Levin woman Rebecca Williams has been profoundly deaf since the day she was born, a victim of the virus disease rubella.
But in 30 years, she has learned to cope with that disability, learning a language called “sign” to communicate more easily with those in the hearing and deaf worlds.
As a practitioner of sign she is now teaching other deaf people — and teachers of deaf people — the language which uses the hands rather than the vocal chords, to convey the message.
Rebecca was recently chosen, along with seven other New Zealanders, to attend a two-week training course in London to learn the basic concepts of teaching sign language.
Although fluent in sign language, most deaf people have received little or no training in teaching the language to others.
It is a hard language to teach, and valuable lessons were learned on the specialised training course, says Rebecca.
The students learned an essential tool of their teaching was an overhead projector, so pupils could view a list of words or and pictures on a screen while watching their teacher “sign” those words with their hands.
Also important was to have a course description, course aims, objectives, a syllabus, a scheme of work and lesson plans – none of which Rebecca has used in her teaching of sign at night classes at Horowhenua College for the past two years.
The course has also provided an insight into the lives, language and culture of deaf people.
For two years, she has been taking night classes of up to 22 people in sign language at Horowhenua College. Also this year she is teaching Wellington Teachers’ College students the art of sign.
It is a language she is grateful for — but a language she was banned from using at St Dominics School for the deaf in Fielding where she boarded for six years from the age of three and a half.
“At St Dominics we weren’t allowed to use sign language. The nuns didn’t believe in sign language.
“What I find is really hard is to lip read all the time, because I get so tired. I’d rather sign — it makes you cheer up — happy.”
It wasn’t until she attended Te Aro primary school in Wellington, which has a unit for deaf students, that she saw sign language being used for the first time.
“I was surprised because children were signing and I had never seen it before in my life. I thought — this is marvellous! I learned to sign there.”
From Te Aro she spent six years at Viard College in Porirua.
The lively 30-year-old, deafness isn’t a real problem in coping in the real world.
She was employed as a bank officer for the Bank of New Zealand for 10 years, firstly in Porirua and then in Levin, up until last April when she was made redundant in a restructuring move.
If she cannot understand people through lip reading, she asks them to slow down.
In teaching others to sign – and teaching teachers to communicate with their deaf students — Rebecca hopes to open up to others a whole new world of communication that is easier to for those in the deaf world to cope with.
