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Image:  Raychelle Harris, a white slim womxn with light brown, slightly wavy, long hair.  She is wearing a gray cardigan, small dangling earrings and a tiny necklace.  

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Image:  Raychelle is signing in ASL, and due to editing, she changes in size and position throughout the video.  

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Hello everyone!  Who am I?  I'm Raychelle Harris.  I've been teaching American Sign Language (ASL) since 1993 in different capacities.   

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I've taught ASL to adult second language learners in high school and college settings.  

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I've also taught ASL at a deaf k-12 school as an ASL specialist, working with primary language learners.  

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During my ASL teaching journey, I decided to return back to school

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for a doctorate in deaf education at Gallaudet.  My dissertation topic was focused on ASL in academic settings.  

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I'm currently a faculty member at Gallaudet University, originally teaching with the Department of Interpretation, 

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then I moved over to the ASL and Deaf Studies Department and stayed there ever since.

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I'm very honored and delighted to be chosen to do the closing keynote speaker 

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for this summer's ASL Teachers Association (ASLTA) national conference, 2015.

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Image:  In the top left corner, there is a white rectangular box with the "ASL" logo in linguini type of font, in red and blue, and below "ASLTA" in blue, and slightly to the right and on top, "American Sign Language" is in red, with "Teachers Association" in blue, below.  

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Image:  In the top right corner, there is a black & white rectangular box with "Reflect - Celebrate - Dream" text, and the Minneapolis skyline in the background.

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The theme of the ASLTA conference this summer is "Reflect - Celebrate - Dream".  

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I decided to incorporate the theme into my presentation title, "The Future of ASL:  Reflect, Celebrate & Dream".  

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Animated text:  In top right corner, "The Future of" is in white font, "ASL:" is in blue, and in smaller font, "Reflect, Celebrate & Dream" is in red font, and they are flying in and out.  

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What will I discuss during my presentation?  I'll give you a hint.  

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Image:  Raychelle is scaled down and frozen on the left bottom corner.  A chart appears, with the left axis displaying 225,000 on bottom, 450,000, 675,000 and 900,000 on top.  On the bottom axis, there are labels with Italian, German, ASL, French and Spanish.

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Image:  1995 is superimposed.  Italian is the second smallest bar in blue, with German in green, considerably higher than Italian.  ASL seems to be non-existent, and French is in red, considerably higher than German.  Spanish is in purple and higher than all of them.  

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Image:  1998 is superimposed.  Italian increases a bit, German is reduced slightly, ASL appears in yellow, but is still tiny and in last place.  French is reduced, and Spanish increases a bit.  

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Image:  2002 is superimposed.  Italian increases considerably, German, ASL and French increase a bit, and Spanish increases considerably.

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Image:  2006 is superimposed.  Italian increases considerably again, German increases a bit, ASL increases considerably, French increases a bit, Spanish increases considerably.

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Image:  2009 is superimposed.  Italian and German increases a bit, ASL, French and Spanish increases considerably.

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Image:  2015 is superimposed.  Italian and German declines, ASL increases considerably, French and Spanish declines.  

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The Modern Language Association (MLA) holds the honors of having the longest-running comprehensive survey of language enrollment.  

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Text:  On bottom left, there is text in tiny white font, "(Goldberg, Looney & Lusin, 2015)".

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However, ASL wasn't included in the survey.  

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MLA collected enrollment data for Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese and many more languages, except for English.  

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MLA's survey is usually sent out every 4 years.  

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ASL was finally included in 1990.  

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ASL started out in the bottom of the pack, and started to move up quickly - 4 years later, in 1994, and again 4 years later in 1998 and so on.  

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Now, ASL is third most studied language.  

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Spanish comes in first, and French in second, with ASL in third.  

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What an amazing, and uphill trajectory for ASL!  

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What are the implications of this incredible change in enrollment?  What does this mean for our organization?

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What are the possibilities?  What are our future plans?    

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This coming summer, the 2015 ASLTA Conference - I'll be coming.  

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I hope to see all of you there.  I'm excited to meet you, and exchange knowledge and resources.  

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Two thumbs up!

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Text:  Reference.  Goldberg, D., Looney, D., & Lusin, N.  (2015).  Enrollments in languages other than English in United States institutions of higher education, fall 2013.  New York, NY:  Modern Language Association of America.