Daniel Greene

Tag: conference

  • What I’m up to these days. Just a wee bit busy!

    I crave excitement and I have a need to achieve. Sometimes, though, it seems that all my projects overlap and the pressure feels crushing. One way that I handle the pressure is to avoid it, which in turn makes the pressure even worse by the time I get back to work on what I’ve been procrastinating.

    So, what are all the things I’m doing (and/or avoiding doing) right now? Well, there is the matter of taxes. My husband’s employer somehow forgot to take out any taxes for him in 2008, and he somehow never noticed this. So I have to pay his tax debt with my tax refund. But to get my tax refund, my tax accountant needs to return my phone calls and e-mails, which so far he hasn’t. The sooner I get my taxes filed, the sooner I get my return, and the sooner we can file my husband’s taxes along with the money he owes. I would be nice if filing jointly were an option for same-sex couples.

    Then there is the Arizona RID State Conference this weekend. I am presenting a workshop on Saturday afternoon titled “Knowing What They’re Going to Say Before They Say It: Using Genre Recognition to Improve Your Predictive Skills.” I’m in a competing time slot with Ari-Asha Castalia, Sharon Neumann Solow, and Teddi Von Pingel, so no pressure there. 😉 (more…)

  • Genre Recognition Venn Diagram

    I’m such a nit-picking perfectionist it’s killing me! I’m working on tweaking my slideshow presentation for a workshop I’m teaching at the Arizona RID State Conference, and I’m creating a Venn diagram because it was suggested by a few of the participants when I first taught this workshop last November. Problem is I’ve never created a Venn diagram before. I’m trying to represent how Genre Recognition is a skill that develops at the intersection of Discourse Analysis, Predictive Skills*, and Genre Theory.

    Is this diagram readable? Does anyone have any suggestions for improving it? Can you believe I’ve been working on this for an hour? Urgh! I hate being a perfectionist!

    *While Googling “predictive skills” (a term used a lot in ASL interpreter training), I could not find a single page that defined the term. Hm… interesting.

  • Thoughts on “pre-screening” ITP candidates

    The “attitude” of an interpreter toward ASL and Deaf Culture is highly valued by the deaf consumers we serve. Hence, an ASL ITP should teach the attitudes and cultural values that are desired by deaf consumers. Some say that one way to weed out “unsuitable types” from ITP’s and from the interpreting field is to pre-screen candidates to ITP’s to check for personality suitability. I disagree with this. I believe it is prejudiced and discriminating to disallow students to enter an ITP based on some personality inventory delivered and interpreted by people who are not licensed psychologists. For that matter, even if one brought in licensed psychologists to “pre-screen” candidates, I would be offended.

    Some people claim that deaf consumers “used to” naturally select interpreters who were suitable and weed out those who are not, but “so much has changed in the last several years” that the deaf culture is no longer fulfilling this function and that it now must be taken up by college faculty. For one thing, where is the evidence that the deaf community no longer weeds out unsuitable interpreters? There are still many processes by which deaf consumers can assert control over who interprets for them. If enough deaf consumers refuse to work with an interpreter, that interpreter will not work. There are grievance processes in place. I would bet that most ITP’s don’t even have the luxury of turning away students because not that many people are clamoring to become ASL interpreters. If you teach in a community that really has that many people who want to become ASL interpreters, why not allow them into the program, teach them what they need to know, send them on their way, and let the free market sort them out? (more…)

  • Reflections on the CIT Conference

    Here are some of the things I learned, was reminded of, or thought about during the CIT conference I attended this past week:

    • I was reminded that people remember most what they learn first and last (primacy and recency). In the future, when I teach a class or a workshop, I will begin and end with exercises that engage students in active learning that is content-focused. Also, I was taught that nothing shuts down a student more than fear and anxiety. Hmm… Note to self: in the future, do not begin a class by giving out graded homework that for several students is copiously red-penned and graded lower than they might have liked, and do not end class with a discussion of the next homework assignment! 😉 Instead, begin a class session with a lively, fun exercise that engages students in active learning that is tied directly into the content matter of the class. End with a summary of what I taught them in class that day, or — better yet! — with an active learning exercise in which the students take turns summarizing (teaching each other) what they learned in class that day. Don’t bother marking up their papers with all kinds of editorial marks. If their writing is very poor, give them a poor grade and have them come to you after class if they want to talk about it. Hand out homework on a paper to them as they leave the classroom. Take care of “housekeeping” during the middle of class. Save the first and last portions of the class for the meat of the lesson. (Inspiration: “Designing and Delivering Effective, Learner-Engaged Trainings” by Len Roberson and Shannon Simon — one of the only workshops I ever gave all fives to on the RID evaluation form)

    • A conference venue for attendees who communicate in sign language must have large common areas, wide corridors, non-distracting walls (e.g. floral patterns and huge mirrors), and lighting that is bright but not glaring. Unfortunately, the Red Lion Hanalei Hotel in San Diego was not an ideal conference venue for visual-gestural communication and traffic flow!
    • Discourse analysis and genre recognition are areas that I would like to do further learning and teaching on. (more…)

  • Had Lunch with Jared Evans!

    Jared Evans and Me at CIT

    One of the first people I saw when I got to the CIT conference on Wednesday was Jared Evans of DeafRead. We went out to lunch together and discussed blogging, vlogs, captioned videos, and voice acting (voiceover) for ASL videos. He’s just as nice and smart a guy as I felt he was from his blogs and vlogs. 🙂