Teacher Certification...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
May 28, 2002

Eugenio in El Salvador wrote:
>  Valerie, we are making  some parts of the "old testament" in salvadorean
>signwriting for our students and catholics deaf in general, if we book is
>acepted for all, we will go to the deaf protestants schools to show it, and
>if they decide to learn we will teach them too.

Hello Eugenio and everyone -
This is great news.... There are at least seven countries now, that
are writing religious texts in SignWriting...I know Saudi Arabia, the
US, German-Switzerland, Malaysia, Spain and several other countries
are at least beginning...now El Salvador!

Eugenio...you asked in a previous message about certification? Your
question was..."Could I give you a certificate?"....I am so sorry I
do not give certificates...SignWriting is free for you to use.
Perhaps someday your country can establish a way to certify teachers
in SignWriting, but in my lifetime, I just hope to get as many
textbooks, videos and computer programs published as possible, so
that future generations can make their own decisions about
certification...

Back in the 1980's, I did certify teachers. I worked with each
teacher about 6 months in person, and they took four very long and
hard courses with me. I then gave them a very long, sometimes two-day
long certification exam. In the end we had 80 DanceWriting teachers
and 33 SignWriting teachers. But interestingly enough, after all that
work, the people who were qualified did not necessarily continue with
SignWriting...instead it took another decade, for computer programs
to develop, before it really spread...so perhaps we were a little too
early to train teachers years ago...the writing system has improved
enormously in that period of time, and I can contribute the majority
of the improvements to the fact that computers put us in touch with
more people, and as more and more people started to use SignWriting,
it changed for the better.

So you will have to tell your opposition in El Salvador, that all new
ideas are hard to accept in the beginning, but if they understand
that finally their Sign Language can be a written language too...in
time they will adjust to the idea, and accept it. And you can truly
say, Eugenio, that you and your co-workers were the pioneers in El
Salvador...

So keep strength and good spirits! Thank you for sharing with us -
--

Val ;-)


___________________________

Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

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Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting
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Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
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