Teacher nominated for deaf learning help

Story from Bristol Evening Post – Growing links between Fairfield School and Elmfield School for Deaf Children in Horfield have been recognised by an honour for one of its teachers. The two schools have shared a flagship building off Muller Road for four years to enable deaf children to learn alongside mainstream pupils. Increasingly, some students from Elmfield School are sharing lessons with Fairfield youngsters. They are helped by British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters, who are known as communication support workers. However, head of English Sarah Barker has taken this a step further by studying BSL herself. Now her efforts have led to her being nominated for a learner of the year award by the charity Signature, which champions excellence in communication with deaf people.

Ms Barker said: "Although I had completed deaf awareness training, and some basic BSL lessons, I didn’t really appreciate the challenges faced by the deaf community until I started teaching a deaf child. Small things that hearing people take for granted, are not accessible to some deaf people."

She started with a BSL Level 1 course at Bristol University then had a rare opportunity to do a BSL Level 2 course at the Family Centre for Deaf Children. Now she is doing pre-Level 3 at the university. This has enabled her to communicate better with the Elmfield students and some of their staff who are deaf. She has also run awareness courses for Fairfield staff and students to increase their BSL knowledge too. This year, for the first time, Fairfield students are studying for a GCSE in BSL.

"It has been inspiring and it is good to raise the profile of deaf awareness," Ms Barker, 31, said.

She has four Elmfield students in her GCSE English class, two of whom are BSL users. Two of them have exceeded their target coursework grades by two levels.

"I am so proud of them," she added.

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