I stayed at one middle school all day, and the last class I interpreted was Speech. I was surprised that the teacher knew very little sign - I had previously thought it would be an important tool when working with deaf students. I realize now, though, that the emphasis is supposed to be on oral communication, so teachers may not want to use ASL much for that reason - but still, it would be useful.

The two girls with hearing aids worked on a packet independently, while I sat with the teacher and the girl with a cochlear implant; they were working on training her to recognize and interpret the signals from the implant. The teacher had an opaque black card she held up to hide her mouth, and the girl had to determine which sound the teacher was making, and then duplicate it. They went through mmmm, buh-buh-buh-buh, ssss, oooo, ch-ch-ch-ch, and all the rest; the girl (who was very sweet and friendly) frequently guessed wrong. Her vocalizations were okay, I guess, though she had problems with tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh. From her voice now, I fear she will turn out to be one of the less-intelligible deaf adults - though she may also do very well and develop a clear voice.

I can’t imagine how difficult the speech-learning process must be for her or for any deaf child. What comes so naturally to me requires grueling effort and endless repetition on her part - and even then she knows she may never speak clearly enough for hearing strangers to understand.

Okay, so, adventures in interpreting. The first story is from the elementary school, where I work from 10-12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The gym teacher started to break the class into groups for a written assignment, and put each of the four deaf kids in separate groups. She then turned to me and asked, “Is that going to make your life hard?” I immediately said “Yes,” and she began to rework the groups. This time the deaf students were only in two different groups, but I was still uneasy as the teacher continued counting off.

I finally approached her and said “Is there any way all of the deaf students can be in the same group?” Her disapproval was written all over her face, so I explained. This was a written assignment, which requires language exchange; normally when she splits up the deaf kids it’s for something physical where they all watch as she demonstrates and I interpret the explanation. For this, though, they would require back-and-forth dialogue with the hearing students.

The teacher countered with the suggestion that her aide (an adult) could work with the other group, but I insisted that my job was to interpret for the deaf kids, and it’s not appropriate for an aide to act as interpreter. I’m perfectly aware that it happens all the time because schools can’t afford both employees, but when an interpreter is present, the aide can do their job of actually helping the students.

This situation is well known among educational interpreters, I think. The simplest (but not the only) reason is that aides rarely have the ASL skills to function effectively as interpreters. In this particular instance, that was proved to be the case: later in the class period, the aide came over to me and said one of the students was trying to tell her something, and she couldn’t understand. When I went over there, he was saying something fairly easy (for me) to understand.

The teacher was very definitely peeved by my reaction. She let the deaf kids work in a group together, but told me “that’s not what [she] was told to do with this group.” I assume she meant there are expectations that the kids interact with hearing peers, and I understand that. I even agree with it, and every other time kids were in groups, I was fine because it was all physical. I should have mentioned to the teacher that I wasn’t trying to avoid the job - I still worked with the students on the assignment - but rather that I physically cannot interpret for two different conversations simultaneously. Nobody can, and it’s not fair to the students to deprive them of participation because of absent or inadequate interpreting.

I’m in New York now, and the trip went very smoothly. I ended up getting to the train station way too early - I’d dropped off the car for repair and thought I’d be stuck there for a while - but I ended up seeing the guy from Gallaudet who’s going to be our housemate soon. It was really surprising to run into him like that, he and I have only met once before but I recognized him immediately. We talked a bit, and I explained the situation of how we have to get this other guy out first. To my relief, he understood, and said it was no problem.

The actual ride up here was just fine. I was alone until Baltimore, when a woman going to Hartford sat beside me; I was glad she didn’t want to have a conversation because I wasn’t especially in the mood. I wrote some, read some, and did some puzzles - I’d bought the latest issue of World of Puzzles at Barnes & Noble in Union Station - and we were here before I knew it. The walk to C’s building wasn’t nearly as long as I’d feared, and I was only cold for a few minutes before I got up enough energy to be warm on my own. I didn’t get to see his office, because he was just coming down to the lobby when I walked in. Damn! He told me how to get back to his place (I took the local 9 from 42nd to 18th) and gave me the keys. He also gave me a shopping list and $40 cash, so I got to go grocery shopping for him, whee. Potatoes, celery, Turkish apricots…no idea what he’s planning. He did say I could get food for myself too, so I made a salad and picked up a chocolate Slim-Fast shake. For some reason I’m not even hungry…which is strange, considering that all I’ve had today is a cereal bar, some Diet Coke, and (now) half a salad. Why aren’t I hungry?

When I got back to his apartment I logged onto the computer and found several good e-mails, including one from another former teacher. I also had one from a friend who lives in New Jersey and will be in the city this weekend; I programmed his numbers into my phone so maybe we’ll actually meet up. (We kept planning to and it never worked out, though we have met once before.) And I got a bcc’d copy of the letter of recommendation R sent to the mentorship program…obviously it’s a great big compliment, but I actually believe all the nice things he says. I’ll probably keep that one around as an ego booster. (Yes, I know he probably shouldn’t have sent it to me, but he did.)

Yerf. I should be asleep, because I haven’t been sleeping well lately.

• I wish I’d heard about the blog costume party sooner, it would be amusing to dress up as someone else’s site. Maybe there’s still time - I will likely have a little time in front of the computer tomorrow, so I could just put on the “costume” for actual Halloween night only. If anybody reading is willing to let me dress up as your site, please let me know - coding hints would be great, too! (I figure there’s no point in dressing up as a LiveJournal - sorry, friends.)
• Bizarrely, I am currently using my time to work on developing an Everything2-like design for the everything2 LiveJournal community. I know it’s a big waste of time, but I’ve gotten hooked on working on it.
• According to the 80s Purity Test, I am 72.7% pure when it comes to that decade. (Hey, I was only nine when it ended.)
• I didn’t hear back from Restoration Hardware or the Discovery Channel Store, but I have an interview Monday at 2pm at Rand McNally.
• While at the mall, I got to see how the Rainforest Cafe gets ready to open each day. There’s a little pool just inside the entrance, and an animatronic alligator in there - the restaurant is full of animatronics - and people toss coins in all the time. I discovered that these are collected with a big industrial-type vacuum!
• The other day (yesterday?) I saw a truck with the license plate SNEYEPR - I bet the driver gets a lot of crap from people who see that.
• I keep seeing cars around town that have ads plastered all over them. They’re generally hot new vehicles, frequently the new VW Beetle. I wonder how you get one of those…I could really use my own car.
• As usual, I have lots of writing to do and lots of reading to catch up on. I won’t get to do any of it on the train tomorrow; I’m taking the 12:05 and getting into Penn Station at 3:15. I then have to find my way to C’s office building, go up to the 27th floor - I’ve never been in a regular office building quite that tall - and get his keys so I can hang out in the apartment until he gets off work. I think he’s bought No One Lives Forever 2 by now, maybe he’ll let me play that. If not, I can certainly find things to do online.
• I forget what all else I was going to say. Well, that’s not quite true: the other things are kind of involved story topics, and I’m too tired to write well now - I may skip the stories altogether, it’s pretty much just mundane day-to-day work stuff. Does anybody (besides you, Mom) want to know about the gym teacher getting cranky or what speech therapy class was like?

Me tired. Me go bed now. Love to all of you - really.

While using the web interface to edit a file on my site, I noticed I have just under 100 megs of space free. That’s a lot, but it occurred to me that maybe someday I would run out. I’m poor right now, of course, but I think I would go ahead and buy more space if it came to that. This site is important to me and is one of the few things I’m proud of, so I wouldn’t want to lose it.

I’m at a middle school right now. I’m supposed to be interpreting a social studies class but the kid wasn’t there, so the resource teacher for the deaf kids said I could use her computer. I checked my e-mail, looked at the Sue Thomas F.B.Eye message board, and fiddled around a bit. In a few minutes I’ll be interpreting for speech therapy, which should be a fairly educational experience for me as well. I’ve heard plenty about it, but never actually seen a class.

Aha! I finally worked up the nerve to mention using the free computer next to the deaf students in Keyboarding I class. One of them said that other interpreters do it all the time, so I asked the teacher if it would be okay. She said yes! She told me I could ask one of the two deaf students if I could use their login ID, and one of the girls was happy to share. So I finally have something to do in this class besides sit around watching time pass! There’s essentially no actual interpreting to do, the students just do timed writings and copy exercises from a keyboarding textbook.

Okay, now this is weird. I was chatting online and amateur radio came up, and somebody said -.-. –.- –. . -.- . -…. .-. . .–. to me. I copied the text, figuring I could find an online interpreter for it. I went to Google and typed mo into the search box, and the drop-down auto-completion offered me morse code.

WHAT?!

I did not start using this computer regularly until a week or two ago. Since then, I have primarily used Netscape 6. Yesterday my girlfriend downloaded IE6 to this machine, so tonight I started using that. I do not have bookmarks on this machine. I have never searched for “morse code” before from this machine. How did it know?! This is mind-boggling. Maybe it really is magic?

I saw a message on a mailing list today indicating someone I knew as an acquaintance had died. My first reaction was disbelief, and I posted that to the list - that rumor comes up in this community every six or eight months, and it’s disproved 99.9% of the time. Except today. The girl (19 years old) really had died, and my foot was in my mouth big-time. I backpedaled and took a step to preserve her memory (I’m a partial administrator in this group, though my word is not allowed to be final); tonight I got a message leading me to the obituary. I was very startled to see the girl was born exactly two years after me, which means she was born the very same day as my girlfriend’s little sister. That made her death a bit scarier for me…though even seeing the obituary I don’t want to believe it. I’m chatting right now with her boyfriend (their daughter was four months old, she’ll never know her mother), trying to let him talk to me if he wants to. It’s all definitely very unsettling.

I realized I did lose something important when my e-mail disappeared: the message from my favorite high school teacher. I didn’t copy his address, either - argh! I’m going to have to send him a postcard apologizing and asking him to please write again so I can get his address back. Good grief.

I also have to prepare my application packet for the interpreting mentorship program. I need to film myself doing sign-to-voice and voice-to-sign interpreting…not sure when I’m going to get it done, but it was due two days ago and I can’t ask for another extension. Maybe I can do it tonight and send it express mail tomorrow, or something…I need two letters of recommendation, too.

The weekend was fine; the most interesting thing that happened was a very-nearly-terrible accident that I managed to avoid. I was in the far left lane on the Beltway near Alexandria, and some jerk was tailgating me. Once there was a break in the lane to my right, I put on my turn signal, checked over my shoulder, and proceeded to begin moving over. Unfortunately, somebody in the next lane had decided to switch to the left - without signaling and without checking around. The tailgater had already sped up to get around me (before I was all the way out of the lane), so I couldn’t jerk back to the left. There was nowhere for me to go, but I managed to steer properly and keep from freaking out, though A’s little sister screamed in the backseat. (I didn’t even hear her.)

Yesterday we went up to visit my mother for her birthday; I’d gotten her a plush toy blue jay and an Advanced Birding book. We went out for Indian food for lunch, which I didn’t especially enjoy - it was okay, but I don’t like eating out anymore because it’s so hard to follow my diet. Back at home I had to watch Sue Thomas, F.B. Eye for class; it continues to be the cheesiest thing on TV (I don’t usually watch Pax for exactly that reason), but it was nice to see a bit more sign language and a bit more “sorry, I didn’t catch that?” this week.

This morning I went to an interview at Restoration Hardware in the mall…I think I did a terrible job, actually - I flubbed a lot of the questions. On the way there, though, the director at my interpreting agency called to ask if I could do the high school this afternoon. I had to work out whether or not I could make it there in time, and if I could park on campus, but it turned out everything would be fine so I told him I’d take the assignment.

I feel kind of blah today. Oh well.