Learning BSL and transforming teacher-artist collaborations
We have been reflecting a lot over the last month on the choices we make which have helped strengthen and develop our teacher-artist partnerships and the impact this has on advancing our research forward. And on National BSL day, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the impact of my journey to learning BSL has had on my practice.
Since September, I have been working towards Level 1 BSL with Sign Core, a decision I took firstly to increase my ability to communicate with pupils at Royal Cross Primary School for Deaf Children, one of our partner schools in the From HEAD to TOE project, but also due to an interest in advancing non-verbal communication more generally. From co-leading sessions this month with KS2 pupils I have actually unearthed a much broader wealth of benefits that allows my practice to even further support capacity for teachers to be in a space of enquiry, for my instructions and guidance to be further fine-tuned and to form relationships with this wonderful school community where I feel part of the team.
When teaching in a deaf school, previously I have relied wholly on the teacher or teaching assistant to interpret for me as I go. I had to quickly become clearer in what I said, what I was aiming for and also embrace my preference for using imagery even further to support this communication barrier. In reflection with my teacher partner, we were discovering that the combination of two voices/two signers adds more cognitive load for the pupils, making initiation of their tasks much harder to get to, and, in some cases, exhausting. With my (yet still limited but improving!) BSL skills, I can slowly start to reduce that load and arrive at the information with much more efficiency. This has also opened up the enquiry of using BSL and non-verbal strategies as signals to support pupils to begin/shift/end a task, hopefully reducing that cognitive load, and shift in focus or breaking of flow, much further.
Alongside this, our ambition on this project is to be in enquiry WITH our teacher partner; exploring through practice-based research, in the act of facilitating in the classroom, to discover, develop, evolve and refine our enquiry thread. By adding an interpreting role for my teacher partner, I am further removing her ability to be with me in the flow of co-leading, with her energy focused on specific communication with individuals. We are really interested in how my increasing BSL skills, and bringing pupil voice and leadership into a collaborative facilitative space, can allow us, as a whole community, to discover together, and to learn, grow and exist in a space that supports EVERY individual.
An enquiry we continue this term but that my experiences with Sign Core and my progress towards completing my Level 1 BSL qualification will whole-heartedly support!
Happy National BSL day everyone!