A "Working Party" approach to planning in-service training in manual signs for an entire public school staff

A working party, composed of elementary school personnel (administrator, regular and special education staff, and parent) and university special education personnel (faculty and graduate students) worked cooperatively to develop and implement a manual sign in-service training package to improve the communication environment for severely disabled students attending that elementary school. A series of four, half-day workshops were planned during which school staff (teachers, aides, custodians, support staff, food handlers, and bus drivers) would learn manual signs for a functional core vocabulary selected from a list generated by the public school staff and students. These signs were carefully sequenced using existing research findings to facilitate successful acquisition. The process of planning and conducting the in-service training workshops has yielded valuable lessons in several areas. The use of a working party, selection of vocabulary, development of the workshop format, activities, materials, and development of a set of manual sign videotapes are described in this article.