A Celebration for Collaborations

Esmail Patel collaborates with Manchester Metropolitan University and The University of Manchester to aid D/deaf Learners with University Choices, Wednesday, 24th April, Geoffrey Manton Building, MMU

Words by Siobhán O'Toole

Esmail Patel, Director/CEO of DEAF (Deaf Education Advocacy Fellowship), joined forces this week with Manchester’s top universities to provide a day in which D/deaf learners could acquire information needed regarding their prospective university experiences, with support from Manchester’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress.

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), The University of Manchester (UoM) and DEAF, came together to inspire and encourage D/deaf learners of the North West, and instil in them the belief that they can attend and enjoy university just as hearing people do. During the event, Hassan Naseer, a student at UoM, speaking on behalf of the deaf university experience, said, “we are exactly the same as hearing people, and have the same rights.” With that, he summarised the main ideology of the event: D/deaf learners are able to, and should, take as much from life as any other hearing person would.

Following registration in the Geoffrey Manton atrium, and the set-up of equipment (such as screens to show typed speech in order to ensure understanding), participants filled Lecture Theatre 6, eagerly anticipating the commencement of the event. UoM’s Laura Cragg enthusiastically introduced the day’s activities, while Dr. Sharon Handley, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at MMU, conveyed her enthusiasm by thanking everyone for attending with hopes that the event would stimulate and inspire all attendees.

It was then Lord Mayor, Councillor Elaine Boyes’s turn to speak, whose presence alone, along with Lord Mayoress, Linda Geoghegan, was inspiration enough. Her speech incorporated the story of Dame Kathleen Mary Ollerenshaw, a British mathematician and politician who was Lord Mayor of Manchester from 1975 to 1976 and an advisor on educational matters to Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s. Ollerenshaw became almost completely deaf at the age of eight, and reached the wonderful age of one hundred last year.

From right to left: Lord Mayor, Councillor Elaine Boyes,
Dr. Sharon Handley and Lord Mayoress, Linda Geoghegan

Following her impairment, Ollerenshaw quickly learned to lip-read, as well as a multitude of other skills, including sports; representing England in the women’s ice-hockey team. At 19, Somerville College, Oxford, invited Ollerenshaw to an interview, and due to her advancement in lip-reading, no one at the university knew of her profound deafness until she had started the course. She left Somerville College with a first class degree.

The Lord Mayor utilised the life of Dame Ollerenshaw extremely effectively. Through details of her devotion to education and music, the whole room was affected, moving and inspiring D/deaf and hearing people alike, a unity felt throughout the entire day.

Before presentations on Student Finance and how to budget throughout university, Esmail thanked all involved in the organisation and support of this event, whilst also introducing his community-interest company, DEAF, and its aims:

“We were set up with one aim in mind, to empower and encourage confidence within the D/deaf community, encouraging D/deaf people to achieve their goals. We work primarily with deaf people, but also within the hearing community too, to campaign and spread awareness of the possibilities for all people within higher education.”

An important point of attention for Esmail was the diversity of the DEAF group today, commenting that, ‘it doesn’t matter whether you’re culturally or linguistically deaf or oral; we want this group to be all inclusive’, whilst also conveying the significance of being independent and how higher education facilitates this. I was extremely pleased when Esmail invited me to interview him in the near future. I look forward to hearing more about his story and primary role in creating and running the community-focused organisation.

After being educated on the difficult but worthwhile process of funding via Student Finance England, ambassadors from both universities directed tours of the two campuses. The ambassadors highlighted the most interesting and impressive buildings, such as MMU’s New Business School—a £75 million building which is one of the finest and most environmentally sustainable academic buildings in the UK—and UoM’s library, the largest non-legal deposit library in the UK and the third-largest academic library, after those of Oxford and Cambridge.

Next, guest speakers, Hassan Naseer and Farkandah Khan, introduced as D/deaf role models, tried to encourage participants not to be afraid, and fully take part in university life.  Nasser, a current student of UoM, said that, “despite the problems that first year will present, such as new and frightening environments and people, it will get easier, and you will enjoy your experience.” Naseer, who is the first D/deaf student to study Electrical Engineering at UoM, also wanted to emphasise the level of support in place at universities, so that D/deaf people can learn and enjoy university like everyone else, and develop as independents. 

Farkandah, a deaf, oral learner—and graduate from MMU—told her story of hard work, persistence, multiple jobs and time at MMU. Through ‘strong self-belief, commitment, determination and passion’, Farkandah achieved her first-class degree in travel and attained the accolade of Student of the Year. She later revealed her passion for helping the disabled in Manchester by improving their day-to-day experiences. Farkandah also shared her hopes of setting up a business that focuses on the disabled; organising events and partnerships to benefit the lives of those often ignored and forgotten in society.

Another inspirational D/deaf role model, whose work has significantly improved the lives of many, is Mahmudur Rahman. Despite many financial trials and tribulations over the past ten years, Rahman managed to set-up the Rochdale Rhinos Deaf Football Club and secured sponsorship from Esmail, through DEAF. Mahmudur, who left his boarding school for the deaf at 16, found it difficult to become involved in mainstream activities as, ‘society wasn’t as accepting of D/deaf people in those days’. He quickly became involved in D/deaf football, and despite many thinking that ‘deaf people couldn’t do this’, they played against mainstream teams and beat them over and over again. He said it was ‘a wonderful feeling to prove that we had talent, even playing against hearing people.’

Mahmudur proudly detailed the history of the team, and their initial local success against hearing police teams. They represented the only D/deaf team in the league and they still continue to defeat all other teams. They had local recognition, and a progressive sense of pride in both themselves and their achievements. Unfortunately, the team did not have sufficient funding to support the success of the team, and so, after years of struggle, Mahmudur eventually approached Esmail, who was happy to accept Mahmudur’s proposals and support the ‘Deaf Rhinos’ through the sponsorship of DEAF.

It was clear to see Mahmudur’s honour and pride in his team, especially after introducing his goalkeeper, Adhil Dad, ‘the star of the team; a great player’. Adhil said that being a part of the team is ‘fantastic, [and that] being a part of something that has endeavoured so hard to progress is just incredible. I’m so proud. The sky’s the limit for the team, and who knows where we will progress from here’. Their first game with the new sponsorship, and subsequent new kits, will be on 12^thMay against last year’s champions, and after fervent requests that I attend, I very much look forward to cheering them on.

The day’s event was extremely successful. It proved to be significantly beneficial to both the hearing and D/deaf participants, who learned not only about the logistics of their prospective university experiences, but also that ‘deaf people can achieve, and should not be held back, ever’. Mahmudur represented this belief by saying:

“Race doesn’t matter, religion doesn’t matter, culture doesn’t matter, regardless of who you are, you have skills and interests, and so can take from life just as much as anyone else’.

The collaboration between MMU, UoM and Esmail Patel and DEAF was clearly a success, evident in the participants’ positive acceptance of ideas regarding the potential of D/deaf individuals, the multitude of opportunities open to them, and the event’s encouragement of participants to refuse and banish perceptions of inferiority. 

Siobhan studies English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan and is an inspiring writer, hopeless optimist and romantic, and a complete technophobe. Follow Siobhan on Twitter @smo_07

Fun and excitement at the Lancasterian: All Write! Winners 2012

Lancasterian All Write! celebration ceremony, Wednesday, 20th March, Lancasterian 

Words by Sophie Chivers

On Wednesday, 20^th March, writer Noel Fagan held a special assembly for students at the Lancasterian. After running the workshops with pupils as part of his MA Creative Writing course, Noel enjoyed the experience so much that he returned to work in the school.

Noel worked with students from various classes, producing two different stories: Iggiley Piggiley and Our Manchester Journey. Both stories made it into the All Write! anthology as examples of excellent writing, and so the Lancasterian held their very own celebration event to reward the children’s efforts.

Since 2005, Manchester Metropolitan University has published the creative writing of more than 600 young writers. The All Write! competition is open to 8-12 year olds this year (click herefor more information) and entries are already flooding in from all over the world.

Having had the privilege of editing this year’s anthology, myself, and organiser Kaye Tew, were invited along to give out the anthologies and to congratulate the students on their success.

Noel began by reading the students their stories and asked his main storyteller, William, to come up and act out a few of the parts of the story for the rest of the audience. William did this very well and all the children cheered and laughed along as Noel read out the stories to them.

Iggiley Piggileyinvolved an amazing trip to another world, where all of the pupils found strange and mysterious things, such as an ocean made of chocolate and aliens with weapons that fired mashed potato! Noel also showed the crowd the weird and wonderful pictures that the children had created, including a funky, which is a mix between a fox and a monkey (my personal favourite). 

My Manchester Journey was based around the idea of time travel and students used words and pictures to put together a very exciting story about giant dinosaurs and a yellow submarine!

After the storytelling, Kaye congratulated all the students on their hard work and the prize giving began. All the students involved received a copy of the All Write! anthology to take home and a big round of applause from their teachers and fellow pupils. As they then gave Noel a round of applause, one of the pupils asked if he would come back and work with them again. He very happily agreed.

Many students in the Humanities Faculty get the chance to work on projects in schools. If you are studying a Humanities  degree at MMU and would like to get involved, emailhlssschools@mmu.ac.uk The next round of training for HLSS will not begin until this coming September, but there are always opportunities to support schools’ visits in different faculties within MMU.

North West Events

Film and Culture Event for Languages (FACE) GCSE Day, Monday, 4th February, Geoffrey Manton Building, MMU

Words and photographs by Amillah Javed

The Routes into Languages event took place on Monday, 4^th February, at Manchester Metropolitan University. Year 10 and 11 students from Bury Grammar School Boys arrived in the atrium of the Geoffrey Manton Building and chatted amongst themselves while waiting to receive information about what cultural and language events lay ahead.

Yasmin Hussain, the Routes North West Project Manager said, “Routes into Languages North West is a popular national project which promotes the learning of languages and encourages not only the modern foreign languages (French, Spanish and German), but we also encourage the participant of lesser taught languages like: Arabic, Urdu, Madarin and Italian”.

This Film and Culture Event for Languages (FACE) Day started off with a Language and Career talk from Carmen Herrero, a language lecturer at MMU. All the boys sat up straight and listened carefully from the moment Carmen began talking about the benefits of learning another language. The welcome talk was informative, explaining how learning another language is important, especially if you were to apply to job sectors that demand multilingual communicators.

Numerous hands shot up when Carmen asked, “How many of you have been to Spain?”, in contrast to the one hand that went up with the next question, “How many of you communicated in Spanish when ordering food from the restaurants or buying something from the shops?”. Rather embarrassing for some, but also an interesting point was rooted here. It will surely encourage many students to continue studying languages, allowing them to communicate better in other countries. Carmen continued to engage the students by asking, “Wouldn’t you all want to go to a country and speak their language?”, to which everyone responded: “YES, YES, YES!”

Ben Cross, one of the students from Bury Grammar School Boys, said, “Learning different languages other than English is really interesting and enjoyable. I find the Russian language intriguing and the way it is structured. I’d like to be an engineer in the future and I would definitely combine my degree with a language, because if I need to buy or sell products to people in another country, it would be great if I can also communicate with them in their language”.

Three MMU Student Language Ambassadors were about the whole day to guide the students and teachers to the different classes. After the welcome talk a Language with Film session followed, where a film was shown in French and German to the group of boys and their teachers. I quietly sneaked into the French film screening where Isabelle Vanderschelden, a French language Tutor at MMU, explored, Un Bisou Pour Le Monde (Cyril Paris, 2007). Watching films and analysing particular scenes is definitely entertaining, and stimulated a fun way in which languages can be taught.

Joseph Patel, currently studying French and German, said: “I thought today was really useful and I learnt new vocabulary in French. We watched a short clip from a French film and then analysed it which was really interesting”.

Top left: Joshua Glazer, top right: Joseph Patel,
     bottom left: Ben Cross, bottom right: Matthew Schofield

Joshua Glazer added, “I really enjoyed myself today and the French film showed us a different way of learning languages. It was quite a new thing. I study French and I do Karate so I learn Japanese from that. In the future I would like to become a doctor and work in France, so knowing languages will be beneficial for me. If I am given the opportunity to attend another Taster Day, then I will, because it was a very enjoyable day today and a really good experience for me”.

After lunch the group of boys were escorted off to taste a language of their choice, while others were whizzed around through the rain on a campus tour. The language taster sessions gave the students an opportunity to discover the language options that are available to them at university level. The Student Ambassadors swiftly swapped the two groups so that everyone had tried a language taster and explored the university campuses by the end of the tiring, but fun day.

Manon Gotte, a multilingual Language Ambassador at MMU announced, “Today the students got a great opportunity to discover languages which they can study further at a higher level. I believe it’s important to speak another language because you can communicate in different languages, not only in English”.

To finish off the day, the students were back in Lecture Theatre 2 for farewells and to share their evaluation of the activities. Overall, the day was focused on the benefits of learning languages with the quote, ‘English is just not enough’, continuously emphasised throughout. This quote was better understood at the end of the day after everyone had experienced a new language other than their mother tongue. Ultimately, those who know more than one language are better equipped with knowledge about certain cultures and have better opportunities in life altogether.

The FACE GCSE Days are designed to advance and expand the knowledge of language students, enabling them to experience what their language has to offer at a higher level. This opportunity is excellent for bringing language students together to observe exciting ways they can learn languages of their interest.

Matthew Schofield who is studying French at Bury Grammar School Boys said, “If my school organises another event like this, then I will definitely come along because I found it relevant and interesting.”

Yasmin Hussain further added, “The government policy is trying to encourage young people to take up a language and it’s not just about choosing joint honours degrees in languages. Languages help learn about different cultures and learning about a culture through film. These events are thus important and this is one of many.”

This event will be repeated again on Thursday, 14^th February and on Monday, 4^th March 2013.

For further details about the 2013 North West Language Events or the FACE GCSE Days, please visit the website here.

Amillah Javed is currently studying English and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is passionate about journalism and teaching and hopes to pursue a career in one of these fields. Amillah also has an interest in writing creatively and having work published. Follow her on Twitter @a_amillah