July 2022
Frank Barnes School is a bilingual school where all children are valued as unique individuals and given opportunities to develop and maximise their academic, social, emotional and physical skills in a language-rich environment. They aim for all our staff and pupils to be bilingual and achieve fluency in both British Sign Language and English and provide high quality education as excellent language models to prepare our pupils to become lifelong, independent learners. was constantly struck by the fact that each class seamlessly, but determinedly made clarity of language (both English and BSL) as much of a priority as the subject matter, and how this enhanced the subject learning
The children were introduced to a few different concepts from anthropology, in large part thanks to the support of Louise the BSL interpreter and also Lee and Connor who facilitated different ways for the children to think and understand about these new concepts. The students thought about how anthropology relies on listening, and how by listening we show how we value one another’s contributions and unique perspectives.
The students thought through the kind of things we might learn by being in a space, using the classroom as our example – we explored what was present in the classroom – people, things, ideas – that gave us clues about what this space is, how we can see rules in action, roles, the ways that people sit or stand.
They then drew proxemic maps – visual representations of people’s spatial placement and what this tells us about relationships between them. They spent a lot of time outside to the walkway surrounding their playground to watch the Kings Cross students play. Though break time was announced while we were outside, about half of the children continued to draw what they were seeing, noting how tricky it was to capture people in motion.
The children to different offered unique perspectives on the Kings Cross children playing:
KJ drew a zoomed in perspective on girl in a wheeley cart laughing; MD indicated movement and dynamics using arrows and directional indicators. Several children zeroed in on particular zones of the playground; leading to insights on segregation between the Kings Cross students and the Frank Barnes students which had persisted post-Covid ‘bubbling’ (when students in the connected schools were kept socially distant to inhibit infections).
Once the children were finished with their drawings and their break time, we came back together to listen to the explanations of what each drawing represented. The children were amazing during this task, each one narrating what clues they were showing in their drawings. They talked a bit with Robinson about her work with Deaf colleagues and British Sign Language users, both in the theatre and with advocacy groups such as DeafPlus. This led to a discussion on the importance of telling one’s own story, about DEAD empowerment, and why learning the skills to help ourselves and others tell clear stories can support empathy. The day ended by talking about
