(no subject)
Yesterday I began my Teacher of the Deaf Course with my first Auslan lesson!
My course is set out in a strange way. Instead of regular classes each week, most of my units are going to be held in intensive all-day 5-day blocks. It's cause its run through the University of Melbourne and I'm in Perth, so they have to fly lecturers over for big teaching blocks, rather than for an hour each week, which would be stupid. Anyway, the WA Institute for Deaf Education hosts the course and as a part of it they have Auslan classes. In Melbourne the students do it at the uni, but we'd have to go to TAFE here. WAIDE decided to run it for us, which is great cause its free Auslan lessons and a small class environment WITH a Deaf teacher. So how did it go?
The class goes from 4:15-7:15pm on Mondays, so I got there about 4pm and went in. There was only a few people there when I got there but they arrived pretty quickly. There were 5 of us there, all women. One was about my age, another was about 30 and the other 2 were about 35-40. Apparently there are about 15 people doing the course, but Melbourne have been VERY slack about sending us information and VERY uncontactable. We ALL had trouble finding out what was going on. Hence, only 5 of us turned up.
So the lecturer, Leanne began introducing herself and Melissa who is Deaf and will be teaching us Auslan by immersion. That means no translation from Leanne. Leanne wont be there when Melissa teaches! It will be interesting! Melissa works at Shenton College with the deaf students there and has 2 daughters of her own Natasha (14) and Vanessa (12) who are both deaf also. Anyway, the second I met Leanne before all the intros started, she was talking AND signing at the same time and never once talked without signing. So it was fascinating the whole time just to watch. We all introduced ourselves and told them why we were here and why we wanted to do the course and they told me that previous knowledge of Indonesian would be very useful for Auslan because the grammar structure is similar and there are some deaf Indonesian kids whose (hearing) parents I could talk to.
Anyway then Melissa introduced her Hearing Dog, Jade. She's gorgeous. I'd seen her earlier and patted her, but apparently you're not allowed to. it gets her out of working mode and into play mode, so they dont pat her. But this dog is absolutely AMAZING. Her job is to help Melissa and her daughters in daily life by going to get her when somoene knocks on the door or the phone rings or whatever. So Melissa demonstrated what she could do: she made kissy noises with her lips and Jade came running over. Then Melissa SIGNED "go and get Vanessa" and the dog ran straight out of the room and came back about 4 seconds later with Vanessa. How smart is that dog? I mean a normal dog would have trouble if you told it by speaking to go and get someone. But Melissa SIGNED it to this dog and she did it straight away!
So after that she began to teach us the fingerspelling alphabet, which I already knew, so that was handy. She taught us "My name.." and then we spelled our name. So now I can sign "My name is A-N-N-A" and we're going to get our own personal sign names soon! Then she taught us about facial expressions and how you can do one hand movement thats the same but has different meanings with different facial expressions. We learned some facial expression signs but I've forgotten them now, lol. More practice!
Then Leanne took over again and we learned about how Auslan is an actual language which you can't do word-for-sign translations with and how a few signs can convey so much more than a whole sentence in English. We watched a video on that and had a question time and a tour of the school. It was great and I was so fascinated I didn't even notice the 3 hours go by so quickly. I am really into this and cant wait for it all to begin full pace! YAY! :D
After that I went to Fremantle to have dinner with simple_graces. We ordered and sat there for an HOUR before calling a waitress and asking what was going on and she was like "WHAT? you havent got your food yet? I'm so sorry. we're having a terrible night. I'll get it straight away". It didn't take long after that and we got a free cocktail each. But they really were having a bad night. One of the chefs walked into the kitchen and punched the wall and then yelled at a waitress. Eeek! Anyway it was nice when it came, lol.
My course is set out in a strange way. Instead of regular classes each week, most of my units are going to be held in intensive all-day 5-day blocks. It's cause its run through the University of Melbourne and I'm in Perth, so they have to fly lecturers over for big teaching blocks, rather than for an hour each week, which would be stupid. Anyway, the WA Institute for Deaf Education hosts the course and as a part of it they have Auslan classes. In Melbourne the students do it at the uni, but we'd have to go to TAFE here. WAIDE decided to run it for us, which is great cause its free Auslan lessons and a small class environment WITH a Deaf teacher. So how did it go?
The class goes from 4:15-7:15pm on Mondays, so I got there about 4pm and went in. There was only a few people there when I got there but they arrived pretty quickly. There were 5 of us there, all women. One was about my age, another was about 30 and the other 2 were about 35-40. Apparently there are about 15 people doing the course, but Melbourne have been VERY slack about sending us information and VERY uncontactable. We ALL had trouble finding out what was going on. Hence, only 5 of us turned up.
So the lecturer, Leanne began introducing herself and Melissa who is Deaf and will be teaching us Auslan by immersion. That means no translation from Leanne. Leanne wont be there when Melissa teaches! It will be interesting! Melissa works at Shenton College with the deaf students there and has 2 daughters of her own Natasha (14) and Vanessa (12) who are both deaf also. Anyway, the second I met Leanne before all the intros started, she was talking AND signing at the same time and never once talked without signing. So it was fascinating the whole time just to watch. We all introduced ourselves and told them why we were here and why we wanted to do the course and they told me that previous knowledge of Indonesian would be very useful for Auslan because the grammar structure is similar and there are some deaf Indonesian kids whose (hearing) parents I could talk to.
Anyway then Melissa introduced her Hearing Dog, Jade. She's gorgeous. I'd seen her earlier and patted her, but apparently you're not allowed to. it gets her out of working mode and into play mode, so they dont pat her. But this dog is absolutely AMAZING. Her job is to help Melissa and her daughters in daily life by going to get her when somoene knocks on the door or the phone rings or whatever. So Melissa demonstrated what she could do: she made kissy noises with her lips and Jade came running over. Then Melissa SIGNED "go and get Vanessa" and the dog ran straight out of the room and came back about 4 seconds later with Vanessa. How smart is that dog? I mean a normal dog would have trouble if you told it by speaking to go and get someone. But Melissa SIGNED it to this dog and she did it straight away!
So after that she began to teach us the fingerspelling alphabet, which I already knew, so that was handy. She taught us "My name.." and then we spelled our name. So now I can sign "My name is A-N-N-A" and we're going to get our own personal sign names soon! Then she taught us about facial expressions and how you can do one hand movement thats the same but has different meanings with different facial expressions. We learned some facial expression signs but I've forgotten them now, lol. More practice!
Then Leanne took over again and we learned about how Auslan is an actual language which you can't do word-for-sign translations with and how a few signs can convey so much more than a whole sentence in English. We watched a video on that and had a question time and a tour of the school. It was great and I was so fascinated I didn't even notice the 3 hours go by so quickly. I am really into this and cant wait for it all to begin full pace! YAY! :D
After that I went to Fremantle to have dinner with simple_graces. We ordered and sat there for an HOUR before calling a waitress and asking what was going on and she was like "WHAT? you havent got your food yet? I'm so sorry. we're having a terrible night. I'll get it straight away". It didn't take long after that and we got a free cocktail each. But they really were having a bad night. One of the chefs walked into the kitchen and punched the wall and then yelled at a waitress. Eeek! Anyway it was nice when it came, lol.