Play Ranger Ben

I have kind of touched on this in my intro post. To add meat to those bones... I want to learn BSL for a number of reasons: 1. Professionally. I am a playworker and work with school aged children all over Gloucestershire. I would like to be able to welcome anyone to our play provision and learning BSL will hopefully allow me to introduce myself and make any children/young people feel welcome. I also work in a Special Educational setting and they use a combination of BSL and makaton to help the pupils understand what is being asked of them, it would be great to start conversing with the pupils in this way too. 2. I have friends who use BSL and I would love to speak with them using the skills picked up on this course rather than them having to lip read me and/or translate. 3. Ever since I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral when Hugh Grant's character and his brother use BSL during the first wedding, I thought that would be cool to learn. There was always something that prevented me from taking the plunge. Half laziness, half anxious about learning a new language i guess! I am currently a furloughed worker so there is no better time than now to learn and achieve my goal from so many years ago.

Hello My name is Ben, I am a playworker and work with children across Gloucestershire. I am currently a furloughed worker and I am keen to boost my skills while stuck at home looking after my own kids. Signing up to this course (especially with the reduced cost) was a no brainer, my hope is that I can engage with children who use BSL and encourage them to our community play sessions, as well as building relationships through language with school pupils I work with. I am trying to find that balance between learning something new to add strings to my professional bow (so to speak) as well as keeping my brain engage in something that isn't Bing Bunny or unicorns! I'm liking the course so far, once I have a bit more confidence in stringing sentences together (by going over and over the work sheets) then I plan to FaceTime friends of mine who use BSL, it will be great to chat with them using this new ability.