With the resignation of the school’s only American Sign Language teacher, Carrie Geoffrion, the school has opted for an online course alternative. When Geoffrion announced last month that she would be leaving in order to be closer to her family, the school was faced with a dilemma as finding a certified American Sign Language teacher has always been challenging.

“[This] is a struggle we’ve had for years,” principal Scott Warstler said. “Ideally we would much rather have a teacher here in front of the student’s face.”

Having students moved to other campuses to take the course was considered as well, but these campuses are also lacking teachers in the subject. With no one applying for the job, moving the course online was the only adequate option.

“We’ve had some success online with Chinese, so we thought let’s give it a shot,” Warstler said. “We’re kind of transitioning in some Sign Language to online anyway.”

Warstler said he believes the students will transition well and the class will be successful if there is enough base instruction.

“Sign Language is a class [that] blends itself pretty well to the online environment,” Warstler said. “We were going to do a teacher through the online environment every other Friday and realized that probably wasn’t enough base instruction, so we’ve changed that now to thirty minutes every day at the beginning of class, and then the last hour is students working on the online assignments.”

The change in direction for the class caught many students off guard.

“I’m gonna miss Miss Geoffrion because she’s my favorite teacher, and I’m really not looking forward to online ASL,” junior Hanah Simmons said. “I wish her the best, and I hope that everything is good with the situation she’s in.”

Geoffrion said that her decision to leave was a difficult one to make and that she genuinely enjoyed her time teaching.

“I made it based on personal reasons, but I really am going to miss the schools and students,” Geoffrion said. “I wish them the best of luck.”