This Rhode Island Woman Wants to Teach Everyone Sign Language

This Rhode Island Woman Wants to Teach Everyone Sign Language

A Rhode Island educator wants to help all kids learn sign language — and wants to help make it fun.

Deb Visnueski Fontaine, who resides in Harmony along with her husband Joe Fontaine, recently wrote, “The Signing Kids Present: Learning Sign Language Through Laughter.” 

According to Fontaine, the benefits for hearing children to learn Sign Language include better memory, increased brain growth and development, and stimulation of the formation of brain synapses. She says it also helps with early spelling and reading skills, and benefits children with ADD and dyslexia.

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In the book — which will be the first in a series coming out in January — six illustrated children teach young readers whimsical sign language sentences beginning with each letter of the alphabet. 

For Fontaine, the journey to published author has been a passion-filled one. 

Author’s Story

Fontaine had not always set out to become a Sign Language expert — but her life led her on a path that took her there. 

Now, she wants to help everyone, starting with children, learn how to sign.

“My husband was on the Providence Fire Department for 33 years. I start with that fact because anyone who is married to a firefighter knows there is no schedule in life,” said Fontaine. “Call-backs, details, orders and the unknown can happen at any time. Raising four children I had to be creative as I walked the tightrope of motherhood, entrepreneurship and peace of mind.”

“So my business would have to work around my children’s school schedule, their extra curricular activities and life in general,” Fontaine continued. “In 1992, I opened a children’s party facility called Polly’s Parties with locations in Warwick and Smithfield, which was only open for one party after school on Fridays, three parties on Saturday and three parties on Sunday. My children could be with me at anytime if need be. And as a mom that was most important.”

Through her business, it was a chance encounter with a young girl that sparked Fontaine to learn Sign Language. 

“During the first year of the parties, a little girl with big brown eyes and a frilly green party dress approached me. I squatted down to meet her eye to eye, ready for whatever question she had. But there were no words. Instead she started signing to me. The mom immediately started interpreting. In all my years of interacting with children I had never felt so helpless,” said Fontaine. “Here was a child with a smile that lit up the room who wanted to share her thoughts and emotions with me and I had nothing to give back.”

For Fontaine, the decision was made at that moment to give back — and go back to school. 

“The following month I went back to college to take courses in sign language followed by classes at RI School for the Deaf,” said Fontaine. “I started incorporating the sign language into the parties, teaching the children how to sign the song ‘Happy Birthday’ and other simple signs. News of their new-found language made it into their school classrooms where, I was told, children were teaching other children what they had learned. Teachers witnessing the enthusiasm about signing contacted principals and directors who then contacted me.”

“Before I knew it. I was hard at work putting together a whimsical curriculum to teach in the schools. I ran both Polly’s Parties and the new ‘Sing A Sign,’ until there were so many school requests that Polly’s Parties needed to be sold,” said Fontaine. “I traveled all over the state from Foster to Westerly to East Providence and all locations in between from September through June. Since my classes were during school hours, I was home to get my kids to school and back home to welcome them back.”

From there, Fontaine’s education business continued to grow. 

“In 2006 I opened my own preschool and kindergarten, ‘The Little Village Schoolhouse Preschool, Pre-K and Kindergarten’ in Smithfield. I continued teaching signing at local schools but my main focus was on my own school and its sign language program. At The Little Village, the fun and giggly lessons were given twice a week,” said Fontaine. “Songs, games, magic and silly stories were woven together to teach each signing class, with signing used between classes, as the children asked for certain color crayons, discussed the weather or talked about family members, family pets or going to the zoo.”

Fontaine sold the school in 2016, but said the letters from parents praising the school and its sign language program are now “kept safely tucked away.”

“Two weeks after the sale of the school, my husband nearly died after cyanide poisoning collapsed his lungs at a major fire on Eaton Street in Providence. In an induced coma, he fought to survive and won, but it would be a long road back,” said Fontaine. “One year later I was on the road again and back in the schools across the state. The demand was high once more and I needed a way for the schools that I couldn’t fit in my schedule to learn sign languate. But I needed it to be as fun and whimsical as the program always had been.”

So Fontaine set out to write a book. 

“Page by page, I sketched and resketched over and over again. After nearly three years, with the talent of illustrator Carlo LoRaso, 'The Signing Kids' is completed,” said Fontaine. 

The book will soon to be available at Barnes & Noble,  at the Coffee Grinder on Bannisters Wharf and Bellevue Kids on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, and also at Brown & Hopkins Country Store in Glocester.