Our language program at Cascade Canyon arises out of our mission to help our students develop the foundational skills and awareness to assume active roles in our global community, and to appreciate diversity. This fall, we instituted a new Spanish program in place of our former French program, in alignment with the linguistic diversity of our surrounding communities. We offer both Spanish and Sign Language studies within our curriculum. Devin Eckert, also our Kindergarten science teacher, is our Spanish Specialist, and Peggy Tunder, our Kindergarten teacher, is our Sign Specialist. Both teachers are fluent in their language, and engage students through highly interactive, thoughtfully designed lessons.
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Sign Language is a formal gesture language. It began as a manual
alphabet in the Italian monasteries of the fifteenth century as an
acceptable means of communication between monks who were under vows of
silence. Since that time, sign language has been used to teach the
deaf. Our own sign language is a mixture of French, English, and
Native American signs. In this year’s sign language class, I am
teaching “Signing Exact English” which is the current language used in
the education of the deaf and follows our spoken English syntax.
However, I also expose the students to American Sign Language, which is
a natural language of the deaf community in America and has its own
sentence structure, grammatical rules and semantics.
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Our Program 
