LIFE AND DEAF
Life & Deaf was a speech and language therapy driven poetry project mainly for students aged 11-16 at the Deaf Support Centre, Thomas Tallis School, Greenwich and some aged 16 -19 at Shooters Hill Post 16 Campus. The project, led by Specialist & Speech Language Therapists, Jane Thomas and Katie Martin, was designed to encourage the students to explore their Deaf identity, express what it's like to grow up as a young deaf person and develop communication skills, confidence and self esteem all essential to good mental health. The fIve Every Child Matters outcomes were at the core, so too was the wish to celebrate the beauty and flexibility of language, whether BSL, written or spoken English, even – in one case – Lithuanian!
As the project developed it took on a life of its own and from the relatively small beginnings of a school poetry project we found ourselves producing a book, a DVD and holding an exhibition of the children's fantastic work! The excitement generated during this process was contagious. There was great support from the PCT and from Education, including the Advisory Service and staff at Thomas Tallis and other resourced Centres for the Deaf in Greenwich.
The response to the project has been so amazing that we felt we had to share our experiences and success. We want this story to run and run, with your help. So here is some background. I have used italicised extracts from our young poets’ work to illustrate each section below
I dream a whole town full of Deaf people
Something like this dream came true for the student poets at the Launch of Life and Deaf in October 2006. Greenwich University donated a prestigious venue for a two week exhibition.
On the night of the Launch, the students’ photos and their colourfully illustrated poems, enlarged and framed, adorned the exhibition space. Videos of each of them were projected onto walls and arches.
During two performances (many people had to be turned away!) in the adjoining lecture theatre, the Deaf poet Richard Carter, who had worked with the students on signing their poems, performed, followed by the students, who signed or spoke their own poems live to an audience of 240.
In all about 400 people, d/Deaf and hearing, strangers, professionals, family and friends attended the Launch. ‘See Hear’ came to film it and broadcast an item. BSL was in evidence all around. The atmosphere was terrific.
I hope I will be deaf and famous!
The students all amazed us by their poise and naturalness during filming for the DVD. The preparations for the launch and performance involved the students in rigorous learning and practice of their poems. Fame does not come easy!
Look at the front! look at the front!
I don’t want to be deaf
I want to be hearing, happy free
Back at the chalk face or smart board, we all know what hard work it can be. Life and Deaf, with a brief introduction to each poem on the contents page, gives a flavour of those oh-so-familiar issues, which parents and newcomers to the field may not remember or even be aware of
One girl said it’s stupid to call
A deaf person names
She became my friend and asked
What’s it like to be deaf?
This student recalls being the only deaf student in a mainstream school. She was lucky there, some are not. As an advisory teacher, who no longer normally works with DSP students, I was very struck by the coherence of the Thomas Tallis group of more than twenty students. Some were oral/aural students I had known before in mainstream, similar to others I still see there, most of whom have not met other deaf kids and would never think of signing, nor even think of themselves as deaf at all.
Signing, lip-reading, BSL, SSE and spoken English
Deaf people have lots of differences like hearing people….
Whatever they are
It is natural
The students in the project have losses varying from moderate through to profound and varying communication preferences.
Deaf are the best!
This culturally Deaf poet suggested an illustration for his poem of hearing aid equipment in the bin! As our designer worked with him on this, another profoundly Deaf signing student was visibly upset at what she saw as shocking treatment of valuable and important technology.
Always put on my cochlear implant
Feel relaxed and have good fun
We were keen to promote BSL and positive, inclusive views of Deafness. This profoundly Deaf student chose her CI as the subject of her poem, her photo and illustration. A spin-off was a generous donation from her CI manufacturer!
Fundraising was a constant pre-occupation. For a long time we thought our designers would go unpaid and ISA’s have to be cashed in to pay the printers! Eventually, after much time-consuming research and form-filling, more sponsors, including the National Lottery and the Arts Council as well as individuals and organisations, supported with money or services,
Am I famous or a freak…..who am I?...
I am deaf
And I am sticking by it!
Many students expressed negative or confused feelings in their poems. There were descriptions of Unknown Darkness and, in Street Signs, the shock and typically teenage embarrassment of people staring at you, of being different. I was startled and moved to be in a workshop with the designer as a group gathered round an illustrated mock-up of a poem one of them had written anonymously:
Anger, hatred, fear and pain
Hating our parents so much for forgetting we are deaf
I wanna get out of here
How can I vanish my feelings?
They identified very strongly with the poem, of which this is a short extract, some seeming relieved to find they were not alone in experiencing such strong emotions. Others seem at an earlier stage in the exploration of their identity:
All the Deaf children think
‘why don’t hearing children ever talk to them?’....
But hearing students are happy
To learn to sign and voice off
Then we are so smiley and happy,
Just like you.
Two of our students have recently been diagnosed with Usher Syndrome and chose to write about this with raw honesty, one in ‘My unaccepted world’,
the other in a piece, illustrated with her own beautifully drawn butterfly, which includes:
The whole of my eyes ushers
The whole of my ears deaf and
The whole of my mind dreams……..
I always dream the light and the shadows mix in the sky
In their poems, the students themselves, unbidden, raised all the pertinent issues. I have only scratched the surface. Just two more quotes remain with me:
All my life dreaming about going to a space that I wish for
……….. Deep in my mind encouraged
and
I want to belong half in the deaf world and half in the hearing world
I don’t want to half belong in a whole world
WHAT CAME NEXT
For Parents and families
At the launch, we had seen the power of our students’ work. They moved around, happy, relaxed and confident amongst the crowd. Their families were crying, laughing, hugging, thoughtful, delighted, amazed, above all, proud. We all were. Some were involved and engaging with d/Deafness and with us for the first time, or in a positive way they never had before. Many had gained new insights into their child’s condition. They came to tell us how they felt, how it helped them. They wrote in the comments book, bought multiple copies of the book/DVD on top of their complimentary copies, ordered the blown-up versions of their children’s poems and photos. They took details of BSL classes, many of which we are able to fund in Greenwich. They later wrote in:
Should do more events like this. It was so emotional as parents. The whole experience lifted my wife and I and gave us confidence, feel-good and showed us that we are part of a great community
‘The poetry book/DVD is fantastic. It was a real confidence boost for our daughter. I am able to share this event with other members of our family
‘It was wonderful. I felt proud and relieved. You always worry when you’re a mum. I want to learn to sign now. I’m going to show my friend the DVD.
This is a wonderful evening during which my deaf daughter gets the opportunity to express herself naturally and with pride.
Members of the wider Deaf community, colleagues from other disciplines, strangers were all deeply affected.
For the students
Before the Launch, the students were most excited about the group Pizza Express outing Jane and Katie arranged with the local Deaf club, to ensure they all came back in the evening! We have no formal measures to see how the aims of the project were met, but a lot of incidental evidence. Students said
I felt after brave, excited, proud and very very pleased with myself.
I will never forget it
That day chan[ge]d my life and I would love to do this again…My family was really proud of me… I also felt more confident about my usher.
They wrote prolifically for weeks afterwards and had to be stopped! The students performed in 2 whole school assemblies at Thomas Tallis. They were very engaged in therapy and very confident around school in the weeks after their assemblies. They were all very keen to have their poems up on the walls at school.
For others
Thomas Tallis has included ‘Life and Deaf’ in the English curriculum as an example of ‘Poetry from other cultures’. The LEA is being approached about rolling this out across the borough. The book has been cited in the LEA as a very good example of ‘securing pupils’ views’. The video was shown on a loop in a public space at our Post 16 Campus, attended by many d/Deaf students. Feedback from the Deaf community has been entirely positive. A 7 year old mainstream hearing-aid user asked me to show the book to his class and his teacher told me she had never seen him look so happy.
The poetry was truly amazing and got across the Deaf identities of the teenagers performing more securely than a million formal papers would have done.
Over the weeks and months that have passed, more and more positive feedback has continued to come in. People are still asking ‘When is the next one?’ We have thought carefully about this.
And that is where you come in.
Jane, Katie, Tim and Chloe [our designers] and I are ‘The Team’. We will recruit an administrator and a treasurer. We want to take this project forward and run a project in London and the South East and hopefully repeat this nationwide in the future
Our Managers are in support. We all believe so strongly that this project has benefited and will continue to benefit our students and their families. So, funding permitting,
if you work with Deaf students in London, we will
- send you or your Service a copy of ‘Life and Deaf’
- invite you to become involved and provide training and/or a pack for you, the professionals and your colleagues, to use with ‘your’ d/Deaf students
- Ask you to Involve Deaf/deaf students in mainstream schools, DSPs and special schools and Invite them to write poetry
- Invite their parents and siblings to write poetry about their own experiences
- Hold a competition and acknowledge and reward all entrants
- Appoint a judging panel, to include d/Deaf and hearing adults and students, including perhaps celebrities, such as the Poet Laureate
- Select poems to appear in a new book/DVD and invite their authors to Greenwich to a launch party and performance
We are actively fund-raising for the project and welcome donations
please visit www.lifeanddeaf.co.uk, write to info@life and deaf.co.uk or contact me at helena.ballard@shootershill.ac.uk or on 0208 319 9738for more information