Blog

Deaf education professionals gather for GLADE

Members of our Greater London Affiliation for Deaf Education (GLADE) have recently met together to share a special day of presentations and updates about the sector. The event also provided an opportunity to celebrate GLADE facilitator Joyce Sewell-Rutter (pictured presenting here) who is retiring from Ewing Foundation next month after an amazing fifty years in deaf education.

This was the first in-person event for our networking group for staff in resource provisions across Greater London in two years. Highlights from the programme included:

  • Perceptions of Inclusion with Tom Pilsel, sharing his research of Qualified Teachers of the Deaf (QToDs) in resource provisions.
  • The Green Paper (March 2022): implications for deaf practice, a keynote presentation from Jess Haslam, QToD and Special Educational Needs and Disability Advisor at the Department for Education.
  • Deafness Autism and Me: A Personal Journey with Louisa Bradshaw, a Deaf and Autistic Mental Health Nurse in Hampshire’s Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health
  • A workshop on using the Five Point Scale To Recognise and Regulate Feelings of Anxiety delivered by Stephanie Dawson, QToD Team Lead for Deafness and Autism, Birmingham
  • The Reluctant Talker, a workshop on using Bloom’s taxonomy and Blank’s questioning to encourage conversation, presented by Ewing Foundation Education Advisors Helen Martin and Carole Wood.
  • News from our partner, grantmaker Ovingdean Hall Foundation, and two of its recent grant recipients SoundWaves Foundation and The School of Sexuality Education. SoundWaves is conducting research into the impact of live captioning in classrooms. The School of Sexuality Education is piloting a Relationships and Sex Education programme aimed at deaf young people, with a focus on consent, signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships, and puberty and anatomy.

Thank you to all of our speakers and our exhibitors Connevans Ltd, RG Sound Solutions and Simple Acoustics Ltd. Thank you also to our ever organised and attentive hosts, The Bridge Development Centre.

If you are a deaf education professional working in a resource provision in the Greater London area, please contact us to find out more about GLADE. We are here to support you.