Inclusive practice- valuing the importance of recognising a teacher's passions through collaboration

This week, I have been working quite hard at promoting the use of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to celebrate NZSL week. Prior to this week, I thought about how I would celebrate this week with the children in my class as well as the school. I thought about an idea that each day of the week, a video of a child signing a basic sign will be shared with everyone at school through the use of  the 10am news doc. This way, everyone will have access to the information.

Our children are familiar with New Zealand Sign Language as I talk a lot about it and use it through songs. Having many children are ELL means that signs can help children understand and communicate. They know basic signs like 'eat', 'drink', and 'toilet'. Our children can sing a few songs like 'Te Aroha' and 'One call away' and we are practising 'Count on me'.

Once we filed a video of a child signing, I uploaded the video on our blog so people can go and have a look at it. This was also shared in the Hamilton East School Facebook page which was so fantastic to spread the awareness of the NZSL week and how important to learn one of the NZ's official languages.

The children were so engaged with this sign language learning, and they were eager to learn new signs. It was so great that each morning, we would show the signing video that we filmed the day before so that they know what sign we are learning, and it really empowered our children. I also talked about our blog and how people can go and have a look at the video. We had a comment on our blog, so reading the comment let our children know that there is audience of our blog.

On Thursday morning, we went to the gateway and sang and signed 'One call away' and filmed it and I again uploaded this on our blog and Pippa also uploaded it on the school's Facebook page. The response from parents, whānau, and teachers were just amazing.

On Friday morning, we have decided to do a little concert using NZSL on our deck. Many children and teachers turned up to watch our performance which our children did an amazing job of. They were just so excited about putting a concert on. What was more amazing was that the school's senior children also performed one song in NZSL.

So what does this experience tell me?

To watch all the senior children perform showed that they cared about what we were celebrating and the importance of learning this beautiful language. It showed me how much the leaders of the school valued my passions in learning and teaching NZSL with my class and school. It meant that we are able to practise inclusive practice by learning something new, valuing NZSL/deaf culture, and developing understanding that having access to this language enables to communicate with more people.
I also thought about what our children have learnt through these experiences, and I recognised how confident our children were at performing the song and how engaged and excited they were through the week. In fact, our children are so keen to learn all of the alphabet signs so that they can finger-spell their own names. I like that it has brought a purpose and an aim, and I have to say that our children have achieved so much by performing in front of so many people.

While listening to the senior children perform, it made me feel so grateful to be at this workplace where they value people's unique differences/needs. I feel that when we are able to do this, we are able to support them fully with appropriate support. To me, inclusive practice means knowing the differences between 'equality' and 'equity', and changing our environment to support the child's unique needs before changing the child.

I would just like to thank all the people who have helped me this week celebrate New Zealand Sign Language Week.