On September 23, ASL Club and Find Kind Club teamed up once again for their annual Silent Dinner event, held at Chick-Fil-A this year. This year the turn out brought more than just strictly ASL students, but opened it up to many others, as the ASL Club has started to accept non-ASL students with open arms.
Silent dinners are held in restaurants, ranging from Chick-Fil-A to Panera, and are usually held in silence, only communicating through sign language. The goal with these dinners are to open the world of ASL and deaf awareness to people who may not fully understand what signing in public may be like, and offering a safe space to do so with school and local support.
“Everyone’s ‘talking’ with each other, there’s so much community involved, and it’s like one giant team, because we’re helping each other improve,” ASL Club President Dania Nasreldeen (12) said. “I just really like the community aspect.”
The growth of the silent dinner over the years was unprecedented, as people of all sorts of grades and non-ASL have become active with the silent dinners. This can be because of the opening of ASL Club to non-ASL students, but also the amount of advertising that has been put forth. With ASL Club taking the stages on K-9 News, flyers posted around the school, and even the mass exposure online through Instagram posts and stories. ASL Club has been everywhere, making it impossible to miss them, and ultimately perfecting their marketing to grab the attention of all sorts of students. Though the accomplishment seems grand, there is still more publicity that can go into it.
“We need more advertising, because there’s a lot of posters around school that advertise events, but ours was only advertised in the ASL class and on the club [Instagram] page,” ASL Show Chair and 4 year ASL student Ben Midlik (12) said. “We could probably do more by putting more posters up around the school and getting a broader reach to get more people into the ASL program, which will inadvertently get more people to join in.”
As ASL Club and Find Kind Club continue having their silent dinners, the hope to expand past Chino Hills looms over. Although having the local factor does play well with the goal of spreading awareness, the club hopes to find some bigger restaurants to meet with their growing attendance of attendees.
“I’m hoping to see a lot more people show up, and I’m hoping we can get more restaurants, not just in the Chino to Chino Hills area, but maybe somewhere in Pomona,” ASL Club Publicity Manager Julian Francisco (11) said. “I’m not sure if we could go as far as Ontario, but maybe we could expand on a little more restaurants.”
With many of the ASL Club and Find Kind Club members graduating this year, it will be fun to see just how much these silent dinners will grow along with the club, as well as the critiques and additions hoping to be made to make the annual silent dinners more inclusive and impactful.
