When Theory Meets Reality
In my most recent post, The Interpreter’s Task (Not), I discussed the maintenance and honoring of boundaries between interpreters and interlocutors. A good friend of mine, a veteran interpreter with all kinds of experience with the industry including the very ugly and the bad, asked me…
What about the Children?
In mainstreamed K-12 settings, the reality is that educators often leave deaf children behind/out in instruction. To roughly paraphrase/quote: They just don’t give a shit. If the interpreter doesn’t intervene and act as a paraeducator, then who will?
Jon (Henner) and I talked about this kind of thing often. We mentioned this reality in our Crip Linguistics papers. We can theorize this and that, but what happens when we’re confronting the reality of how systems and institutions function? Our argument might be distilled into, while we’re abolishing these systems, we still have to work within the system to address the urgency of now. Deaf children shouldn’t wait for access or language capital. Language (and social) deprivation is an emergency.
So how do we thread this needle? I’ve invited my brilliant and experienced friend, with real lived experience ‘on the ground’ to join me for a conversation on this blog in the new year when they’re settled. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I double down on my affirmation that deaf kids belong in congregated settings with other deaf and disabled children in linguistically rich and accessible environments. [Yes, I’m well aware of the debates about mixing deaf and disabled kids in the same classroom setting. This isn’t about lumping together deaf and disabled kids with different access needs. I’m thinking of disabled kids who might learn better through signed languages and in environments that are sensorially attuned to ways of being that aren’t aural-centric.] In this sense, we depathologize deaf and other disabled children by focusing on linguistic and sensory orientations.
Now onto one last tidbit, last weekend, I had a chance to FaceTime with Tashi Bradford, a good friend and linguist based in the Netherlands. They suggested a new way of signing languaging that emphasizes the relational nature of language. With their permission, I share this little clip below.
