Every year, students across the country memorize and recite poems for the Poetry Out Loud competition. But for Deaf students, memorization isn’t the only challenge – they first have to translate the poem from English to American Sign Language. From there, they work to interpret the poem’s meaning and incorporate it into their performance in ASL. 

Traiton Kramer and Brayden Olson are seniors at Oregon School for the Deaf. They both competed at the state Poetry Out Loud competition this year and join to tell us more about the process, along with Gayle Robertson, a curriculum specialist who coordinates the competition at the school.