What's going on here?
We're all waiting for you (yes YOU) to post something intriguing. Something we can, as a community or an individual, chew on and digest to increase our intellectual girth.
Most of us work solo so I’ll mention again the word “community”.
We are a community, a society. There is very little that we do as individuals that does not affect our community. Just a few preliminary moments on the soapbox.
You might be thinking, “It’s your blog for pete's sake, don't you have any ideas?”
Not really. Well sort of. Those of you who know me know I can be somewhat, umm, opinionated. But I’d like this to be OURS, not just mine. So we can discuss anything, but my personal preference (told you) is that we discuss topics related to effective communication. After all, that's our job. The law says so. "Communication with persons with disabilities must be as effective as communication with others." ADA Glossary of Terms
What on earth are we supposed to talk about?
Interpreting tips. Interpreting challenges. Interpreting...well, anything that we can hash out together to make us better. Yes, even YOU can offer an idea or two (sub your name for YOU if you can’t fathom that you can make any contribution or even worse, that you need any improvement whatsoever). If you want to post a vlog and can figure out how to do it, go for it. If you don't know how, send it to me and I'll post it for you (if I can figure out how).
What can’t we talk about?
Remember our Code of Professional Conduct? If not, click here. Don’t identify Deaf or hearing parties and assignments by name or other identifying characteristics; i.e. don’t use Deaf descriptions like “fat woman, short, with frizzy hair” (hey, I think that’s a description of me). Don’t pick on one another in a nasty way. Don’t talk smut, whatever that means.
That being said, I’m not a big believer in “nice”, mainly because although genuine niceness is really nice, there isn’t nearly enough of it. There is however a preponderance of fake nice, under which often lurks a switchblade. So you don’t have to be nice to post here. You just have to be respectful and honest.
Who’s behind all this?
I am, silly.
What qualifies me to manage this blog?
Not much. Well, maybe this, if you can believe any of it. I started teaching children who are Deaf when I was 16 and did that for 21 years. I figured out early on that for 3-year-old children who are pre-lingually Deaf and start school without any ability to express themselves linguistically, language development is more important than coloring and cutting and matching shapes. I signed and talked non-stop all day long. It paid off. People noticed, Some were impressed (administrators, parents, a few co-workers, Deaf staff.) Some felt threatened (mainly lazy and/or resistant to change teachers). The local Deaf Ed programs noticed and asked me to make a series of language teaching videotapes and to mentor their Deaf Ed students.
Those were the “rubella years”, a time when children whose mothers had Rubella (German Measles) in the first trimester became pre-school aged. Most of our children had multiple disabilities, some so intrusive that we could make no academic progress. I developed a program for children who were Deaf and had co-existing disabilities like autism, schizophrenia, brain injury. I ran that program for 4 years and also acted as a consultant for other schools that had children in the same boat.
Did you notice that I always say “children who are Deaf” instead of Deaf children? That’s because “Deaf” should never be the focus. Children are children first, students are students first, people are people first. Some of them happen to be tall, some short, some fat, some skinny, some black, some Asian, some white, some blind, some Deaf.
I started interpreting when I was 22. I tested for my original RID certification with the first testing materials RID developed. Yep, they were pretty raggedy ~ live panel, incomprehensible audio, video with missing upper body parts that made it challenging to voice. It’s a miracle that I passed, not just because the testing materials were flawed but also because back then I thought moving your hands fast enough to keep up was “interpreting”.
I first freelanced for the New York Society for the Deaf, then was a staff interpreter for the Connecticut Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired (CDHI), then freelanced in the Orlando area, then gave my whole schedule to Valencia College. When I finally accepted that I’m too nosy to pop in, move my hands, and pop out with no say about anything, I threw in the freelancing towel. I applied for a full-time position at Valencia. According to them, they gave me the job after a couple of interviews because “We didn’t understand a single word you said so we figured you must know what you’re talking about.”
I first worked for COMPASS, a grant program serving students with disabilities who met certain criteria such as first generation college student, low income, etc.. I was responsible for lots of numbers, technologies, advising, and supervising, with some interpreting and Cprint captioning thrown in. I then transitioned to Coordinator of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services (DHHS), and eventually to Assistant Director of the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD). I don't feel like digging up any more acronyms so please don't beg me.
As Assistant Director, I coordinated Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services and Assistive Technologies across 5 campuses while attempting to produce the quality of alternate formats that complied with laws mandating equally effective communication for students unable to access traditional print. After several years of this insane, practically solo endeavor attended by increasing responsibilities and increasing bs (the latter being a topic for a different blog - if you're interested go to Gadfly Journal), I was tired. So I leapt out of that frying pan to work at Sorenson as a full-time Video Interpreter. Let me cut that part of the story short by saying that full-time VRS work is only for the very strong and very stupid. After a couple of years, I packed up my mounting blood pressure and few remaining brain cells and bid Sorenson farewell. I incorporated as White Feather Interpreting, LLC, with the purpose of providing legal, medical, and mental health interpreting services via direct contracts with the local courts and a few carefully picked agencies - not carefully enough, but that too is a topic for a different place and time. Let me just say that RID is deficient in its responsibilities to the Deaf and interpreting communities by refusing to oversee the questionable operating practices of agencies.
Currently, having managed to recoup functional brain activity after my exit from VRS, I interpret about 90% of the time in court and the remainder in medical and mental health settings. My wife and I also managed to make it out of the suburbs to the sticks, where we cohabit peacefully with black bears, deer, sandhill cranes, and a variety of other wildlife.
In our house, there’s a wonderful, light-filled room paneled in knotted pine where I keep all the musical instruments I have attempted to play with varying degrees of success. In that room, after a lifetime of wanting to be a writer, I’m finally working on some books that will hopefully be good enough to publish. For information about my writing efforts, head on over to another page of this website named White Feather Tales. (Wow, did anyone else notice that the section about ME is a lot longer than the other sections?)
Your turn.
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