Symbol: Meet The Experts
Who are the team behind the Exploring Language videos?
Symbol UK was established in 1998, to provide speech and language therapy services to children and adults with learning difficulties. As a not-for-profit, they are a leading provider of training and syndrome-specific speech and language therapy in the UK. Their Down's syndrome service is run by highly specialist therapists who have been supporting our community for many years. Our team have formed a close working relationship with Symbol UK and have been lucky enough to have their expert input into our Teach Me Too programme.
More specifically, our ‘Exploring Language’ videos; supporting children in learning language. They are designed to help young children with Down's syndrome explore early language and vocabulary. Jo Gawn and Leela Baksi kindly presented our videos, and as well-known, knowledgable faces in our community, we couldn’t have been more thrilled!
A bit about them:
Jo Gawn:
Jo is a specialist speech and language therapist who has worked with children and young people with Down syndrome for over 25 years. As well as working for Symbol UK within their specialist Down syndrome service, she also works with a local parent support group running their preschool speech and language groups, and their teenage and young adult communication groups. She sees children and young people across a range of settings including mainstream and specialist schools and has presented at events such as the World Down Syndrome Congress.
Leela Baksi:
Leela has worked in specialist speech and language therapy for people with Down syndrome with Symbol since 1997 and is mum of Jacob who has Down syndrome.
We asked them a series of questions to delve a little deeper into their inspirations, experience and time spent filming for the Teach Me Too videos:
How long have you worked with Symbol?
Jo: I have worked with Symbol for over 10 years.. I had started working with PSDS, a charity that is local to me that had recently been set up to support families with children with Down syndrome. Although I had worked with children with Down syndrome as part of my career in the NHS I felt there was much more I could do and started looking for other organisations that I could lean on for support. I discovered Symbol and after realising how like-minded we were I started working with them.
Leela: I’ve worked in Symbol’s specialist speech and language therapy service for people with Down syndrome since 1997.
What inspired you to work in the industry that you do?
Jo: I think I was always going to have a career in a health-based career. I had thought I wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up but quickly changed my mind when I realised how long the training was! I looked at other professions and speech & language therapy just seemed a perfect fit… I trained straight out of school and have loved my job since the moment I started working. It certainly has been a perfect fit for me!
Leela: When I was at secondary school, I did work experience with kids with learning disabilities. It was fun and I was captivated by the power of doing things differently. Jason Kingsley, who has Down syndrome, wrote about , ‘easy steps to get to hard work’ in the book he co-authored (Count Us In, 2007). The easy steps aren’t always easy to see, but when you find them and use them, they work like a dream. I learn so much about how to live and make a place in the world from the work I do.
What was your experience filming the videos?
Jo: This was my first experience of being filmed and so learning to use a teleprompter and thinking about how to set up each video was definitely a learning experience… I am looking forward to hearing from families who are accessing these videos about how their children are watching them – I wonder if they are starting to sing the hand clapping rap!
Leela: Filming the videos was a bit weird! We use picture cards on the floor or table in our live sessions, but in the videos, the graphics are around us and above our heads, and imported in after filming, so we were working with invisible floating props! We’re used to running the activities with children and families and carers, with lots of audience participation, and curves thrown in… like competing for attention with the truck parking up or snow falling outside (top tip: don’t compete, make it part of the learning activity). There was an audience of the team behind the camera - giving us silent directions and running the autocue, but it’s not the same as a ‘live’ session. I guess that’s a bit like doing standup without the audience!
How does it feel knowing you’re supporting the community of people with Down’s syndrome and other learning difficulties through the Teach Me Too videos, as well as the work you do with Symbol?
Leela: It’s been heartbreaking knowing that many people with Down syndrome are not getting syndrome-specific interventions to help with learning, communication and speech, while others are thriving with the right support. I’m really pleased that the Teach Me Too videos build awareness of the benefits of bringing the right learning opportunities to our children.
We hope that gave you a bit more insight into the experts (and presenters) of the exploring language Teach Me Too videos. Have you used them yet? If so, we would love to hear how you found them?