Archives for December 2012

Afterthoughts on disempowerment

December 23, 2012

In light of the recent presentation (and article) I provided for Street Leverage, I’ve been thinking a lot about economic disempowerment and what we need to do first. I’ve been deluged with responses from people who are thrilled that I discussed deaf disempowerment and the challenges facing us. Yet many of them are searching for solutions, as am I.

To have a solution, we have to find the root of the problem, of course (gee, I sound like my high school teacher). So, back to economic disempowerment: one of the obstacles is that there are simply not enough qualified deaf people for all the jobs out there that have to do with the deaf community. There are certainly plenty of qualified deaf people; there are just not enough of them. So, do we first focus on producing qualified deaf people? Or do we first focus on making job opportunities more accessible and more centered on qualified deaf people? Chicken or egg first?

I have my opinions—and will share it in a later blog entry—but I invite your input. What do you think should happen first?  How do we ensure that deaf people are given equal opportunities to earn the necessary education, credentials and experience? How do we carry this over into the deaf education system, which we all know is horribly fragmented?

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Communication advocacy

December 22, 2012

When my children began school, I was amazed at how little I knew about individualized education plans (IEPs), even though I grew up having to deal with them as a deaf child myself. After a while, I finally learned the difference between IFSPs and IEPs…and it was only then that I really understood how powerful IEPs and my rights as a parent are.

One of the concerns I had was about ensuring that my children were in a complete American Sign Language (ASL) immersion environment, as opposed to simultaneous communication (sim-com). Although their school has a majority of deaf teachers, there are still some old-school staffers who think it’s perfectly acceptable to sign and speak at the same time.

This, of course, is one of the most ineffective ways to communicate with deaf children. Usually, when a person speaks and signs at the same time, which language gets words dropped more? Yup, ASL. As a result, the deaf person is forced to lipread more than watch the signs—and this becomes a horribly mangled communication system where the brain processes different things at the same time. It’s confusing, hard work and ineffective. Yet I knew I couldn’t be an ASL cop (nor did I want to be), walking around telling people to not sign and speak at the same time.

What to do, then? When my oldest child began having IEPs, I requested that the school add that she be exposed to only one language at a time—i.e., written English or ASL. In fact, the specific sentence in each child’s IEP says:

The parents have requested that [child] be exposed to only one language at a time (either ASL or written English) in order to prevent, or at least minimize, exposure to signing and speaking at the same time.

 

For example, the teacher can sign to my children in ASL while reading a book in English with printed words, but not speak and sign at the same time. Instead, she’d be doing consecutive language sharing. This is how I learned to acquire English, and I’ve seen it pay off with my children already.

I shared this with a school administrator, and he said that it was the most powerful piece of language advocacy he’d seen in his career. It’s also a really effective way to hold schools accountable for their communication choices with my children.

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CHAMP YOU!

December 21, 2012

A good friend and I were discussing specific signs, and we realized that there is a major difference in the way we sign “CHAMP.” Do you sign it using the 3 handshape, or do you sign it using the 5 handshape? Or do you sign it either way for specific situations?

We discussed this a bit, and I use “3” on the forehead to sign “champ” (as in tournament champion), or on my hand to indicate someone has won a contest or competition.  For any other version of the word, I use “5” on top of the index finger. How about you?

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No such thing as reproduction…?

December 20, 2012

My copy of Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon arrived. I haven’t gotten to start it yet, mainly because of the kids always interrupting whenever I sit to read. But I’m really eager about reading it, especially with all the publicity surrounding the book. Take this article at Huffington Post, for example:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/lisa-belkin/andrew-solomon-far-from-the-tree_b_2118744.html

What jumped out at me—and obviously that’s why the writer chose to use it as an opening to the article—was this:

“There is no such thing as reproduction,” Andrew Solomon writes — an opening sentence that may well displace Dr. Spock’s “Trust yourself” as the most important parenting advice in history.
“When two people decide to have a baby, they engage in an act of production,” the author continues in his newest masterwork, “Far From The Tree: Parents, Children, and The Search For Identity.” “The widespread use of the word reproduction for this activity, with its implication that two people are but braiding themselves together, is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads.”

This is fascinating to me, especially as a Deaf mother to four Deaf children. All my friends who have started the book have said they’re “riveted.” Stay tuned.

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Deaf Disempowerment and Today’s Interpreter

December 12, 2012

Originally appeared at Street Leverage. Presentation given at Potomac Chapter of RID, Columbia, MD, November 2012.

In the spirit of being transparent, the stories I’m about to share might be uncomfortable for some of you.  While I would like to speak my truth, I recognize that you have your own truth as well.  I trust that you will evaluate the stories I share and recognize the value in them. I actually was, and am, reluctant about presenting today because like many deaf people who speak out, I’ve had to endure a lot of negative feedback for being a “strong personality,” “angry deaf person,” and so on. My goal today is for you, as interpreters, to be open to possibly uncomfortable topics, uncomfortable truths, and uncomfortable analyses—whether they apply to you or not.

I believe that the best way to become bona fide allies is to embrace difficult ideas, opinions and, yes, facts. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.

Four weeks ago, my two-year-old son fell and broke his leg. A week later, I took him, along with my one-year-old, to the orthopedic doctor for a check-up. Now, I live in a town where there are 250 to 300 deaf people living among 23,000 people; we have the deaf school, so everyone knows how to sign or how to work with interpreters. After about 45 minutes of waiting in the lobby—very unusual for a town of this size—I asked the receptionist about the severe delay. The receptionist never once looked up from her computer, saying that the doctor was backed up. I asked if we could see the doctor since my children were restless, hungry and my son, in a body cast from chest to toe, needed his medicine—which was at home. She said no. I said, “Could you please speak to the doctor or nurse?” She replied, “Oh, no, I can’t do that,” and I repeated my request. She adamantly refused.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Culture, Deaf education, Interpreting, Language

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