I had the opportunity to travel down to the Wellington Deaf Short Film competition. It was a wonderful chance to practice my NZSL skills as well as a chance to see the showcase of amazing deaf tallent. A student on my caseload had entered a film and i really wanted to support his efforts.

Kyle and one of his actors pose with his film poster outside the cinema

Kyle with his "Best Actor" award. 

It was particularly interesting to sign with other guests to see what their expectations were, and on the whole it seems like a huge amount of interest has been fostered for the next festival. This could be something that RTDs could encourage all their students to participate in, including ipad-created films.

Flying to the NZSL Deaf Film Festival

An amazing trip down and back from Wellington for the NZSL film festival. I was on the same flight as 12+ deaf students and adults. It was interesting to notice that so much of the plane's info (emergency instructions etc) were missed by all of them. I spend much of my flight signing various bits of info to the two deaf adults next to me. It was fantastic practice!

NZSL Descriptors

ASSIST case - Dealing with DNA's

I had a visit to a school who were keen to get hearing aids onto a Maori student who had a history of not wearing them. The school felt powerless and the student was falling far behind in all subjects. There was a reluctance to engage from the family.

After an initial meeting with the school I was able to ascertain that the problem was two-fold - transportation and concern over money. As is often the case with some of the Maori families I work with, these two issues can be a huge factor in preventing students accessing critical assistive tech. I was able to arrange an appointment through the clinic to have a new fitting. The school was able to transport the student to the appointment and now a second appointment has been made to fit his new aids. The family were releived when I spoke with them; their concerns being that they were 'in trouble for the loss'.

This experience is a fairly typical case I face with my ASSIST role and it is always good to be aware of these issues when working with Maori families.

feedback from Whanau re: Assessment data

Feedback from a family. ..

"...Thanks so much for taking the time to explain the report.  It makes much more sense now, I appreciate you taking the time to break it down for me.  There is so much to learn for us as a family to help *****, I do worry that she will fall behind too much and lose interest in reading and spelling.  We do however keep trying no matter how hard things can be for her sometimes, we just want to keep her learning new things. Thanks again for the advice and we will try the app that you have suggested.  Take care,*******...."

I now realise that the time allocated to the writing of a further email to further explain a piece of assessment, although time-consuming, can have a huge impact on the understanding and acceptance of Whanau when coming to terms with the unexpected results of assessment. I believe it is well worth allocating a portion of time disseminating any feedback with future assessment inquiries.

Level two NZSL attendance

  Awarded to me after 5 hours of NZSL training over a term. Following this I was assessed as to my NZSL competency at level two and passed with a great score :)  My assessment data and final results can be viewed on my end of level report HERE

NZSL intensive day - Teaching Maths in sign

Teaching specific subject matter with signing students is now a very relevant and critical part of my current role. I have two students from the NZSL@school project

Today I had the opportunity to practice teaching simple subtraction skills using imaging and NZSL. It was great to have two NZSL teachers present to offer guidance and support. Already my mind is filling with possible activities to take into school to work with my Thursday student. 

My NZSL Video: "A current event"

Signing a waiata

As part of my NZSL goals this year, a need to be able to reply to a waiata (in NZSL) was right up at the top of the list. KDEC as a centre seems to be quite ahead of us with regards to the ability to do this so it was a great opportunity today to have a staff member step up and teach us all.

We decided on "Te Aroha" as our chosen waiata. Its a beautiful song that is fairly well know, but most of all it was a simple one to master.

Although my initial NZSL goal was to learn and perform a single waiata in sign; I may need to modify this to include learning two of more.

Session One: "Pasifika"

Key ideas I took from the session

• We need to know more about our pacific Island children than 'just a name'
• Family is EVERYTHING to majority of pacific Island families. 
• Silence often means "respect" rather than non engaging.
• Church is like a meeting place.

I have a student whose family would have the above points apply to them. The 'silent and respectful aspect is something I have dealt with already and I have found that by giving advance warning/notification of oppertunityto talk/ask questions allows the family elders to find answers to their questions without being disrespectful.

Mala'ia and Maka

After a discussion about famous people from history (who are now dead), my student was keen to discuss the topic of cemetery's. At first this was a challenge to decipher as he only knew a few Togan words to describe the setting.

It was a great oppertunity to share the vocabulary he knew and compare it / alongside English. The student really took pride in sharing his language with me. 

Mala'ai - street near the cemetery 

Maka - tombstone 

Home Visiting

I needed to acquire permission for a student to attend the KDEC sports day. The school permission forms were easy as the procedure is straight forward. With other students the same was so with gaining permission. With this student, various cultural expectations needed to be attended to. 

In this culture, both manners and politeness, as well as a customary stop inside, are the norm. It was not the done thing to simply ask for forms to be completed and race off again. Often we as RTDs are placed into unfamiliar cultural settings. I feel that the extra effort I have placed into this family relationship has benefitted in all dealings to this date.

9 - Respond effectively to the diverse languages and cultural experiences and the varied strengths interests and needs of individuals and groups of akonga.,

9 - Respond effectively to the diverse languages and cultural experiences and the varied strengths interests and needs of individuals and groups of akonga.,