Pratt Community College Produces Highest Paid Grads in State
Local News
According to new data released by the Kansas Board of Regents, Pratt Community College students graduating with an associate’s degree between 2008 and 2012 have a higher annual wage than the average of both associate’s degree and bachelor’s degree graduates in that same time from all Kansas public colleges and universities.
PCC students graduating with an associate’s degree in 2012, which is the most recent cohort with measurable post-graduation wage data, made an average of $42,276. The average of all Kansas community college graduates was $32,369 and the technical college sector had an average wage of $38,615.
2012 graduates from PCC out-earn even those with degrees from four year institutions; the average wage of 2012 public university graduates with bachelor’s degrees was $35,355. Kansas State University grads posted a wage average of $36,590, while those from the University of Kansas averaged $32,831.
The information comes as the fourth installment of data from Foresight 2020, a 10-year strategic agenda approved by the Kansas Board of Regents for the state’s public higher education system. Established in September 2010, the plan sets long-range achievement goals that are measurable, reportable, and ensures the state’s higher education system meets Kansans’ expectations. The original plan included six goals, but a redesign reduced that number to three: increase higher education attainment among Kansans, improve alignment of the state's higher education system with the needs of the economy, and ensure state university excellence.
The report and its appendices provide data for 21 metrics, including demographics, graduation and retention rates, student success index rates, credential production, and data on graduates' rates of employment and average earnings in Kansas.
For more information, contact Breeze Richardson at (785) 291-3969.
According to new data released by the Kansas Board of Regents, Pratt Community College students graduating with an associate’s degree between 2008 and 2012 have a higher annual wage than the average of both associate’s degree and bachelor’s degree graduates in that same time from all Kansas public colleges and universities.
PCC students graduating with an associate’s degree in 2012, which is the most recent cohort with measurable post-graduation wage data, made an average of $42,276. The average of all Kansas community college graduates was $32,369 and the technical college sector had an average wage of $38,615.
2012 graduates from PCC out-earn even those with degrees from four year institutions; the average wage of 2012 public university graduates with bachelor’s degrees was $35,355. Kansas State University grads posted a wage average of $36,590, while those from the University of Kansas averaged $32,831.
The information comes as the fourth installment of data from Foresight 2020, a 10-year strategic agenda approved by the Kansas Board of Regents for the state’s public higher education system. Established in September 2010, the plan sets long-range achievement goals that are measurable, reportable, and ensures the state’s higher education system meets Kansans’ expectations. The original plan included six goals, but a redesign reduced that number to three: increase higher education attainment among Kansans, improve alignment of the state's higher education system with the needs of the economy, and ensure state university excellence.
The report and its appendices provide data for 21 metrics, including demographics, graduation and retention rates, student success index rates, credential production, and data on graduates' rates of employment and average earnings in Kansas.
For more information, contact Breeze Richardson at (785) 291-3969.
MArion Artist channels light and dark emotions in latest exhibit
News Writing
The September exhibit in the Pratt Community College Delmar Riney Art Gallery features the works of Sheri Lauren Schmidt of Marion, Kan. Schmidt’s work encompasses acrylic, watercolor, digital photography, pen, pencil and pastels in a unique combination of large canvases, murals and small-scale illustrations. The collection on display is modeled after a previous exhibition called Whimsy and Wise, which juxtaposed works of playful lights with serious darks.
“I try to keep myself centered and focused in what I’m trying to express, whether it be silly or something more grim,” said Schmidt of her art. “In some ways it’s easier to focus in on the darker pieces of art, because it can be easier to access those emotions of anger or hopelessness. It’s harder to make yourself feel happy emotions and channel that in a direct manner.”
Schmidt says that channeling those emotions and examining the motives behind them is the most important element in creating good art.
“One of the most important things for me as an artist is to make sure my heart is in the right place. If you’re not moving in a pure way, you can end up with a piece that is technically excellent, but leaves you cold.”
When an artist is able to create art that clearly expresses the desired emotions, she explains, it often produces strong reactions in the viewer.
“I get a wide range of feedback on my work. Sometimes people do comment negatively; even the expression on a subject’s face can upset a viewer and remind them of dark places in their own lives. You have to have thick skin as an artist. Other people find my darker pieces to be their favorite; one man created a whole narrative about a certain painting that initially caught me by surprise. It wasn't my intent when I painted it, but he was able to fully articulate the emotion I was feeling better than even I could at the time, and that was special to me.”
For Schmidt, combining the artist's eye with the layman's perspective is what completes the landscape of art.
“It doesn’t matter what you decide to do in life, most people have some level of the artistic in them,” said Schmidt. “Everyone is an art appreciator.”
Schmidt graduated cum laude with a major in fine arts and minor in English from McPherson College. Other career pursuits include singing in a duet, graphic art, poetry and book illustrations.
The Delmar Riney Art Gallery is open Monday - Friday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. or by appointment. For more information about the gallery or to make an appointment, please call (620) 450-2184.
The September exhibit in the Pratt Community College Delmar Riney Art Gallery features the works of Sheri Lauren Schmidt of Marion, Kan. Schmidt’s work encompasses acrylic, watercolor, digital photography, pen, pencil and pastels in a unique combination of large canvases, murals and small-scale illustrations. The collection on display is modeled after a previous exhibition called Whimsy and Wise, which juxtaposed works of playful lights with serious darks.
“I try to keep myself centered and focused in what I’m trying to express, whether it be silly or something more grim,” said Schmidt of her art. “In some ways it’s easier to focus in on the darker pieces of art, because it can be easier to access those emotions of anger or hopelessness. It’s harder to make yourself feel happy emotions and channel that in a direct manner.”
Schmidt says that channeling those emotions and examining the motives behind them is the most important element in creating good art.
“One of the most important things for me as an artist is to make sure my heart is in the right place. If you’re not moving in a pure way, you can end up with a piece that is technically excellent, but leaves you cold.”
When an artist is able to create art that clearly expresses the desired emotions, she explains, it often produces strong reactions in the viewer.
“I get a wide range of feedback on my work. Sometimes people do comment negatively; even the expression on a subject’s face can upset a viewer and remind them of dark places in their own lives. You have to have thick skin as an artist. Other people find my darker pieces to be their favorite; one man created a whole narrative about a certain painting that initially caught me by surprise. It wasn't my intent when I painted it, but he was able to fully articulate the emotion I was feeling better than even I could at the time, and that was special to me.”
For Schmidt, combining the artist's eye with the layman's perspective is what completes the landscape of art.
“It doesn’t matter what you decide to do in life, most people have some level of the artistic in them,” said Schmidt. “Everyone is an art appreciator.”
Schmidt graduated cum laude with a major in fine arts and minor in English from McPherson College. Other career pursuits include singing in a duet, graphic art, poetry and book illustrations.
The Delmar Riney Art Gallery is open Monday - Friday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. or by appointment. For more information about the gallery or to make an appointment, please call (620) 450-2184.
"sustainability and respect"
Personal Essay
I could not remember a time when I had been in so much pain. The discs in my back seemed likely to fall apart at any moment, and the deadened nerves in my feet had long ceased sending their pleas for mercy. The blood throbbing through my head seemed to impair my hearing, my breathing and my sight all at once, but that did not stop me from noting yet again the peculiarity of what I was witnessing. It was mile 12 of my first half marathon, a 13.1-mile exercise in torture for which I was severely underprepared, and I had reached the final water stop of the journey where chipper race volunteers handed out styrofoam cups of water and lemon-lime Gatorade to the runners as they passed by. One by one, 27,000 runners gulped the life-giving liquid and splashed it over their heaving bodies, and thousand by thousand they flung their styrofoam cups to the ground in heaping piles of artificial foliage. Everything about marathon racing was unfamiliar to me, but I acclimated to the feeling of running in the middle of city streets surrounded by armed state police faster than I did the uncomfortable feeling of throwing my cup to the ground, where it would later be collected and thrown into dumpsters with millions of other pieces of non renewable waste.
Granted, I could think of no immediate alternative to this process as an efficient way to hydrate thousands of runners attempting a very strenuous feat, but I have also been taught to solve problems by the same culture that finds it acceptable to manufacture automobiles for each individual in the United States and drill for oil at the cost of irreplaceable ocean reefs. Most developed countries of the world rely upon non renewable energy to some extent in order to sustain their infrastructure, but not everyone is so willing to forego sustainable alternatives to waste problems.
As an exchange student living in former East Germany during the summer before my senior year in college, I witnessed for the first time a system of daily waste management as meticulous as its adherents. I was not pleased with the strictness of the German people around me and found their endless unspoken rules to be oppressive and impossible. I wanted to jaywalk, wear sweatpants in public, use restrooms without paying for them and drink water at restaurants for free, and there was always a German around every corner to correct me. Like it or not, I quickly adapted to the various behaviors expected of me, though my newly adopted “German lifestyle” remained trapped in a framework of misunderstanding. But I was still eager to learn and observe, and for all my American hot headedness, the German people still had much to teach me.
I was mystified at the strange machines that appeared in every grocery store, train station and shopping mall. These machines feed on the plastic and glass bottles of the German citizens and return slips of paper redeemable for so many Euros off your next purchase at any participating retailer. It’s an extrinsic motivator that provides an irresistible incentive to participate in recycling initiatives until it becomes second nature.There are comparable programs in certain locations of the United States, but nowhere is it so accessible or so expected as in Germany.
Much of the behavior among Germans appears to be a function of societal expectation. When they congregate en masse to watch futbol games, they permit themselves an uncharacteristically loud public ruckus as they drink and shout and throw their beer bottles to the ground. But even this disorderly behavior occurs only because they are ensured an infallible clean-up plan: The homeless people of the city will have picked up every single bottle and redeemed it for a good breakfast by sunrise and the citizens will have returned to their ordinary reserved natures, never having completely abandoned their environmentally conscious lifestyle.
They behave in public places according to what is expected of them, and they learn it early. German children routinely run free in public places in “child gangs” from a very young age with a kind of liberty that coddled American children rarely experience. While overbearing mothers in my neighborhood would never even consider allowing my playmates to run through the neighborhood without supervision, German children ride public trams across the city to and from school by themselves as young as age six. I remember being startled on occasion by the looks in the “old eyes” of the children wandering the streets who are often expected to be more responsible than many of my university peers in Oklahoma.
In many places the call to be environmentally conscious goes past a monetary incentive and becomes a legal mandate, such as the green sticker you are required to put on your windshield in order to drive an automobile in large cities certifying that your car does not produce high amounts of damaging exhaust. This is not an optional action performed by those citizens trained from birth to conform to societal expectations, but is instead a program implemented by the government to ensure that society never adopts too lenient a view towards greenhouse gas emissions and the necessary preventative actions. Strict policies like the automobile certification contribute to Germany’s infamous reputation as a land of harsh people and unrelenting regulations. Then one day, towards the end of my stay, an incident occurred that forever altered my impression of the German people and helped me to understand their attitudes and their occasional distaste for my fellow Americans.
I was walking towards the neighborhood tram stop on my way downtown and was carrying along a small bag of trash from my apartment. The housing complex had given very clear instructions for the handling of waste and provided more than an adequate number of dumpsters in a locked side yard on the back side of the building. But the dumpsters were far from the main road, and I was loathe to go to the trouble of walking the long way around and fishing out my trash key. So I simply walked down the row of private homes nearby till I found a driveway with a trash can on the curb awaiting pickup. It was clearly a receptacle designed for disposing of trash and nobody seemed to be around to object. As the lid slammed shut again, a man appeared from behind a corner and I was caught red handed in the middle of a garbage faux pas: one of the worst mistakes you can make, and I knew it. As he angrily shouted at me for violating the city sanitation policies and the obscure rules of private garbage cans, I realized that I had been missing the whole point all along. Living a lifestyle that is economical, sustainable and responsible is more than just rules and regulations imposed to suppress individual expression: it is a lifestyle of accountability and respect.
You see, when one individual decides that his right to live as he pleases rises above the world population’s need to protect its surroundings and its resources, he has performed the utmost demonstration of arrogance and disrespect for others. It is the social accountability of the citizens on every street corner that provides the German people with the network of support that enables them to live in a way that will advance the cause of the whole human race far beyond the short-sighted habits of other developed and developing nations around the world. This is the Bill of Rights I now believe in: the right to behave responsibly and respectfully, and to insist that others around me do the same.
I could not remember a time when I had been in so much pain. The discs in my back seemed likely to fall apart at any moment, and the deadened nerves in my feet had long ceased sending their pleas for mercy. The blood throbbing through my head seemed to impair my hearing, my breathing and my sight all at once, but that did not stop me from noting yet again the peculiarity of what I was witnessing. It was mile 12 of my first half marathon, a 13.1-mile exercise in torture for which I was severely underprepared, and I had reached the final water stop of the journey where chipper race volunteers handed out styrofoam cups of water and lemon-lime Gatorade to the runners as they passed by. One by one, 27,000 runners gulped the life-giving liquid and splashed it over their heaving bodies, and thousand by thousand they flung their styrofoam cups to the ground in heaping piles of artificial foliage. Everything about marathon racing was unfamiliar to me, but I acclimated to the feeling of running in the middle of city streets surrounded by armed state police faster than I did the uncomfortable feeling of throwing my cup to the ground, where it would later be collected and thrown into dumpsters with millions of other pieces of non renewable waste.
Granted, I could think of no immediate alternative to this process as an efficient way to hydrate thousands of runners attempting a very strenuous feat, but I have also been taught to solve problems by the same culture that finds it acceptable to manufacture automobiles for each individual in the United States and drill for oil at the cost of irreplaceable ocean reefs. Most developed countries of the world rely upon non renewable energy to some extent in order to sustain their infrastructure, but not everyone is so willing to forego sustainable alternatives to waste problems.
As an exchange student living in former East Germany during the summer before my senior year in college, I witnessed for the first time a system of daily waste management as meticulous as its adherents. I was not pleased with the strictness of the German people around me and found their endless unspoken rules to be oppressive and impossible. I wanted to jaywalk, wear sweatpants in public, use restrooms without paying for them and drink water at restaurants for free, and there was always a German around every corner to correct me. Like it or not, I quickly adapted to the various behaviors expected of me, though my newly adopted “German lifestyle” remained trapped in a framework of misunderstanding. But I was still eager to learn and observe, and for all my American hot headedness, the German people still had much to teach me.
I was mystified at the strange machines that appeared in every grocery store, train station and shopping mall. These machines feed on the plastic and glass bottles of the German citizens and return slips of paper redeemable for so many Euros off your next purchase at any participating retailer. It’s an extrinsic motivator that provides an irresistible incentive to participate in recycling initiatives until it becomes second nature.There are comparable programs in certain locations of the United States, but nowhere is it so accessible or so expected as in Germany.
Much of the behavior among Germans appears to be a function of societal expectation. When they congregate en masse to watch futbol games, they permit themselves an uncharacteristically loud public ruckus as they drink and shout and throw their beer bottles to the ground. But even this disorderly behavior occurs only because they are ensured an infallible clean-up plan: The homeless people of the city will have picked up every single bottle and redeemed it for a good breakfast by sunrise and the citizens will have returned to their ordinary reserved natures, never having completely abandoned their environmentally conscious lifestyle.
They behave in public places according to what is expected of them, and they learn it early. German children routinely run free in public places in “child gangs” from a very young age with a kind of liberty that coddled American children rarely experience. While overbearing mothers in my neighborhood would never even consider allowing my playmates to run through the neighborhood without supervision, German children ride public trams across the city to and from school by themselves as young as age six. I remember being startled on occasion by the looks in the “old eyes” of the children wandering the streets who are often expected to be more responsible than many of my university peers in Oklahoma.
In many places the call to be environmentally conscious goes past a monetary incentive and becomes a legal mandate, such as the green sticker you are required to put on your windshield in order to drive an automobile in large cities certifying that your car does not produce high amounts of damaging exhaust. This is not an optional action performed by those citizens trained from birth to conform to societal expectations, but is instead a program implemented by the government to ensure that society never adopts too lenient a view towards greenhouse gas emissions and the necessary preventative actions. Strict policies like the automobile certification contribute to Germany’s infamous reputation as a land of harsh people and unrelenting regulations. Then one day, towards the end of my stay, an incident occurred that forever altered my impression of the German people and helped me to understand their attitudes and their occasional distaste for my fellow Americans.
I was walking towards the neighborhood tram stop on my way downtown and was carrying along a small bag of trash from my apartment. The housing complex had given very clear instructions for the handling of waste and provided more than an adequate number of dumpsters in a locked side yard on the back side of the building. But the dumpsters were far from the main road, and I was loathe to go to the trouble of walking the long way around and fishing out my trash key. So I simply walked down the row of private homes nearby till I found a driveway with a trash can on the curb awaiting pickup. It was clearly a receptacle designed for disposing of trash and nobody seemed to be around to object. As the lid slammed shut again, a man appeared from behind a corner and I was caught red handed in the middle of a garbage faux pas: one of the worst mistakes you can make, and I knew it. As he angrily shouted at me for violating the city sanitation policies and the obscure rules of private garbage cans, I realized that I had been missing the whole point all along. Living a lifestyle that is economical, sustainable and responsible is more than just rules and regulations imposed to suppress individual expression: it is a lifestyle of accountability and respect.
You see, when one individual decides that his right to live as he pleases rises above the world population’s need to protect its surroundings and its resources, he has performed the utmost demonstration of arrogance and disrespect for others. It is the social accountability of the citizens on every street corner that provides the German people with the network of support that enables them to live in a way that will advance the cause of the whole human race far beyond the short-sighted habits of other developed and developing nations around the world. This is the Bill of Rights I now believe in: the right to behave responsibly and respectfully, and to insist that others around me do the same.
"Sordomudos"
Feature Writing
English is the most widely spoken language in the world. For many Americans, it is the only language that exists. It frames our thoughts, our understanding, our relationships, our careers. It is the way we connect to the world around us – the English speaking world – and provides the fundamentals for our very lives.
But sitting across the table from an olive-skinned teenager in a gray school uniform whose eye contact alone suddenly defines the communication between you and him, your English-speaking world has suddenly been turned upside down.
Mexico, Centros Cristianos para Sordomudos, or MCCS for short, is home to 23 hearing-impaired children from the poorest streets of Mexico. They come from Rio Bravo, Reynosa - wherever they can be found - to find new life and a new reality. They discover education, structured sign language, community and friendship, most for the first time.
Some live at the school during the week and visit home on the weekends and holidays, others come only during the day for classes and return to their homes each night. All are cared for by full-time teachers who are employed by the International Christian Centers for the Deaf, the parent organization of MCCS. ICCD is a Christian organization based in Virginia whose mission is to “reach the deaf in the world with the gospel of Christ.”
The MCCS complex is found 25 miles south of the Texas border on a sprawling piece of land, where the wind moves easily through enormous fields of tall grass and not another building is seen for miles around. Dogs romp around barking wildly, chasing the small car that is driven by the director of the school from the administrative buildings down to the cafeteria, where the live-in residents wait impatiently for dinner.
Efraín Escorza’s presence in the room immediately commands attention, and the children crowd around to greet him, forming his “sign name” and competing with each other to catch his eye. It is easy to see how well he is loved by the children, with whom he eats dinner every night. His enormous smile is for each child, and he quickly quiets the children and raises his hands to sign the blessing for the food.
Escorza became Center Coordinator for MCCS in February of 2007. He pastored a Methodist church in Rio Bravo for 20 years before the pollution drove him out into the country.
“When I came here and visit this place, I was shock because it was very hard for me to see their deep struggle with their handicap. And when the Lord pushed me several ways to come here, I know that the Lord call me to come here. [sic]”
Escorza was given the coordinator position to serve primarily as administrator over the classes and director of the school’s small staff. He was told that learning sign language would be unnecessary, as he would not be teaching the children or involved in the classrooms. After his arrival he found it impossible to not communicate with the children, so Escorza continues to learn sign language and spend as much time as possible with them.
He and his wife Lety provide counseling to the children, who come to the school with histories of poverty, prostitution, drugs, alcohol and abuse.
“For the deaf to receive attention, it’s so wonderful, because for most of them, they have suffered a lot of rejection,” he says. “I am amazed because when they are finished with counseling time, you can see them so proud, so quiet, and I can see that they need a lot of support, and this is the reason why I am learning sign language. [sic]”
Escorza says that sometimes he will visit the homes of the students to see how they are doing. “I am amazed because in the school he is so smiling and so happy, but when they arrive at the family, they are sad because this place has been a lonely place for them. And I say wow, what is happening here. And yes, most of the families, they ignored them, and they know what is their place in the family: Out of the family…They have the family signs, but for the heart signs they have none. [sic]”
Alberto is 24 years old and began taking classes at MCCS one week ago. He can hear, with the assistance of hearing aids, and speak, but he never learned sign language. He is a junior in college, studying psychology, and has come to MCCS to learn to sign so that he will be able to help the deaf community.
“The children who cannot hear, they do not receive help,” he says. “They need counseling, that is why I go to the university.”
Even Alberto’s mission to learn to sign presents problems, as there are so many different versions of sign languages used by the hearing impaired, region to region. In border towns from Laredo to Matamoros, there are as many as eight different sign languages used. LSM, short for Lengua de Señas Mexicana, or Mexican Sign Language, is the official sign language of Mexico, though that doesn’t stop the disputes between states and even cities over whose sign is “right.”
MCCS teaches both LSM and American Sign Language, or ASL.
Helen Keller once said “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” Overcoming suffering is just what the missionaries at MCCS are accomplishing, barrier by barrier, child by child. Success with the hearing impaired children of Mexico isn’t just about conquering language barriers –
Love is universal.
English is the most widely spoken language in the world. For many Americans, it is the only language that exists. It frames our thoughts, our understanding, our relationships, our careers. It is the way we connect to the world around us – the English speaking world – and provides the fundamentals for our very lives.
But sitting across the table from an olive-skinned teenager in a gray school uniform whose eye contact alone suddenly defines the communication between you and him, your English-speaking world has suddenly been turned upside down.
Mexico, Centros Cristianos para Sordomudos, or MCCS for short, is home to 23 hearing-impaired children from the poorest streets of Mexico. They come from Rio Bravo, Reynosa - wherever they can be found - to find new life and a new reality. They discover education, structured sign language, community and friendship, most for the first time.
Some live at the school during the week and visit home on the weekends and holidays, others come only during the day for classes and return to their homes each night. All are cared for by full-time teachers who are employed by the International Christian Centers for the Deaf, the parent organization of MCCS. ICCD is a Christian organization based in Virginia whose mission is to “reach the deaf in the world with the gospel of Christ.”
The MCCS complex is found 25 miles south of the Texas border on a sprawling piece of land, where the wind moves easily through enormous fields of tall grass and not another building is seen for miles around. Dogs romp around barking wildly, chasing the small car that is driven by the director of the school from the administrative buildings down to the cafeteria, where the live-in residents wait impatiently for dinner.
Efraín Escorza’s presence in the room immediately commands attention, and the children crowd around to greet him, forming his “sign name” and competing with each other to catch his eye. It is easy to see how well he is loved by the children, with whom he eats dinner every night. His enormous smile is for each child, and he quickly quiets the children and raises his hands to sign the blessing for the food.
Escorza became Center Coordinator for MCCS in February of 2007. He pastored a Methodist church in Rio Bravo for 20 years before the pollution drove him out into the country.
“When I came here and visit this place, I was shock because it was very hard for me to see their deep struggle with their handicap. And when the Lord pushed me several ways to come here, I know that the Lord call me to come here. [sic]”
Escorza was given the coordinator position to serve primarily as administrator over the classes and director of the school’s small staff. He was told that learning sign language would be unnecessary, as he would not be teaching the children or involved in the classrooms. After his arrival he found it impossible to not communicate with the children, so Escorza continues to learn sign language and spend as much time as possible with them.
He and his wife Lety provide counseling to the children, who come to the school with histories of poverty, prostitution, drugs, alcohol and abuse.
“For the deaf to receive attention, it’s so wonderful, because for most of them, they have suffered a lot of rejection,” he says. “I am amazed because when they are finished with counseling time, you can see them so proud, so quiet, and I can see that they need a lot of support, and this is the reason why I am learning sign language. [sic]”
Escorza says that sometimes he will visit the homes of the students to see how they are doing. “I am amazed because in the school he is so smiling and so happy, but when they arrive at the family, they are sad because this place has been a lonely place for them. And I say wow, what is happening here. And yes, most of the families, they ignored them, and they know what is their place in the family: Out of the family…They have the family signs, but for the heart signs they have none. [sic]”
Alberto is 24 years old and began taking classes at MCCS one week ago. He can hear, with the assistance of hearing aids, and speak, but he never learned sign language. He is a junior in college, studying psychology, and has come to MCCS to learn to sign so that he will be able to help the deaf community.
“The children who cannot hear, they do not receive help,” he says. “They need counseling, that is why I go to the university.”
Even Alberto’s mission to learn to sign presents problems, as there are so many different versions of sign languages used by the hearing impaired, region to region. In border towns from Laredo to Matamoros, there are as many as eight different sign languages used. LSM, short for Lengua de Señas Mexicana, or Mexican Sign Language, is the official sign language of Mexico, though that doesn’t stop the disputes between states and even cities over whose sign is “right.”
MCCS teaches both LSM and American Sign Language, or ASL.
Helen Keller once said “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” Overcoming suffering is just what the missionaries at MCCS are accomplishing, barrier by barrier, child by child. Success with the hearing impaired children of Mexico isn’t just about conquering language barriers –
Love is universal.