Here We Go Again...

So much for updating regularly. And now I can't remember whether I fixed whatever "design issues" were bothering me before. Oh, well.

I survived my first year at NMSD, made some great friends among the faculty, and worked with some great students. There were also some horror stories, but I'll share those later.

For now, I'm home in Utah for about a week to unwind, then back to Santa Fe to teach in the two-week summer program. (Help, I'm clueless!) That should be a lot of fun, including some deaf students from Sweden. I'll get to learn a little Swedish Sign Language! :-D

Until then, I'm saving up my energy for that tedious 9-hour drive back to Santa Fe.

Remodeling

You may notice over the next little while that the look of the blog changes bit by bit. I made a silly decision to upgrade to the new version of Blogger, and because I had some hacks before, it messed things up a little. Now I'll have to play around with it until I get it like I want again. (And relearn all the stuff I used to know about HTML in the process...) Fortunately, I'm soon going home to see my siblings who are more web-design knowledgeable.

Meanwhile, don't feel obligated to get a Google account and log in to leave a comment. Just click the "Other" option and type in your name or screen name.

Progress is Sweet

I was just going through, "labeling" all my old posts, and read through all the posts that are the reason I started this thing -- student teaching at a school for the deaf in Spring 2005.

Something struck me -- how stressed I was about the language. It's been almost 2 1/2 years since I entered graduate school, feeling like my ASL skills were completely rusty. I remember that first day at orientation, hardly understanding anything and pretty much ready to panic and give up. Two quarters later, I had some confidence back, and was ready for student teaching, but I was still so nervous about understanding (the students) and being understood.

Fast-forward to now ... Sure, I still have moments of, "What on earth are my hands thinking?!" (most often when I don't get enough sleep) and while conversing with students, I have those moments of, "Say what?" But looking back, I have those moments with hearing students, too. Moments when the "math" part of my brain doesn't connect effectively to the "linguistic" part of my brain. Moments when the students make comments so out-of-nowhere that I just can't process it the first time around. Moments when students are mumbling, talking too fast, not speaking up, or otherwise being "teenagers" in their communication.

The nice thing now is that I no longer freak out about whether I can communicate with deaf students. I know I can, and I do. And every week I'm getting better at understanding when they're having animated, non-academic conversations with each other. Yes, 4th period, I do catch a lot of what you say ... I'm just not always paying attention or looking your way (especially if I'm helping one of you with your math). ;-) Between student teaching, my time at NTID, teaching part-time last year, and especially teaching full-time for the past four months, my fluency has increased more than I actively realized. It's a good feeling.

The final hurdle to overcome: the increased anxiety I feel when I'm signing with Deaf adults. It's not something I choose to feel. Every Deaf adult I've interacted with has been super-nice and supportive. There's just some kind of subconscious pressure I put on myself to "live up to" some invisible standard.

... and signing in front of the entire faculty? Forget about it. Maybe next year. :-)

What Kind of Coincidence...?

How weird is this? My "traditional" zodiac sign is Aries (the Ram). My Chinese zodiac is year of the Sheep. And my first name means "a ewe" (female sheep).

Does this mean I should have more of an affinity for wool than I do? Or do I bleat in my sleep?

Cross-Language Dilemma

Can someone help me with how to sign "read upside-down" in ASL? It's something I do all the time, and a very handy skill for a teacher to have. You know, most of the time I'm across the desk, facing the student, and since I can read upside-down, the student doesn't have to turn the book around for me to see what they're asking about.

But I'm not perfect at it. Sometimes, when my brain is a little more tired, or the textbook is more complex with technical vocabulary, I have to work a lot harder at understanding from my upside-down perspective. This means I make the occasional mistake, and I try to say something along the lines of, "Oops, wrong me, my fault for trying to read that upside-down."

Every time I say something like that, I feel like I stumble over the "reading upside-down" part. I just haven't figured out the appropriate way to sign that.

Where are my ASL teachers when I need them?

Too long ... much too long

I've got to get back into the habit of posting stuff...

I'm just about halfway through my first school year here. Things are still going well. My students are great, and I have a lot of fun teaching them. Having five very different classes to teach wears me out a little, but it's also really interesting and keeps me on my toes. Teaching Pre-Calculus gives my brain the kind of exercise it needs to avoid Alzheimer's later in life, I think. ;-)

Funny thing ... People are always saying to me, "It must be so different teaching deaf kids," or, "So how do you teach math to deaf kids? Isn't it hard?" It still floors me every time. It's not that different. Teenagers are teenagers, whether they can hear or not. Just like in any group, there's a lot of variety in personalities, but that just makes it interesting. Since I know the language, teaching them math isn't so different from teaching it in English. True, quite a few students struggle with English ... but I've taught ESL kids and struggling readers before. It's not like I have to re-invent math just to teach it to deaf students.

As with any school, though, things aren't perfect. We're a little off-balance with academics vs. athletics. Anyone who wants to claim I don't support athletics can stop right there! The kids know I come to every home game I can manage, and I totally support them. It's just the sheer volume of time they're taken out of my class, particularly due to sports (although there are other things as well).

Consider that most of my students are behind grade-level, to varying degrees. That means my goal is to help them close the gap. To do that, they have to make over one year's worth of progress in a school year. But how do we do that when in some cases, students will miss my class at least 30 times in the year? Get it?

Fortunately, some dialogue has begun about that, so hopefully we can make some steps to find more balance.

Something else hit me really hard today, though. I had to interpret between a student and some members of his family. That just stinks. Not that I had to interpret -- I'm happy to bridge communication barriers where appropriate -- but that I had to interpret. I can easily see reasons these particular people aren't fluent signers yet, but I hated the realization that I can have much more meaningful conversations with that student than his family can.

Someone needs to use all this high-speed internet, web-cam/video-conferencing technology to set up really high-quality ASL classes for family members of deaf children. Somehow we have to get around the "time" and "money" constraints that seem to get in so many people's way.

Well, just another week, then two blissful weeks at home (and hopefully this time I can force myself to do some lesson planning ... once I get started, I actually enjoy planning different activities and approaches ... it's just the "getting started" part that gets in my way). :-P

Meanwhile, here's another picture of Melanie, the Plucky Ducky in her Halloween costume:


Definitely a cutie! :-D I can't believe she's almost 6 months old already.

Hopefully more to come soon ... if I manage to remember that I have a blog ... and if I get some indication that anyone's actually reading it.... ;-)

Labor Day Weekend

Only time for a quick post. I promised pictures of my niece, and here's the best one ever! (Good job on the photography, K!)

Isn't it funny how it looks like she's wearing a bonnet, but really it's the burp-cloth on my shoulder? :)

Next time I see her she'll be five months old. Insane! (She's just two months here.)

And here's the classic "yawn" shot:


And just because I want to, here's me and Ms. "I Love Ithaca", aka Monica, before I left the Roch-cha-cha. :)


That's all for now, more to come in the next few days, hopefully.

The Guru is Back Online

Okay, it's been a while. With Regent's exams and getting ready to move, June got busy fast, and I just couldn't bear the thought of trying to post anything through the dial-up connection at Mom and Dad's.

But now, here I am in Santa Fe, NM ... this evening is the 3-week mark. I just got the internet up and running a week ago, but have been a little busy for funny things like blogging. ;)

Quick update of what's been going on:

• My niece, Melanie Rae, arrived on June 26th at almost 4 in the morning (I think I've got that right... if not, I'll edit). That was just after Dad and K arrived to help me with the big pack-up-and-go. Thank goodness I got to spend a month at home... I'll be seeing her when I head home next weekend (briefly), but then I won't see her again until Thanksgiving. She'll be nearly 5 months old then! Since her parents now have a decent internet connection as well, I expect regularly updated photos (ahem...)
• We made the drive from Rochester in two days flat. As Mom said, "Never again!" (And she wasn't even with us!) At least since we were driving west, the time changes were in our favor.
• I made the move to Santa Fe. Not bad, took us ten hours with a U-Haul trailer. We'll see how fast I can do it next weekend with just my little un-loaded-down Corolla. :)
• I started work right away. And I mean right away. I moved into my apartment on a Saturday, and reported to my first orientation meeting the following Monday. But there was at least enough time on Saturday to do some major shopping (I have my own washer and dryer -- heaven!) and get everything into the apartment. Mom and Dad stuck around Monday to finish setting things up while I was at work -- even painting shelves! Thanks, Mom and Dad -- MWAH! (that's a Monica-ism)
• I've been teaching for two weeks now. All my kids are awesome. All have their strengths and weaknesses, as usual, so it'll keep things interesting. I have one student that I swear looks just like my cousin Ethan will when he grows up. I'll have to bring pictures home to show the family.
• Speaking of teaching, I'm covering my biggest range of classes ever -- from basic math (real-life applications) to Pre-Calculus. And considering I've got some sophomores in Geometry who have already taken Algebra 2, there may be a possibility of Calculus two years hence ... if I can talk the principal into letting me teach it instead of sending them to the local high school.

I think that's all for now. If I think of more this weekend, I'll post it. I promised I'd go to both the volleyball game and the football game tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed.

Graduation Photos, As Promised

Here are some select photos from graduation. The quality suffered a little when I shrank them down, but you get the idea. (Hopefully this won't take too long for my family on dial-up...)



This is the area where the graduates would be sitting. I sat in the middle section, just about straight ahead.

This is the stage before the dean and the other "special people" came in.

This is my home away from home for the past two years, LBJ, Building 60, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Here I am out in front of NTID with my nice little folder which I'll eventually be able to put my degree in.

Since I graduated with a master's degree, I got to wear the fancy hood. Brown and orange are RIT's colors. The sort of aqua color (which you can see better from the front) I *think* refers to my degree being in education ... not sure, though.

My good friend and classmate, Sophie-Shifra Gold, the S-SG.

My professor, thesis mentor, and frequent project collaborator this past year, Dr. Harry Lang ("H-to-the-Lang" ... that one's for you, Monica!) :)

Catching Up Now That I'm Caught Up

• Got A's in my last two courses at NTID.
  
• Graduated on May 26th with my Master's degree. Photos will be forthcoming.
• Entertained Mom and Dad here in Rochester for a week during graduation. Visited the Eastman House and some sites in Palmyra. Saw a couple movies. Exposed Mom and Dad to a Deaf environment for the first time. :)
• Survived my 10-minute presentation for my capstone project. Decided to wear earplugs, sign voice-off, and make the interpreter voice for me. Received compliments from the interpreter about my signing (!) Link to video of presentation *may* be available soon.
• Caught a cold. Got over it.
• FINISHED MY THESIS! Finally feel graduated.
• Finished all work at school that I actually have to prep for ... nothing but proctoring Regents exams and cleaning out my classroom from here.
• Spotted Allison Holker on So You Think You Can Dance -- I taught her algebra when she was in 8th grade, my very first year of teaching ... Go, Ally!
• Now: Contemplating the packing and cleaning I need to do in the next two weeks ... plus the work I need to get done in the office my last few days of work