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Published: Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009 / Updated: Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009 04:42 PM

Indian Land High to offer sign language course for credit

Indian Land High School may make history next fall as one of the first high schools in South Carolina to offer sign language as a foreign language.

Students at Indian Land High School were sent home this month with a course guide, detailing the courses available to them at the school next year. Among them, for the first time, was a sign language course offered by history teacher Dennis Bivins.

Bivins grew up signing with a deaf brother and continued learning about sign language as an adult. Recently, he has worked part time as a sign language interpreter. Bivins is taking a course that will finish his certification, allowing him to teach sign language in the classroom.

Already, he has seen a lot of interest from the students.

"It's a challenge," Bivins said. "I'm looking forward to this as a new challenge. I'm really excited about it and I think it will be more rewarding on a personal level."

Spanish is the only foreign language offered at Indian Land High School right now. Sign language is currently seen as an elective by the state department of education but is in the process of being classified as a foreign language and will fill the high school requirements for foreign language credit.

"I've studied the language myself and it is indeed a different language with grammar and structure and all the things language has," Bivins said. "And you'll benefit in another way as well because we have a lot of visual learners, so we'll be tapping into the visual side with sign language."

Bivins doesn't know of any other high school in the state that offers sign language to its students, and he looks forward to being among the first. There are no deaf students at Indian Land High School right now, he added, but he has filed a grant that would bring deaf and hearing impaired people into his classroom, to provide hands-on experience for his students.

Students interested in taking the course can talk to the school's guidance counselor for more information.