Introducing Myself!

[Jasmine Bea]

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I joined a forum, but it is my first time joining a BSL one. I am learning BSL as a teaching assistant helping a hearing impaired student that I was due to begin working with in April. Due to the current situation, the pandemic has resulted in necessary school closures, so I now support her in her home learning via online video calls. She is a growing teenager and feels very secluded in a world of people who can hear with the aid of technology, so it is my mission to make learning BSL with her an experience that she values. I want to show her that it is a very useful skill to have as a deaf child, and that it will remove limitations she currently faces in her adolescence. I want to make learning BSL fun for her, and prepare her for the classroom environment in which we can use it as our own secret language without disturbing the rest of the class. Right now, she feels isolated and different from every body else, but by finding a passion for BSL myself, I hope to transfer that energy to her. It would be lovely to speak to others from a similar situation, be it teaching a deaf child in a mainstream school, or trying to inspire a young person to learn how to sign. 😚