Hooray!
It's that time again where I can very proudly give you the link to my latest piece of writing on the Limping Chicken!
This one is about Disabled Students Allowance and the process you have to go through in order to qulaify, have your assessment etc. Thankfully it's a fairly happy story so far :)
Click here for my DSA post on the Limping Chicken :)
As well as that, today there is also an interview with Amanda Everitt who works at NDCS as a Participation Officer!
She's an amazing person, and a brilliant role model for deaf teenagers everywhere!! She runs the Buzz website (NDCS webpage for teens) and helped to run the Youth Advisory Board too! :)
Click here to read Amanda's interview! :)
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Sunday, 27 May 2012
WDCS Sports Day :)
Yesterday was this months Worcester Deaf Children's Society event - sports day :)
The idea was to have a bit of an olympic theme and so there were lots of members dressed up in England shirts, t shirts with the union jack and some very cute dresses in red, white and blue!
As well as this the amazing Mel who organised the event managed to get hold of some sports relief goodies including socks, clappers, deely-boppers and medals - very popular with everyone involved :)
From what I can work out in the chaos Team One won the kids events, but there were also adult races, a massive tug of war and what looked like a hot dog eating competition!
It's safe to say there were lots of very happy, very tanned kids running around enjoying themselves even though the heat was incredible! Brilliant day for a sports day :)
The idea was to have a bit of an olympic theme and so there were lots of members dressed up in England shirts, t shirts with the union jack and some very cute dresses in red, white and blue!
As well as this the amazing Mel who organised the event managed to get hold of some sports relief goodies including socks, clappers, deely-boppers and medals - very popular with everyone involved :)
From what I can work out in the chaos Team One won the kids events, but there were also adult races, a massive tug of war and what looked like a hot dog eating competition!
It's safe to say there were lots of very happy, very tanned kids running around enjoying themselves even though the heat was incredible! Brilliant day for a sports day :)
Monday, 21 May 2012
NDCS YAB Videos :)
Our last bit of fun with the YAB was to spend hours of time with deaf media company Remark making loads of cool videos about the YAB and also information videos for deaf kids and teenagers :)
The idea was that we all wanted to become more independent and find out about the cool technology out there! So we have a retubing you hearing aids video... and a using your radio aid for music etc video :)
As well as that we realised that some deaf teenagers would be wondering about cochlear implants... so we made a video about those too!!
Enjoy :D
The idea was that we all wanted to become more independent and find out about the cool technology out there! So we have a retubing you hearing aids video... and a using your radio aid for music etc video :)
As well as that we realised that some deaf teenagers would be wondering about cochlear implants... so we made a video about those too!!
Enjoy :D
BSLBT - The End
I saw this on the Limping Chicken this morning and when I watched I thought it was an amazingly moving, thought provoking and slightly scary film...
"The End" is definetely worth a watch if you, -like me- have ever wondered what the world will be like for deaf people in 30 years... And even if you've never given that any thought watch it anyway!!
I'm afraid I couldn't find it on YouTube but click on the link to watch it on the BSLBT website! :)
BSLBT - THE END
"The End" is definetely worth a watch if you, -like me- have ever wondered what the world will be like for deaf people in 30 years... And even if you've never given that any thought watch it anyway!!
I'm afraid I couldn't find it on YouTube but click on the link to watch it on the BSLBT website! :)
BSLBT - THE END
Friday, 11 May 2012
Prince Henry's Big Cake Bake
So, this week is national Deaf Awareness Week and the National Deaf Children's Society have asked families, teens, organisations and work places to help them to "raise some dough" - get it? by holding a Big Cake Bake. :)
A group of my friends and I decided that we wanted to get involved and hold our own Cake Bake at school and attempt to break cake sale fundraising records!
We got permission from our head-teacher and started to round up a group of year 12s and 13s who were willing to spend their Wednesday afternoon doing some baking - a pretty welcome break from endless revision for most of us!
In the end we had so many people willing to bake us some cake that I thought we'd never manage to get rid of it all!
As well as this I asked NDCS for some things to help us raise a bit of deaf awareness around our school and received a stack of awesome posters, pens and post it notes as well as some balloons and stickers!
My friend Emma and I had great fun running around school putting up posters to advertise our cake bake and on Thursday morning (cake bake day!) I snuck around our school sticking up posters in places where everyone would be able to see them :)
Amazingly we'd sold our first cake before the school bell had rung! To my biology and form teacher who was having some family over that evening - £5 already, result!!
At break time a group of us hurried off to the concourse to start setting up and as soon as the bell rang we had a whole crowd of sixth form, lower schoolers and teachers gathering around and wanting to buy cake!
We got permission from our head-teacher and started to round up a group of year 12s and 13s who were willing to spend their Wednesday afternoon doing some baking - a pretty welcome break from endless revision for most of us!
In the end we had so many people willing to bake us some cake that I thought we'd never manage to get rid of it all!
As well as this I asked NDCS for some things to help us raise a bit of deaf awareness around our school and received a stack of awesome posters, pens and post it notes as well as some balloons and stickers!
My friend Emma and I had great fun running around school putting up posters to advertise our cake bake and on Thursday morning (cake bake day!) I snuck around our school sticking up posters in places where everyone would be able to see them :)
At break time a group of us hurried off to the concourse to start setting up and as soon as the bell rang we had a whole crowd of sixth form, lower schoolers and teachers gathering around and wanting to buy cake!
It has to be said we had the most amazing and absolutely beautiful selection of cakes and my friends totally excelled themselves, I was so proud!
Holly's cakes in particular were totally awesome :)
After break a small group of us stayed on to "guard" the remaining cakes and Amy and I decided we might make a bit of money if we took some cakes up to the sixth from office and common room - we were right! Sixth form love cake!!
At lunch-time we barely had any cake left! :) And we were feeling quite impressed with ourselves... We quickly sold most of what we had left and were only left with a few little cupcakes at the end of the day :)
Funnily enough what people most loved was being given an NDCS sticker with every cake - and we even had people coming back and asking for stickers for their friends :)
It was great to walk around school and see hundreds of students and teachers proudly wearing their NDCS stickers and enjoying their new pens with pull out BSL alphabets :)
An amazing day and togther we raised a fantastic £72.42 :) definetely a record I think!!Year 12 had better repeat this next year :)
Thanks to everyone who made cakes, sold cakes and bought cakes! You were all totally brilliant :)
Here are just a couple more pictures...
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Odeon Cinemas - Deaf Awareness Week.
Welcome to the biggest scam ever committed by a national cinema...
Last week I received an email from Worcester Odeon Cinema excitedly telling me about their national support for Deaf Awareness Week. The email claimed that as a trial run they were prepared to show several more subtitled films than normal to "test the market" and would I forward this information on to other deaf young people, deaf organisations etc.
I clapped my hands in glee, forwarded it to all my contacts, shared it on facebook and then wrote to Worcester News asking them to advertise the fact that films suddenly became way more accessible.
It wasn't until my friend and I went to check the website yesterday - in preparation for a youth group visit to the cinema! - that we discovered this...
These are the ONLY subtitled films Worcester Odeon will be showing during Deaf Awareness week:
Although I admit this is an increase in subtitled showings (we've gone from 2 per week to 4...) these aren't at accessible times and not one of them is at the weekend! Although Avenegers is being shown on the bank holiday. But on a normal school week I wouldn't be able to make a single one of these showings - and I don't know anyone under 60 who would!!
What's the point in emailing around several people in a good position to advertise your cinema's accessability if you're not going to IMPROVE your accessability! All Odeon have done is make a lot of deaf people laugh at them...It makes me so angry!
I recently wrote to Worcester Odeon and gave them a copy of our YAB petition and they wrote back to me assuring me that they had considered my points and would act on them - silly me to think that Deaf Awareness Week was their action.
So I'm writing another letter and enclosing another copy of all the petitions we have... If you want to sign the petition please click here: YAB Campaign to increase frequency (and accessability) of subtitled film showings...
If your local cinema is being accessible - or if you don't have a job! then enjoy your subtitled showings!!
Last week I received an email from Worcester Odeon Cinema excitedly telling me about their national support for Deaf Awareness Week. The email claimed that as a trial run they were prepared to show several more subtitled films than normal to "test the market" and would I forward this information on to other deaf young people, deaf organisations etc.
I clapped my hands in glee, forwarded it to all my contacts, shared it on facebook and then wrote to Worcester News asking them to advertise the fact that films suddenly became way more accessible.
It wasn't until my friend and I went to check the website yesterday - in preparation for a youth group visit to the cinema! - that we discovered this...
These are the ONLY subtitled films Worcester Odeon will be showing during Deaf Awareness week:
- American Pie Reunion - Thursday - 15.50
- Marvels Avengers Assemble - Monday - 14.00; Tuesday - 13.00
- Mirror Mirror - Wednesday - 14.10
Although I admit this is an increase in subtitled showings (we've gone from 2 per week to 4...) these aren't at accessible times and not one of them is at the weekend! Although Avenegers is being shown on the bank holiday. But on a normal school week I wouldn't be able to make a single one of these showings - and I don't know anyone under 60 who would!!
What's the point in emailing around several people in a good position to advertise your cinema's accessability if you're not going to IMPROVE your accessability! All Odeon have done is make a lot of deaf people laugh at them...It makes me so angry!
I recently wrote to Worcester Odeon and gave them a copy of our YAB petition and they wrote back to me assuring me that they had considered my points and would act on them - silly me to think that Deaf Awareness Week was their action.
So I'm writing another letter and enclosing another copy of all the petitions we have... If you want to sign the petition please click here: YAB Campaign to increase frequency (and accessability) of subtitled film showings...
If your local cinema is being accessible - or if you don't have a job! then enjoy your subtitled showings!!
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
"Look, Smile, Chat..."
Despite the glaring grammatical errors I've lost count of the number of times I've used this phrase over the past few years... teachers, family, doctors, friends...It's my back up phrase, you know for cases of emergency where the hearing aids don't show through the hair of the lack of correct response doesn't make someone suspicious."I don't hear so good..."
From where I'm sitting Deaf Awareness is THE biggest issue for deaf teenagers in this country; and probably kids and most adults too... You could argue that post-code lottery, education, equal access are all more important but actually when it comes down to it all those things are simple - Deaf Awareness.
With better awareness in schools about the needs of deaf teenagers teaching methods would improve, students would be more welcoming. If more cinema managers understood the problems deaf people have understanding speech, more subtitled films would be available. If the government could see that although each deaf child is unique we all deserve to have our individual needs met we wouldn't have such a blatant post-code lottery when it comes to issues in Audiology and deaf education.
I'm not the only person who belivieves this... Last year the NDCS Youth Advisory Board voted that Deaf Awareness was the most important thing we wanted to campaign for - purely for the reason above. We could all see that by improving awareness we would improve a number of other areas simultaneously. Deaf Awareness was just an umbrella heading for many other issues we faced.
And so, this week NDCS have launched their new campaign - Look, Smile, Chat.
The campaign focuses on raising awareness in schools but also spreads out to youth groups, mainstream events and I personally hope that it will be successful enough to one day hit the people who need to see it the most. NDCS have invested so much time in the fantastic resources available - posters, deaf awareness videos, teaching resources and they're all fantastic and made with an incredible amount of input from deaf young people all over the UK.
As well as all this NDCS is encouraging parents, teachers for the deaf, youth workers and deaf young people themselves to go into schools and teach people about Deaf Awareness - who better to tell young people about the issues facing deaf young people than deaf young people themselves?! Sadly I don't think that this happens enough, but who knows, maybe Look, Smile, Chat will change that!
To view all the resources and download copies of the lesson plans, posters etc please please visit The Buzz - Look, Smile, Chat. You can show your support for the campaign by adding the logo to your facebook picture via the Buzz website.
Worcester Deaf Children's Society - Snowdome Trip
On Saturday night my friend Orrion arrived for a girly night in to celebrate my birthday. We had a great time painting nails and learning to french plait and I certainly didn't feel 19! Which was nice in the current exam stress...
The next morning we hitched a lift from Mum into Worcester to meet the WDCS Coach and head off to the Tamworth Snowdome. As Snowdome rules say she have to be over 5 to take part in the activities we were sad to leave behind a number of families who have very young children but it was great to welcome at least one new family :)
When we arrived at Snowdome everything was a bit chaotic! Try getting 30 families the correct wrist-bands for the correct activities in the correct order...
Our first event was tobaggoning for which the Snowdome use the same slope the skiers use! It's steep and bends around meaning you have to know how to use your brakes correctly!! First we had to get kitted up and then sit through the safety briefing - I should say that WDCS have been to the Snowdome at least 3 times now and every time we go we sit through the safety briefing, its a dvd played on small screen TVs and has no subtitles... Its a bit of a nightmare and means it's everyones responsibility to make sure the littlies have understood what they're doing...
I took Lauren down with me this year and having two people in your toboggan just makes it doubly scary!! The first time round I didn't have hold of the brakes properly and Lauren ended up sitting on them... Needless to say we crashed into things all the way down and hit the last slope going ridiculously fast as I tried to steer and stop us using my feet - not recommended!!
The next few goes were much safer I'm happy to report and Lauren certainly seemed to be enjoying herself as much as I was :)
After lunch our second activity was Ice-Skating which is always the teenagers favourite activity; we've all got quite good over the years and it's awesome to be able to whizz around the circle while the adults fall over and clutch the safety rail... Sounds a bit mean I know!
Everyone loved skating and as a group we taught a few of the younger ones (and older ones!) how to skate which is nice...
After a couple of hours though we were all happy to be off the ice and in the warm... Although I did feel like I'd forgotten how to walk!
There was a quick trip to starbucks before we were back on to the coach and off home :) The journey back was spent teaching our new WDCS family some basic sign language and telling them about the NDCS Family Sign Language Project which they were really excited to hear about :)
An awesome day that I'm so glad is repeated every year! Can't wait for the next one to come around... Definetely worth a trip home from University for!
If anyone's interested in WDCS we also have a new website http://www.worcdcs.org/index.html it has information, pictures and a space for our Youth Group!
The next morning we hitched a lift from Mum into Worcester to meet the WDCS Coach and head off to the Tamworth Snowdome. As Snowdome rules say she have to be over 5 to take part in the activities we were sad to leave behind a number of families who have very young children but it was great to welcome at least one new family :)
When we arrived at Snowdome everything was a bit chaotic! Try getting 30 families the correct wrist-bands for the correct activities in the correct order...
Our first event was tobaggoning for which the Snowdome use the same slope the skiers use! It's steep and bends around meaning you have to know how to use your brakes correctly!! First we had to get kitted up and then sit through the safety briefing - I should say that WDCS have been to the Snowdome at least 3 times now and every time we go we sit through the safety briefing, its a dvd played on small screen TVs and has no subtitles... Its a bit of a nightmare and means it's everyones responsibility to make sure the littlies have understood what they're doing...
I took Lauren down with me this year and having two people in your toboggan just makes it doubly scary!! The first time round I didn't have hold of the brakes properly and Lauren ended up sitting on them... Needless to say we crashed into things all the way down and hit the last slope going ridiculously fast as I tried to steer and stop us using my feet - not recommended!!
The next few goes were much safer I'm happy to report and Lauren certainly seemed to be enjoying herself as much as I was :)
After lunch our second activity was Ice-Skating which is always the teenagers favourite activity; we've all got quite good over the years and it's awesome to be able to whizz around the circle while the adults fall over and clutch the safety rail... Sounds a bit mean I know!
Everyone loved skating and as a group we taught a few of the younger ones (and older ones!) how to skate which is nice...
After a couple of hours though we were all happy to be off the ice and in the warm... Although I did feel like I'd forgotten how to walk!
There was a quick trip to starbucks before we were back on to the coach and off home :) The journey back was spent teaching our new WDCS family some basic sign language and telling them about the NDCS Family Sign Language Project which they were really excited to hear about :)
An awesome day that I'm so glad is repeated every year! Can't wait for the next one to come around... Definetely worth a trip home from University for!
If anyone's interested in WDCS we also have a new website http://www.worcdcs.org/index.html it has information, pictures and a space for our Youth Group!
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