Subject: A teacher's experiences....
To: SignWriting List
From: Stefan Woerhmann

October 6, 1999
Dear SignWriting List:

Stefan Woehrmann, in Germany, is teaching SignWriting to his young Deaf students. All the quotes below are from Stefan Woehrmann:

"One of my Deaf students, Irina, was so happy this morning. I explained the basic handshapes - when we came to the gap - palm parallel to the floor - I accidently made a mistake - all of a sudden she contacted my elbow with her pencil pointing at my mistake. This is something we will never forget. We realized that we are learning together."

"The first time my little students - three weeks at school now....went to the blackboard where I wrote several SW - signs (car, Mama, Frau). They wrote the German words in big letters underneath. You know what I´m talking about? Without any effort at all they accepted that they have to be sure to interpret these signs into the German language as well. The timetable is becoming more and more complex - filled with SW symbols - "Good morning" - "today is Wednesday", "first lesson", "Mr Woehrmann" .. and all the other teachers names (hopefully written correctly in SW)"

"I don´t know how to tell you clearly what is going on with me, with us. My family and my students realize that "something is happening". My biggest concern at the moment is that I don´t want to get them into trouble by presenting or teaching wrong SW-symbols."

"Can´t tell you how exciting things are turning out to be....When little Irina entered the classroom - she went straight to the blackboard and wrote ( really !!!!) "Good morning " in SW in "b i g" signs. I wasn´t sure how to write it correctly - and then the whole class (all my little friends) took a seat on the floor and I showed some pictures from your SW materials to them. So now we know the difference between flat hand, open fist, closed fist, palm facing towards myself, receptive view - You were right - little Irina - coming from a deaf family - loves to learn and write SW as much as I hadn´t imagined before!"

"It´s a hard job to look for all single symbols I can get in order to figure out how I can adapt them to our DGS - sometimes I´ve got to change only a little bit. This afternoon I spent several hours writing lots of cards with SW hands symbols. Step by step --"

"Your ideas are working. I feel the spirit that´s growing in our learning groups . My students can´t wait to see the second video. The first video took two school hours. And - believe it or not - my students seventh grade got big, big smiles on their faces when they happened to identify the one or other SW symbol I simply wrote on the blackboard."

"My little students love to write the signs at the blackboard. I'm writing a timetable with more and more SW-symbols. Later on I`ll show that to you. You may post that into our website! I´ll let you know all I learn from my little friends. I´m taking photos during lessons so you will get soon the first impressions. It´s simply very fascinating, how quickly they understand what you had in mind when you developed this system."

"When I teach and show to my students the difference of light and black signs - they have to produce "dark" parts with white chalk at the blackboard! Next week I´m going to change that. I´m going to buy a real block of paper on which we really can draft black on white. This problem I never thought about before..."

Stefan Woehrmann
Teacher of Deaf Children
stefanwoehrmann@gebaerdenschrift.de