Joy Darby: My journey into sign language

When I was 15 and attending a local mainstream secondary school, a child who was deaf joined the school and was placed in my class. This meant me and my friends were given free, after school sign language classes!

I can still remember them. It was cool and we enjoyed learning this new language. Importantly, I had learnt that it was complete, extensive and could communicate on any topic.

When the classes finished I decided I wanted to have a piece of paper to recognise my hard work so I enrolled on my Level one BSL and deaf awareness course with the local town college.

The course was free, as I was in full time education, and interesting! I really enjoyed my level one. It was an adult evening class for adults so I was aware that I was the youngest in the class! I

couldn’t even legally drink when the class had a social to the local pub. But I did meet a deaf tutor and was exposed to the concept of deaf culture and the brilliant deaf awareness advice which was part of the course.

I was told that level 2 in BSL was much more time-consuming so I decided to focus on my other exams and left it there for the time being. But I had met two real life deaf people, been informed that deaf culture existed and knew that BSL was to be respected.

Many years later I went to a CPD activity at work for people who wanted to learn a bit about BSL and how to use it in their roles at work. Then, while volunteering at a community centre, I was able to successfully use sign language to tell a client with a cochlear implant when the children’s club was on. This was first time I had used sign language in daily life.

Then I sold a piece of furniture online to a cochlear implant user. Importantly, the BSL I learnt at school had exposed me to parts of the deaf community and meant I knew some sign language when we were told that our child’s hearing was deteriorating. I had now met about five deaf people; my daughter being one.

There are significant barriers which parents who want to learn to sign have to face, not least the fact they weren’t planning on learning a whole new language at such a busy time in their lives.

Barriers such as time, money, babysitters, effort, and course availability. We were fortunate that although we had missed the September intake for our local college that we were able to find another class ran by a deaf tutor who was willing to take two new class members after the course had started – HELPFUL to say the least.

I wanted to help my husband catch up and was frustrated by what I found on youtube, some videos were clearly well signed by tutors or fluent signers, others were amateurs which is fine, but not what I wanted to recommend to him.

Recognising sign language courses were often based around conversations that adults might want to have and not the topics I wanted to talk to my child about, I enrolled on a ‘baby sign class,’ and was impressed to find that the teacher was trained to level three level in BSL and would compare what she was teaching to BSL if there was any difference.

The babysign class was based on BSL and importantly, it was relevant to life with a baby, but it wasn’t stretching my sign language. Then I found another babysign class, this time ran by someone trying to improve their signing to pass their interpreter exams.

This was useful but like most baby sign classes we spent most of our time doing nursery rhymes. I was then told about a deaf community centre in another city with a playgroup for deaf and hearing parents. Now that really does stretch my signing. I am hugely grateful for the chance to expose my Daughter to role models that happen to be deaf and fluent signers.

I have compiled the best clips that I can find on YouTube on a channel called ‘everyday BSL’ and arranged them into topics that might come up in normal life, like signs for healthcare, children and customer service. I hope its useful.

Joy Darby runs a YouTube channel dedicated to helping other learn British Sign Language relevant to their life. She also blogs on products that could be of interest to parents of deaf children here.