I've been working with Deaf teachers recently, learning from them how they work with deaf children, using signed stories in the classroom. Time and again it comes clear that they know things, can do things, and understand things that can help educate the deaf children in a way that hearing teachers don't seem to be able to do - or at least not so well.
I published the findings with Claire Ramsey at UCSD in the Journal of Deafness and Education International and it seems to have been taken as a wake-up call for better training for hearing people who want to teach deaf children. It is. Hearing teachers need as much training as possible to help them teach deaf children much better than they can now. But, even more, it needs to be a wake-up call for better training for deaf people who want to teach deaf children. Here is the most extraordinary resource that is horribly under-used because of the lack of training. My friend Paul pointed this out in no uncertain terms. Thanks Paul.
I published the findings with Claire Ramsey at UCSD in the Journal of Deafness and Education International and it seems to have been taken as a wake-up call for better training for hearing people who want to teach deaf children. It is. Hearing teachers need as much training as possible to help them teach deaf children much better than they can now. But, even more, it needs to be a wake-up call for better training for deaf people who want to teach deaf children. Here is the most extraordinary resource that is horribly under-used because of the lack of training. My friend Paul pointed this out in no uncertain terms. Thanks Paul.
This made me think of Nilsson, Anna-Lena. 2010. Studies in Swedish Sign Language. Reference, Real Space Blending, and Interpretation. Doctoral thesis, Stockholm University: Department of Linguistics.
ReplyDeleteShe has some lovely data samples of invisible buoys, though all the ones I've seen occur in the context of conversational narratives, not poetry.
But it also brought to mind Merleau-Ponty's “the absence of a sign can be a sign, and expression is not the adjustment of an element of discourse to each element of meaning, but an operation of language upon language which suddenly is thrown out of focus towards its meaning.” (Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence)
and Sartre's “As always in art, one must lie to tell the truth"