ABSTRACT
We set out to write a design case about the Tennessee School for the Deaf’s (TSD) evolving learning spaces. We hoped to view the school itself as a design. We searched local archives for pictures, and decided to interview a teacher at the school for their first-hand experiences of the design. The 90-minute interview resulted in a design case completely from the perspective of the user, who was not only a teacher at the school, but was a graduate, and from a family with four generations of graduates from TSD. Our initial intention to explore learning spaces resulted in a discussion of a crucial design decision which had lasting and liberating implications for TSD as a school, the decision to accept American Sign Language as a language and teach bilingually at TSD.
