SignWriting Report March 11, 2003

[Szwalkiewicz, Dan]

Valerie (& list):

Are you aware of any signwriting classes or schools using signwriting in
wisconsin??  I would love to go see one presented or in session.

Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: Valerie Sutton [mailto:sutton at SIGNWRITING.ORG]
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 2:04 PM
To: SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
Subject: SignWriting Report March 11, 2003



SignWriting List

March 11, 2003


Dear SignWriting List Members!

For the past week I have had four visitors from Albuquerque, New Mexico,
staying with me. Teachers Lorraine Crespin, Kate Lee, Dr. Cathy Witty and
Dr. Cecilia Flood presented SignWriting as a team effort on March 8th, 2003,
to around 25 teachers of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students, at the CAL-ED
Conference (California Educators Conference) here in San Diego.


The presentation went beautifully! The Albuquerque team brought a PowerPoint
demonstration that incorporated video clips showing young Deaf students
typing, writing by hand, and joyfully exclaiming "I can write!"... It was
wonderfully put together...


Thank you, Lorraine, Kate, Cathy and Cecilia...for your steadfast attention
to your Deaf student's needs...What is most impressive is that your Deaf
students have taken "ownership" or responsibility for their own literacy
development...the Deaf children are clearly taking charge...reading,
writing, typing and producing SignWriting and English
booklets...illustrating them, binding them...all themselves. According to
their teachers, SignWriting is playing an important role in the development
of their self-esteem...


The four SignWriting teachers from Albuquerque are now back home, teaching
their flock. They left their own unique legacy on the San Diego area, with a
newspaper interview in the San Diego Union Tribune, and a radio interview
that has been heard by several of our friends. I am told it was a long radio
interview, and that my friends were amazed - so I will call the radio
station and ask for a tape of the entire radio interview and will then
transcribe that interview into written form for the general public. I
thought it was going to be a television interview in ASL - we were a bit
surprised when the radio people came instead! But now the radio reporter is
interested. She says she will talk to the TV people about doing a visual TV
program - I hope that happens!


A fifth teacher from Los Angeles, Richard Bernard, at the Granada school,
presented at the end of the presentation. Richard is having success using
SignWriting on cards. He places the English word on one side, and the Deaf
student is asked to write the sign in SignWriting on the other
side...Richard told me that he believes that SignWriting contributed to
improved test scores for several of his students...


Meanwhile, in my daily life now, I am fulfilling orders, trying to complete
the Shopping Cart design on the web, printing literature, and by the end of
the week, I will be starting video editing in my Macintosh...One of our
board members, James Short, is a professional web designer and video editor.
He is also an expert on captioning, and has developed software for
multi-lingual captioning of videos that are on CDs or DVDs...so James will
help me edit the video we took of the presentation, and try to create a CD
showing the progress in Albuquerque...so this will be fun!


I am also eager to begin to add more signs to SignBank, and to answer some
of your important questions on the SignWriting List. I am happy to see that
you all are posting messages on the SignWriting List to each other...The
more you share different ways of writing, the better it is!


So that is my up-to-date report - I look forward to writing again as soon as
I can -


Have a wonderful day, everyone!


Val ;-)



Valerie Sutton

Sutton at SignWriting.org


1. SignWritingSite

http://www.SignWriting.org

Read & Write Sign Languages


2. SignBankSite

http://www.SignBank.org

Sign Language Dictionaries


3. DanceWritingSite

http://www.DanceWriting.org

Read & Write Dance


4. MovementWritingSite

http://www.MovementWriting.org

Read & Write Movement & Gesture


5. The SoulSite

http://www.SoulSite.com

Proceeds Donated to Deaf Literacy


Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting

Center For Sutton Movement Writing

an educational nonprofit organization

Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA

tel: 858-456-0098....fax: 858-456-0020

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