My Six-Year Hiatus

My Six-Year Hiatus
The last post on this website is dated 2018. That’s six long years ago. In addition to not posting here, I also stopped presenting for the most part. People kept attributing my stepping back to being a “busy mama.” But the simple truth is that I ran out of gas. I became weary, like we all are prone to at intervals throughout our lives. That, and I began feeling as if my words and knowledge didn’t matter. I felt as if the time for people to care what I thought or knew had expired. I’ve always considered [...]
The Importance of Storytelling to Address Deaf Disempowerment
Chapter One in Deaf Eyes on Interpreting (2018) edited by Thomas K. Holcomb and David H. Smith. View the ASL summary of this article here. When my two-year-old son broke his leg, I took him along with my one-year-old to the orthopedic doctor for a follow-up. At the time, I lived in a small town that had a deaf school. What this meant was there were hundreds of Deaf residents and practically everyone in town knew how to sign or at least how to work with interpreters. After an unusually extended wait time, I had the certified and certainly [...]
Deaf Schools: TRUE-BUSINESS Deaf?—20 Years Later
By Trudy Suggs Read the 1997 article or the 2007 article. Scroll down to see my thoughts about this year's results. (For a larger version, click on chart.) A survey sent to 40 schools in the fall of 1997, revealed, to many people’s surprise, that no deaf school had a majority of employees who were deaf. Out of the 21 schools that responded, the highest percentage was 46% (at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf and California School for the Deaf in Fremont) — not even 50%. Following a close second was Maryland School for the [...]