Shane in Bergen

[Shane Gilchrist O hEorpa]

Trevor,

once i perfect my SW, i hope to set up training workshops in the UK and
Ireland but yeah i ll train ye no prob ;-)

Everyone,

Have met a few deaf people in Bergen - the deaf club, the deaf school etc -
it seems that Ingvild have taught half of Bergen's deaf community as she was
a high school teacher. I met the chair of Bergen Deaf Club who was the Chair
of Norwegian Deaf Association for 3 years - now a science teacher at Hunstad
(a deaf school here in Bergen). He was one of Ingvild's best students - I
have to say that I am impressed with this - thats a good teacher we are
talking about! :-)

Spoke to a few deafies - they asked me about the advantage of SW - some have
learned that a while back - in 1991-1992 i think (im not very good with
numbers even in my native language!) and they are trying to see the
advantages in that language - one possible problem is that SW isnt used, say
its not on the doors, its not used in newspapers - for instance, Bergen
Dovesenter publish a regular newsletter (good quality and all that) -
perhaps one can try a regular signwriting column - it will make people
listen and think. I will suggest that to Ingvild here.

As I kept saying in the past, in order for SW to succeed, we do need backing
from the deaf organisations and deaf schools (and even the linguists) - not
very easy I know - but we can look at the Belgian case - if they can do it
with a little push from the ESWO, no reason why we can't do the same.

We have to remember the Danish case here - it was popular at first then
suddenly it went quiet - we have to look into this and find out why it was
the case.

Its hot here and we visited the deaf school yesterday - the kids there are
great :-) - they have SEVEN deaf teachers (its a small school) and I was
very impressed - there is a mixture of oral deafies (i.e. deafies whose
preferred language is Norwegian) and NTS deafies (fluent in Norwegian Sign
Lang) - but they work together great - and the school is great. The odd
thing about the school is that there is a large number of girls there - and
very few boys - thats not normal in deaf education where girls are more
likely to be mainstreamed but Ingvild explained that Norwegian is a very
difficult language to speak so maybe it is the case there.

More to come...

Shane (ESWO)

On 16/08/06, Trevor Jenkins <trevor.jenkins at suneidesis.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Shane Gilchrist O hEorpa <
> shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at gmai...:
>
> > Everyone,
> >
> > im in Bergen, the 2nd biggest city in Norway - the hometown of our
> lovely
> > Ingvild! :-)
>
> Very glad you arrived safley after all the problems at British airports
> this past week. Was thinking about you making that journey after we met on
> Saturday.
>
> > ... and of course to improve my SignSpelling
> > and SW movement as Ingvild is very good in that.
>
> Don't forget that when you are back in London we have another pub session
> where you can pass on some of that great knowledge to me.
>
> Regards, Trevor
>
> <>< Re: deemed!
>
>
>
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