, for example, shows a family baking bread, another family stressing over bills, a
pair of smiling children playing a board game, and another a child looking bored in a virtual
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class. The book also acknowledges that not everyone got to stay home through an outside
scene of frontline and essential workers in action and an indoor scene full of hospital rooms.
In Minor’s teaching bundle, educators can find prompts for “think aloud” and “turn and talk”
moments to use with specific pages. The prompts encourage children to share memories from
quarantine through writing, drawing and talking.
After the read aloud, teachers can build on the discussion by asking students to create an
Outside, Inside house or a time capsule. Minor said that these multimodal activities kids invite
“to think of themselves as illustrators and writers and creators of their own story.” With the
Outside, Inside house, children engage with different perspectives by seeing two views of a
home and making a window to link them. In the time capsule project, students photograph
memorabilia from the past year and discuss themes among items chosen by their peers.
Minor’s guide connects both activities to specific Common Core literacy standards related to
developing and organizing ideas, writing sequences and participating in collaborative
conversations.
Pham has seen those skills on display during virtual school visits for Outside, Inside. She said
her recent classroom interactions have differed from when she toured for previous books.
Before, children often wanted to see her illustration skills in action. Now, “it's not about what
can I draw, it’s about what can you remember?” she said. “Somehow that empowers the kids
to turn it onto themselves.”
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Grown-ups’ reactions have surprised Pham, too. She said teachers, who have faced their own
host of challenges during the pandemic, tear up while reading more often than children. And
she’s heard from parents and educators whose children or students have hooked onto
particular images that connected to their lives. Those adults have expressed gratitude that the
book opened a dialogue when they didn’t know how to.
Outside, Inside ends on a hopeful note, with the arrival of spring, families embracing and
children playing outdoors. Though we can’t write “The End” on the pandemic just yet, Pham
and Minor hope that the picture book and accompanying lesson plans can be part of the
healing process.
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3/17/2021 ‘Outside, Inside’ Is a Time Capsule That Helps Kids and Adults Reflect on Pandemic Life - MindShift

Why Deaf Students Need Access to ASL Stories During

ASL Literacy Activities from the Motion Light Lab

Where the Wild Things Are #OperationASLStorytime

ASL Storytimes by Black and Brown Deaf People

While #OperationASLStorytime has broadened linguistic access to virtual storytimes, most of

Boston University’s Deaf Education Library

ASL Campﬁre Stories

Everywhere Book Fest

Want to stay in touch?

Enter your email

Copyright © 2021 KQED Inc. All Rights Reserved.

‘Outside, Inside’ Is a Time Capsule That Helps Kids

as a time of contrasts and confusion.

So Pham did what authors do. She wrote.

Want to stay in touch?

Enter your email

Copyright © 2021 KQED Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Radio Science Help Center

Podcasts Arts & Culture About

For Educators Corporate Sponsorship

Copyright © 2021 KQED Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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