Sign Bilingualism Education Officer
Comissão Diocesana da Educação Católica
The First Step to Achieving "Deaf CAN" in the mainstream education - the SLCO Programme in Macao
In Macao, Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrollment Programme began in 2018. SLCO was implemented in a local school and a nursery. To raise the awareness and understandings between the hearing and the deaf teachers, trainings about sign language, co-teaching skills, deaf culture were provided to the teachers. Since then, the school and the nursery have started to establish SLCO Programme. This year marks the fourth year of SLCO in Macao. We will look at the current development of the Programme, the changes the school has made after the implementation and the feelings of the parents involved in the co-enrollment classes have to say about the Programme.
Biography:
Gina Lei is currently the officer coordinating the Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrollment (SLCO) Programme in Macao. She got her master’s degree in Linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Besides her role in SLCO, she is also an experienced sign language interpreter and a registered teacher. Having seen a lot of Deaf persons facing limited choices in their career development, she found the root of the problem was mainly lying in the mode of education mode. She believes that with proper education method, the deaf and hard-of-hearing children can have more opportunities and choices available to them in the future.