Association of British Sign Language Tutors and Assessors

iBSL workshop

A new teaching/learning package for BSL tutors and learners has been produced by Linda Day and Tessa Padden, two teachers/trainers with over twenty years of teaching experience at the highest levels.

Try it now.

The ABSLTA, together with The Westminster Partnership Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training and the IfL [Institute for Learning] held three workshops at Westminster University on Saturday, 17th March.

The day was funded by the IfL and was attended by thirtytwo BSL tutors, the workshops covered the topics of ‘Teaching Fingerspelling’, ‘Teaching Methods and Resources’ and IfL issues.

All the tutors found it a very useful day, both for learning new things and refreshing previously learned knowledge and skills.

The tutors especially enjoyed the question and answer session with the IfL representative, which cleared up a lot of misconceptions, and they have requested another such session, which it is hoped will be held at the ABSLTA Annual General Meeting.

It is hoped that the AGM will be held on 26th May, both the date and venue will be confirmed with members as soon as possible.

The ABSLTA held two workshops at the City Lit in London on Saturday, 28th January which were attended by 32 people.

The workshops were on the topics of Equality, Diversity and Transgender, led by Olga Lamb and BSL Linguistics, led by Robert Adam.

Comments from participants included: ‘brilliant’, ‘exciting’, ‘perfect’, “very satisfied, want to have more in future”, “good group activities”, “fantastic, lots of information”, “a brilliant day, did not want to leave”, “all good, information clearly presented, good examples of BSL linguistics features”, “would have liked two days, glad I came along”, “Great, but would like workshops up North”

The only adverse comments were that the room was a bit crowded [more people came than had been expected] and the snacks and drinks in the City Lit canteen could have been better.

Keep on watching the website for future workshops.

It is good for BSL teachers to be aware of the BDA’s focus on the quality of the teaching of BSL. The BDA Academy website is only for members but others can access it, the address is www.bslqed.com

Clark Denmark gave a presentation about this at the ABSLTA AGM in 2009-10 and BSL teachers might find it a useful source of information.

People who are teaching, or hoping to teach, need to be aware that they need the proper qualifications to do so.

Following complaints from students, a tutor was taken to court recently for teaching a course when they were not properly qualified to teach at that level so you need to make sure that YOU have the language, teaching and assessing qualifications AT THE RIGHT LEVELS or you may find yourself – and possibly your college – in financial trouble.

The ABSLTA hope to set up some kind of register for teachers of BSL so colleges can check on the qualifications of teachers they employ to make sure they are properly qualified and the students will get value for money.

You have been warned.

The report on the UCLan project on ‘BSL Tutor Support’ is now available, go to the Penny Beschizza item in the ‘recent comments’ in the right hand column for the link.

First of all I would like to say thank you to Robert Adam, as a tutor, on the above date, he had given ideas of understanding and made me realised what I didn’t Read more »