CEU's

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 13, 2002

Charles wrote:
>CEU - Continuing Education Units - equivalent to University-level credits,
>accredited by an institution.  Various colleges and universities have been
>willing to accept a variety of sign language-related activities for CEUs in
>a particular field with permission of a given professor in independent
>study.

Dear SW List members, Bill, Charles, Ingvild, everyone!
Thank you for your question, Bill, and thanks Charles for explaining
what a CEU is...I had never heard that term myself!

To answer your question, Bill...You are welcome to arrange for
courses yourself, with your local college. Then when you have
completed the administrative paperwork, I will be happy to telephone
or write to the administrators who are making the decisions, to
verify that the course will be worth the credits! So go right
ahead...and you too, Charles...I hope you will establish as many
courses as possible!

Meanwhile, there are literally thousands of people using SignWriting
now freely in 27 countries, without cost to them. We have around
20,000 hits per day on our Lessons Online pages alone, on the web...
I assure you, Charles, if I die tomorrow, SignWriting will be living
and breathing and very much alive for generations to come!

In fact, I am making arrangements that if anything happens to me,
that our web sites, which are huge, will continue to be on the web. I
am also planning to send out hundreds of cds in the Fall, which will
also keep SignWriting spreading... thanks to Bill Reese and his
wonderful cds! So courses in schools are for others, who want to
teach the courses, to arrange, with my full approval.

Background history of List members:
Years ago, when I was young and well enough to teach outside my home,
I was on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory of Music, where
Sutton DanceWriting was a requirement for graduation for all Dance
majors for ten years. It was a huge job for me to get DanceWriting
accredited as a part of the curriculum, and once I could no longer
teach at the Conservatory, DanceWriting no longer is required, nor
does it give a student credits if they learn it. So to keep credits
in schools, the programs must be taught on a regular basis, with
administrators approval, and I personally cannot teach those courses.

And that is exactly why I started the SignWriting Literacy Project,
where I donate books and materials to teachers of the Deaf around the
world (only when I have the funds). And it has worked! SignWriting is
now used more and more because of my openness and generosity. And if
I had not done that, most teachers wouldn't even know SignWriting
exists, let alone get it accepted by skeptical schools!

So more and more teachers of deaf children are using SignWriting as a
part of their daily classes. And I hope that Sign Language teachers
will also use SignWriting as a part of their Sign Language courses.
Using SignWriting inside existing courses that are already accredited
makes a lot of sense, since the written form for any language should
be an integral part of learning that language...and not necessarily a
separate course.
--


Val ;-)

Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

SignWritingSite
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