Talking without words

Nursery World, 27 April 1995

How do you teach a deaf child the meaning of abstract words such as cross, sad or stupid? Helen Saunders visits a school in Birmingham which believes it has found the answer to the question with the help of a puppet called Nathan

Starting nursery is a struggle for many children. For deaf children the struggle is doubly hard. They can become severely frustrated and often disruptive.

The first few weeks of this protect were very moving as we watched our deaf pupils experience what it felt like to really understand something in the same way as their hearing peers.

Starting nursery is a struggle for many children. For deaf children the challenge is made doubly hard. Cut off from the communicative world the rest of us take for granted, these children can become severely frustrated and may also be disruptive.

At Bentley West School in Walsall near Birmingham, 19 of the 400 children are deaf. And in an attempt to break through this barrier, the school is experimenting with an exciting new way of teaching language skills by using a puppet who presents stories through mime.

At 11 o'clock, puppeteer Caroline McDowell is getting ready to deal with the issue of bullying using her home-made puppet, Nathan. As she puts one hand inside his head and one through his arm and into his hand, a group of infants file into the room. Some of them are deaf or hard of hearing and their teacher signs to them to sit down quietly.

Suddenly Nathan's face pops up from behind a suitcase perched on a table at the front, and immediately every little eye in the room is trained on him as he makes a thumbs sign. One of the children waves back and laughs, while several of the deaf children, who nave been totally silent until now, break out into loud squeals and giggles and bounce up and down on the floor, suddenly getting really excited.

Total attention

Deputy head, Ros Bayley, points out one little girl. 'When she came to us she couldn't speak or sign or anything, and wouldn't sit still for two seconds, but the puppet will keep her interested for ages', she says.

Now Nathan is sitting down on top of the suitcase with a school bag next to him. One by one, he takes five sweets from his bag, counting and signing the number of sweets each time. The hearing children shout the numbers back to him, while the hard-of-hearing sign the numbers. Three of the older children enter, and Nathan gives them each a sweet, but they snatch the others from the table and run out. Nathan looks very sad and cries.

After a few minutes the children who are acting as bullies return and Nathan takes a ball out of his bag. He wants to play catch, but instead of throwing the ball back to Nathan, the children only pass it to each other, teasing and tormenting him in an unkind way.

Eventually they stop playing and run off with the ball, leaving Nathan on his own boxing mournfully down at the floor.

When the children come back he pleads with them through sign language to give his things back to him, but they protest their innocence. Nathan pulls out a toy truck to play with, but one of the children steals it. They play with it in front of him, and then kick it around on the floor, while one of the boys chucks Nathan's bag onto the ground, and kicks it on his way out. Another boy punches Nathan on the shoulder.

When the three bullies have finally gone, several children rush to pick up Nathan's bag and hand it back to him. Another infant picks up a sweet wrapper from the floor and passes it to the puppet. Looking very sad, he takes the things back, and makes an angry sign at the door. The play is over and the infants are told to say goodbye.

They run up to stroke Nathan's hair and hold his hand to try to make him feel better. Once the puppet has been put back into his suitcase. a little deaf girl frantically searches all over the room for him, looking under the table cloth and under chairs. She has sat totally still, giving her total attention, for more than half an hour.

The children are divided into groups, and Ros asks her group to explain what happened to Nathan. When asked how Nathan felt, one child says, 'Sad', another comments, 'Angry', while yet another says. 'The bigger children were upsetting him and he was crying.' A teacher then makes signs for these words to the deaf children and asks them how they think Nathan felt.

The children understand from the bullying session what Nathan went through, and they understand that the words being signed to them describe Nathan's emotions. What they later see written down can now have meaning for them as they have already understood the words through visual presentation.

The Nathan project began a year ago, when Ros asked Caroline McDowell, director of the Moving Hands Puppet Theatre company, if she would help them implement a new project to unlock the mysteries of the spoken word for deaf pupils.

Ros explains 'Many of these children come to the school at three years old not even being able to use sign language. They get frustrated and even downright disruptive, because they can't understand anything going on around them. The puppet is great because it's exclusively visual and it's a way of putting as much language as possible into the children in as short a space of time.'

She continues. 'The first few weeks of this protect were very moving as we watched our deaf pupils experience what it felt like to really understand something in the same way as their hearing peers. Their sheer involvement and the expressions of pleasure on their faces said it all. Normally, it's difficult to retain the attention of the deaf children rot much more than two minutes.'

Deaf tutors

Before introducing Nathan, Caroline and Ros employed the help of two deaf tutors as they were determined that the puppet would not use verbal language, and they wanted the deaf children to recognise the puppet as deaf. 'Really, he's all things to all kids. In general deaf children see the hero as always being a hearing person, whereas one of the reasons they get so excited about Nathan is because he is the hero and he is deaf,' says Ros.

Caroline says she is amazed at how involved the children become and adds: 'They are very protective of Nathan. For example, in one session, when he wet himself, some of them said, "Don't worry, it's happened to me," and they were prepared to talk about it.'

Topical issues

Each scenario with Nathan is also videoed so the children can refer to them again as many times as they want to. They are also represented in cartoon form to which the children can add their own comments either in English or BSL.

After the session on bullying during the morning all the children agree that what happened to Nathan wasn't fair or right, and Ros asks them to think of a way to get his things back. One little boy suggests calling the police, some think Nathan should kick the children, while others say he could tell the dinner lady or his mum and dad. In the end they decide to try asking the children to give the things back. Nathan tries this tack, and the older children comply, by returning his belongings. But then Ros poses the question, 'What if they hadn't agreed?' and asks the children to spend some time that afternoon writing a letter to Nathan, suggesting what he could do next.

Nathan can be employed to deal with almost any subject from smoking and substance abuse, to hygiene and healthy eating. And as children progress through the school, they begin to go into these issues in much more detail, and teachers start to notice the dramatic effect almost straightaway.

Ros says, 'When you start off with the little children, they haven't learnt yet to see the consequences of things, and might laugh when they see Nathan steal something or smoke. But with the older children, who have done many more sessions, they begin shouting out. "No, don't do that Nathan, you'll get into trouble," or, as he takes a drag on a cigarette, "Don't smoke it, it's bad for you."'

So, as well as being an extremely useful way to teach deaf children to understand abstract words and ideas, the puppet is also a vehicle for teaching children to think about the consequences of their own actions, and how to solve situations.

The philosophy of giving children empowerment is central to Bentley West School, as the teachers believe the pupils will grow up to have high self-esteem and be tar more confident as adults.

Puppet project

Ros is now hoping to obtain funding to continue the puppet protect it her own school, and to develop a teaching package on Nathan which other schools could purchase.

Caroline, on the other hand, is wondering about the feasibility of going into other schools herself to run workshops in an effort to bring the protect to more children whom would also greatly benefit from it.

Meanwhile, all the children at Bentley west school are starting to learn early on in their lives about important issues which will empower them, and are discovering that they need to take responsibility for their actions.

The deaf children are also coming on in leaps and bounds with their sign language and reading skills - which Ros says is like attempting to teach an English child to read using a French text. And, just as important in the short term, they are having fun with their hero, Nathan.