Jessica Burris knows if her dad could see her now, he wouldn’t have to say a word out loud. 

His actions would say it all. 

Her father, the late Terry Mason, would have held up a finger and pointed to himself. Then he would have made a first with his thumb sticking out slightly, pointed the thumb toward his midsection and slid it up to his chest. Then he would have pointed to his daughter. 

And that simple, loving gesture -- which means “I’m proud of you” in American SIgn Language – would have spoken volumes to Burris, an ASL teacher at Troy High School. 

“I think my dad would have been proud of me,” Burris said, tears streaming down her face as she thought about her dad, who passed away in 2015 after a battle with lung cancer. She had to stop for a few seconds before she composed herself and definitively proclaimed, “I know he would have been proud of me.” 

He would not only be proud of what she has become, but he would be proud of what she’s helping her students become every single day in her classroom, which all the more amazing considering it wasn’t until she had reached adulthood that she decided to become not only a teacher, but an advocate for the deaf.

Growing up in a household with a deaf father and a mother who has a deaf brother, eventually becoming a sign language teacher probably seems like a natural career choice. 

Not so, says Burris. 

“Actually, I’m the only ASL teacher I know who actually grew up with a deaf parent,” she said. “It doesn’t happen nearly as often as you might think, for whatever reason.” 

Burris spent her childhood straddling both the deaf and hearing worlds, learning how to effectively communicate in both. While her mother Sheila’s brother (Burris’s uncle) was deaf, her mother never learned sign language. Sheila would not learn sign sign language herself until her brother introduced her to Terry, who would teach her how to sign. 

At her parents’ insistence, Burris would learn to speak in both English and ASL. 

“I went through stages where I would only want to talk,” she said. “And then my mom was like, ‘No, you have to tell daddy yourself.’ And then I would go through stages where I would only want to sign. So then my mom was like, ‘No, you also have to talk to me in my first language.’ So I had to learn how to do both.”

By the time she entered kindergarten, Burris was able to communicate in both languages. She remembers wanting to bring her pet birds in for show-and-tell when she was very young, and her father had to bring them to school for her. 

Her classmates spent the entire show-and-tell period wanting to learn more about her father and less about her beloved birds. 

“In first grade, I had my dad come in for show-and-tell to bring my birds in,” Burris said. “And then everyone was around my dad, and they didn't even care about the birds. Another time in first grade, another teacher asked me to come in to help because they were talking about deafness in class. And so I went in and told my experience. And that was and everyone thought it was so cool. 

“And then when I would have friends come over, they would want to learn. For the most part, it was always a positive experience. My mom was always like, ‘You have to be very accepting of people, and you know your dad is different.’ It helped build that awareness of myself with people who have special needs or people who are just different from others or have different abilities.”

Still, though, despite all of those childhood experiences, Burris never envisioned herself becoming an ASL teacher. By the time she reached sixth grade, however, she did start to see herself as an interpreter for the deaf. She once told someone her goal was to be “the world’s fastest ASL interpreter.” 

She would eventually enter the sign language interpreting program at Sinclair Community College, where her background would help her graduate early. She began working as an ASL interpreter in the local deaf community, but still didn’t envision herself becoming a high school teacher. While doing freelance interpreting work at Sinclair, however, she was approached by someone with a suggestion that would, eventually, change her life and bring her to Troy High School.

“I was asked by someone at Sinclair if I would be interested in teaching,” Burris said. “She was teaching at Sinclair at the time, and now she's like the chair of the department for American Sign Language. She was like, ‘Hey, would you be interested in coming to teach for us?’ And I told her I had a fear of public speaking. I was like, ‘I am not that person. Do not get me up there.’ But you know what, I tried it and loved it.” 

With an eye toward becoming a teacher, she would earn her bachelor’s degree from Siena Heights University in Michigan and would eventually earn her master’s degree from American College of Education in Indiana. 

While sign language was helping her grow professionally, she was also learning how important it still was in her personal life, as well. 

Her mother would eventually be diagnosed with a brian tumor near her brainstem that would cause her to lose her hearing. Because Sheila already knew sign language, Jessica could still communicate with her mother without the need for specialized hearing equipment. 

 “The doctors asked her, ‘Do you want to get a cochlear implant? Do you want this?’” Burris said. “And she said, "No. I know sign language, so it's fine." 

Before her father passed away, Burris would begin dating Andrew, who would eventually become her husband. They hadn’t been dating for long when Andrew told her that he wanted to learn sign language so he could communicate with his future father-in-law. 

“When I first met him and we started dating, he was like, ‘I want to take a sign language class too,’” Burris said. “So he started taking sign language at Sinclair just to be able to talk to my dad.That was like, ‘Wow!’ for me. He became fluent. I was fluent.” 

The two would marry in 2011. Because ASL was such an important part of their lives, they knew that when they started a family, they would want their children to learn both English and sign language, especially so they could effectively communicate with their grandfather.

In 2015, just before Burris’s father would pass away, she and Andrew celebrated the arrival of their daughter, Brooklyn, who has Down Syndrome. Brooklyn was non-verbal for the first part of her life, and her parents were able to teach her how to use sign language to communicate. They’ve also taught their younger daughter, Alexa (age 9) to use ASL. 

“I don’t feel like this was a coincidence, and I don’t feel like God gives you anything you can’t handle,” Burris said of her daughter Brooklyn being born to two parents who already were fluent in American Sign Language.

Burris would begin teaching at Troy High School in the fall of 2019. She’s a firm believer in the importance of teaching ASL so her students will not only be able to communicate, but also to help bridge the many social and cultural gaps between the hearing and deaf worlds. 

“When they first start in ASL, I  ask them, ‘How many of you have met a deaf person?’ And there's a few that will raise their hand,” Burris said. “Most of them will say they’ve never met a deaf person in their life. But then after they take this class, they are more aware. And they're like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I did see someone signing. And I was like, ‘Maybe you have seen someone that's deaf, and you just didn't even realize that's what they're doing.’”

Burris will frequently bring in deaf guests to her classroom, providing her students the opportunity to use sign language in real-world scenarios, but also to help them understand the challenges deaf people face on a daily basis. 

“When I bring in people here that are deaf, I always tell all my students, ‘You are going to be 100 percent voice-off the entire time.’" she said. “When they come in, this is the one place that they should feel 100 percent  supported. So the deaf often feel like outcasts everywhere they go in life, so you can feel that way for one class period. And I think that really makes them think, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is the struggle that they go through every day and how awful that feels.”

Sign language classes have seen a huge growth in American high schools since the early 2000s, and his now recognized by 45 states as a certified foreign language class. It is one of the top five most popular foreign languages taken by high school students (alongside Spanish, French, German and Latin) and one of the few foreign languages that sees its enrollment numbers growing, not shrinking, every year. 

Burris not only teaches her students sign language, she encourages them to take it home with them and at the very least try to teach some of the basics to their parents and other family members. 

“I think the chances you are going to meet a deaf person in your life is much higher than people probably realize,” she said. “ Just like sign language doesn't necessarily have to be for people who are deaf, but also people who have other abilities as well. 

“There are so many other reasons why people should learn sign language, as well. One day, most of my students will become parents, and at some point will want to be able to use signs with their baby. And their kid will probably have a lot less anger issues because their point can get across and that communication will be easier, even if they aren’t deaf.”

This year, Burris also has plans for her fourth-year ASL students to work with students in Troy’s special needs classes. Because of her own daughter, it’s a project that is near and dear to Burris’s heart.

“I have them basically create lessons every week so that they're getting this experience because they have to figure out what to teach and what categories, how to break this information down, and how to work with someone who has special needs and sign with them and all of that. I love this project. It’s something I’m really proud of.” 

And Burris knows her father would feel the same way, as his silence, and his hands, spoke volumes.