MyBIM conducted Special Education Teachers (Hearing) Professional Training Series 1 at Hotel Shangri-La, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah from 27 to 29 September 2019.
Malaysian Sign Language and Deaf Studies Association (MyBIM) was invited by Sabah Society for the Deaf (SSD) in conjunction with the Sabah State Education and Innovation Ministry to conduct a 3-days Intensive Training Course entitled “Special Education Teachers (Hearing) Professional Training Series 1” at Hotel Shangri-La, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah from 27 to 29 September 2019.
Ms. Jessica Mak, Mr. Anthony Chong and Mr. James Chua, together with interpreters Ms. Lucy Lim and Mr. Paul Gan, co-conducted this workshop on training Sabah special education teachers on nine Deaf-related topics. Over the 3 days, some 97 teachers from special education schools, polytechnics and institutes, Deaf primary, secondary & vocational schools and NGO-run schools attended this workshop, with many of them coming from different states.
On 27th September in the early afternoon, Ms. Regina Wong of SSD gave a warm welcome to all the participants and explained the workshop objectives & rules; and introduced the workshop hosts to the participants and vice versa. Ms. Jessica gave a short introduction about MyBIM. Mr. Anthony then kicked off the workshop with “Deaf Culture” which touched upon Deaf Culture in the Malaysian context, including Deaf traditions, literatures and the Deaf Community. Dinner followed thereafter, which allowed the participants to get to know each other better.
28th September was a full day where the participants learnt more about: Deaf People, Dual Identities; Introduction to Malaysian Sign Language (BIM); Language Assessment; Cognitive Development in Deaf Students; Educational Interventions; and Transitional Education. To break up the heavy schedule throughout the day, the co-hosts included a short introduction to Visual Gesture Communication (VGC) and included several games where the participants used VGC in game activities. Many participants enjoyed flexing their creativity during the VGC games without using their existing BIM and KTBM (Kod Tangan Bahasa Melayu).
The last day (29th September) featured the last two topics: Language Learning Approach which saw the participants drawing up language lessons with shape-codes and BIM Translation (using BIM in teaching English, Bahasa Malay and Geography), and a panel discussion whereby the co-hosts answered many interesting questions about teaching challenges and experiences within Deaf education environments from the floor. After a hearty lunch, the co-hosts and participants came back to the ballroom to have a “graduation” session officiated by Assistant Education and Innovation Minister Jenifer Lasimbang and took group photos with the co-hosts, interpreters and SSD. The co-hosts and interpreters had a sumptuous farewell dinner with SSD before returning to Kuala Lumpur the next morning.
Overall, Ms. Regina with the help of SSD organised this special training very well. MyBIM’s Training Course was an opportunity to share about Deaf education issues and trends, and the training participants enjoyed the course very much. Many of them opened up about their struggles being teachers of Deaf students and found the training course useful to apply in their educational settings; they also requested for a longer, more intensive follow-up training course in the future. MyBIM hopes to introduce such course in the future, and also set up a training workshop model to be replicated across Malaysian states.
