Thankfully last night’s late night cheese sandwich did not give me nightmares, however having intended on getting up early, I somehow ended up hitting ‘snooze’ a few too many times and when I eventually woke up, it was 11am! By the time I had emerged and gotten ready, I realised that everyone had gone to wherever it was they were going for the day.
I made my way down the road to the tram stop and hopped on the 57. About ten minutes into the journey, I was awoken from my daydreams by a troop of ticket inspectors boarding the tram. They certainly attacked en mass, but thankfully I had a ticket so did not get in any trouble. I was even more surprised when, just three stops from the end of the line, another band of inspectors got on and conducted their ticket-inspecting assault, this time achieving several successful stings.
My next tram ride took me to my destination on St Kilda Road, thankfully I managed to get off at the right stop; directly outside Victorian College for the Deaf. I made my way up the drive and saw some children in the middle of what looked like a PE lesson across the other side of the lawn. When I arrived in the reception area, there was a student asking for a battery for her hearing aid and the receptionist was telling her off for constantly finding excuses to come out of class! This conversation happened in Auslan (Aussie version of BSL) and I was surprised that I had understood and it made me laugh quietly to myself – all students are the same, it seems! I checked in and was shown into the staff room for a coffee whilst I waited for my meeting.
I didn’t have to wait long before I was met by Julie Rees, the Assistant Principal of the College. She introduced herself and we had a brief chat, then she took me on a tour of the College. The College has 68 pupils and caters for both primary and secondary education (the majority of the students are in the secondary part), so the students are aged 6-19 years. The children are either Deaf or Hard of Hearing, but they do not have any students who are Deaf Blind or have Ushers.
Julie first showed me into the relatively small library, where I saw two students having some extra English lessons, as they have come to Australia from abroad, so have additional language issues to contend with. She then took me to see some of the classes as they were going on, I saw a variety of lessons including English and IT. The classes varied in size, from four to twelve students – each year group has different numbers of children, hence the different class sizes. I had a chat with some of the children and they told me about what they had been doing earlier on the day – making Caesar salad, which had apparently tasted delicious! A couple of the children were really keen to sign to me, so I switched on my receptors and concentrated really hard to tune into their Auslan and then reply in BSL. They were very excited that I came from England and when I told them I was from London they became even more excited, especially when we pointed to Melbourne and London on the big world map and they could see how far away it was!
It was interesting that the teachers I met were all hearing, but the teaching assistants I met were Deaf or HoH, using Auslan and some speech. The teachers were interested to know what I did back home and about the integration of Deaf students into a mainstream college. One of the teaching assistants was a former student of the school and Julie explained that she had taught her when she was first new to teaching a long time ago! Another thing I noticed was that a lot of the children I saw had cochlear implants. I believe the University of Melbourne was one of the pioneers in researching and developing the cochlear implant in the 1960s, and an Australian man was the world’s first recipient of an implant, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with why there was such a high number of them in the school. The children all signed though, plus some, but not all used their voices.
Having seen around the school, Julie arranged for me to have a chat with one of the other teaching assistants, Cathy, as she works in TAFE (Aussie equivalent of FE college) in an advisory role for TAFEs in Victoria about supporting Deaf and HoH students in the mainstream setting. Cathy is HoH and uses both lipreading and Auslan, she is able to use her voice so we chatted using SSE. She goes to the school one day per week to do some outreach work and get a feel for Deaf education at grass roots level. In our discussion we chatted about the issues that she comes across when advising educators about how best to be inclusive, plus the work she does in trying to influence policies and increase understanding of Deaf issues in the wider community of Melbourne. We found that we both encounter similar difficulties, such as DVDs without subtitles, literacy levels amongst Deaf and HoH students, the issues that arise from students going from special into mainstream education, the lack of availability of communication support and cultural differences between the Deaf and hearing communities.
Once I had finished speaking to Cathy, I went back to Julie and thanked her for showing me around the school. It had been a very interesting visit, particularly having to exercise my mind and fingers when communicating in Auslan/BSL! Meeting the children and seeing them in the classroom environment had been lots of fun, as they were all so animated. The fact that the school was so small meant that all the teachers and children knew one another, making it a little community of its own. I felt this was similar to the way we work at College and Julie and I agreed that this made for a good working environment and positive learning experience for the students.
After I left the school, I went next door to an absolutely stunning building which I had noticed on my way up the drive; home to Deaf Children Australia. When I arrived in the reception, I was welcomed by a Deaf lady and I introduced myself – in BSL. We had a brief discussion about the organisation and she offered me the chance to come back tomorrow for a meeting with a man called Kyle who would show me around and tell me more about Deaf Children Australia – I jumped at the chance, so we made an appointment.
Feeling quite upbeat, having used my BSL again, I left the grounds of the two buildings and headed back to the tram, where I took a short ride down to the Maccas I had seen on my previous journey. There, I sat and chilled out (quite literally; the place was absolutely freezing!) whilst clicking about online.
When the hands on the clock had turned around enough, I got back on the tram and went back to where the Victorian College for the Deaf was, in order to walk to the nearby pub, the Belgium Beer Cafe. When I went inside I saw a familiar face I had not seen for some time – my dear friend Stupot! I hadn’t seen Stu since 2006, when he had popped back to the UK on a visit, after emigrating to Australia with his partner in 2004. Stu and I had worked together since 2001, so it was unbelievably good to see him again! We had a wonderful evening, catching up on each other’s news and my travels so far, it’s funny how it’s possible to not see someone for so long, but when you do see one another, it was like you have never been apart. It really was lovely. We had a delicious dinner of Belgium rissoles and enjoyed some tasty Belgium beer.
It was sad saying goodbye to Stu and getting back on the tram, but I am really glad I saw him. The journey back home seemed to take quite a long time and I noticed a distinct dip in temperature. Eventually I got back to Ascotvale, caught up with Sarah, Becs and Tom (including finding out the results of tonight’s Masterchef!) and had a cup of tea whilst we chilled out watching some episodes of Family Guy and Futurama.
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