I am sorry that I missed our last class but here is what I had wanted to present about my case study. 

Joe

Part 1- The individual I interviewed for my case study is a family friend who is 72 years old. I choose him because I knew him but I did not know a lot about his background at KSD.

There were two parts that were of most interest to me: what was his experience like at KSD and what has his experience been with interpreters.

This man's greatest strength is his loving personality. He has had several difficult times in his life but he is also happy and makes the best out of any situation.

There was one particular experience he told me about from the Deaf club he attended in Dayton, Ohio. This experience happened 25+ years ago. One night at his Deaf club a hearing man showed up whom known of the Deaf members knew. Every week for the next three years this hearing man came to the Deaf club religiously. The Deaf members grew to like him because he seemed to be so interested in them and their culture. After three years of associating with the club, he became quite proficient at ASL. They never saw him again. He became an interpreter and never associated with the Deaf outside of professional assignments. The Deaf were incensed because they felt they had been taken advantage of by this man. The man did not want to learn ASL to become a friend and ally of Deaf people; he wanted to learn ASL to have a good paying job. My case study emphasized that no matter what Deaf-related field one goes into (e.g., interpreting, education, CD, SP, or something else), this is a real commitment and should be viewed as such. If the only reason a person goes into the classroom is for a steady job and summers off, that person has the wrong attitude. If a person goes into interpreting only for a steady job where he can charge 2 hour minimum's and nit-pick about assignments, that person has the wrong attitude. This really emphasized to me that this is not about the teacher or interpreter! It is about the deaf student or deaf client. I saw the face of someone who had been taken advantage of instead of reading it in a book.

I will list the questions I asked this man during my interview via FaceTime:

- What do you remember of KSD?
- What year did you graduate?
- What experiences have you had with interpreters?
- What qualities do you like to see in interpreters?
- What qualities have you seen in interpreters that bothers you?
- What advice would you give to new interpreters from your perspective as a Deaf consumer? (this is the question in which he told me the story I retold above).

This was a great assignment and my favorite that we have had this semester.