Teachers, classroom practice in the spotlight at NYTimes.com

After a two-year hiatus, the New York Times this week revived its Lesson Plans blog, featuring the voices of six teachers from different grade levels, subject areas, and regions of the country. Joseph Santini, an English teacher at JHS 47 in Manhattan, kicks things off with a captivating post about creating a bilingual English-American Sign Language course:

My personal pet project is frustrating and exhausting; I will be team-teaching a new sort of class, based on bilingual teaching principles. We want to design a new course, team-taught, which incorporates both standard English and American Sign Language (A.S.L.) in an effort to raise the achievement bar for both languages, for all students. As a Deaf person who uses several different languages (most prominently British, which is akin to a Gallic signed language, and American, which is more Romantic and descended from the langue des signes française) and a student of education — as well as a product of New York City’s public schools — I am extremely passionate about discovering the truly least restrictive environment for the modern Deaf student.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.