Season 2, Ep. 5 – The Teaching Interpreter: Student & Interpreter Attitude

Watch in ASL

Hi! Welcome to season 2 of the Amanda’s Musings podcast – this season is entitled “the Teaching Interpreter” where we will explore the various ways in which interpreters are taught, mentored, coached, and influenced in their growth and development as an interpreter.

I’m Amanda Smith an interpreter, educator, coach, and creative. I love to discuss the puzzles of interpreting, the complexities of human interaction, and the power we have within ourselves to make a difference.

You can find the show notes at arsmithstudios.com and click the “podcast” button in the upper right navigation bar.

I want you to think about the following reflective prompts as you listen/watch:

1. What, if anything, is sparking your care for the profession, those you influence in the profession, and yourself as a leader?
2. Do you feel moved to take any action? If so, what? When?
3. What questions arise?
4. What insights & connections do you see to yourself?

Hi. Welcome to Season Two of the Amanda’s musings podcast. This season is entitled The teaching interpreter, where we will explore the various ways in which interpreters are taught, mentored, coached, and influenced in their growth and development as interpreters, I’m Amanda Smith, an interpreter, educator, coach and creative. I love to discuss the puzzles of interpreting the complexities of human interaction and the power we have within ourselves to make a difference in shaping each of these podcast episodes, I like to frame them with some reflective prompts for you to listen through. So the four basic questions to have in mind is,

what, if anything is sparking your care for the profession, those you influence in the profession, and yourself as a leader.

do you feel moved to take any action? If so, what and when will you do it?

what questions arise for you?

what insights and connections do you see to yourself. Enjoy.

In today’s episode, we are going to talk about attitude, and specifically student attitude. But I actually think attitude can apply to all of us, not just students in their development, but also those of us in practice and have been in practice for quite a period of time. But because this season is about teaching, interpreting broadly defined we’re going to talk about pre service, but I think we can also talk about in service, kind of elements of attitude. This topic came from a question that was asked a couple of episodes ago about how to handle motivation of students, and motivation of students who are doing okay, but might stagnate, but don’t seem to be really particularly interested in practice, and then motivation of students who are super motivated, super invested, but aren’t actually progressing, an attitude was kind of woven in there a little bit.

If you have been a sign language interpreter for any period of time, I’m assuming that you have heard the trope of consumers, particularly deaf consumers, preferring to have an interpreter who has so so language skills but a good attitude over someone who has stellar language skills and a bad attitude. And that has kind of put attitude into the central focus of what matters as an interpreter. That being said, largely our education of interpreters, both pre service and in service, heavily, heavily, heavily focuses on and prioritizes language. You must have language to be an interpreter. You must have, minimally, two languages that you are fluent in in order to serve as an interpreter.

I am in no way suggesting that the language aspects of becoming an interpreter are not important. I’m merely suggesting that they are not the most important thing. It’s kind of a weird conundrum that we end up in, because if you don’t have sufficient language skills, nothing else actually matters. You can’t serve as an interpreter, but if you have sufficient language skills, then that’s almost less important than the other things that you bring to the table. And what I mean by that is, and I’ll link to a blog post that I wrote a while ago, because this came from a conversation that I had with a colleague who works in deaf education. What I mean by that is, if you have sufficient language skills and you truly care about the people that you are serving. And by that I mean the Deaf consumers, the hearing consumers, humanity in general, your team interpreters, right? If you have deep care for those people, and you have deep care for the work of an interpreter, which is to connect people, then you will figure out how to use whatever language skills that you have in order to provide access, in order to provide connection between people. If you don’t have that care, if you don’t have what I think we are referring to as attitude. If you don’t have that, it actually doesn’t matter how many vocabulary words you know, people will be inhibited in their connection and their access, because your care isn’t so. Sufficient to get them connected.

So I guess what I’m saying at this point is that I think that this care, this deep care, our deep why that we are here, and our deep understanding of human connection and human access and the dignity of all humans, kind of thing is the attitude that is being looked for in the community. I’m not saying that with any sense of authority, having done research on what the deaf community means, this is just my observation, and where I think I’ve come to in my 30 years of practice as an interpreter and 20 plus years as an educator is that you have to care about more than the language. You have to care about more than look how cool that is. The novelty of being a sign language interpreter, or the ability to be seen performing sign language and translating for a song, or you have to actually care about people, and have to care about their dignity, and that is going to take you a lot further. Which reminds me of another blog post. I think I have it published, another blog post, so I’ll link it. If I do have it published. Now I don’t have it published, I might publish it and then link it. I it. But I’ve, I’ve talked about this idea of caring for something deeper. So oftentimes, when I encounter pre service interpreters and in service interpreters as well, given my specialty of legal, courtroom interpreting, I often encounter people who are like, Oh, I could never do that. I would never do that. Or pre service interpreters who say like, well, I just won’t ever end up in a situation that will be challenging for my values or challenging for my constitution as a human right. I just, I just won’t accept those jobs, which is a simplistic understanding of the work that we do as interpreters, and a simplistic view of how humans are very complex. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re going to the most mundane of assignments that you think you can predict 100% what’s going to happen there. Humans are humans, and they’re unpredictable. So something could occur there that you had no idea was going to happen, that is going that could interact with your emotional state, your trauma background, your nervous system, any of those kinds of things in ways that you may or may not be prepared for. So if you are only prepared for predictable things that don’t ruffle you in any way, you’re going to be even further ruffled, right?

And so I think this, this blog post that I wrote, whether or not it’s published, we’ll see, was about valuing something higher. And I think you could think about that as valuing something deeper as well. But this idea that, for example, I’m just going to make up something so for example, if I’m a legal interpreter, and I’m interpreting for a defendant who has been accused of doing something to a victim. Maybe that victim is a child, and I have children, right? And I have children around that age, I might choose not to do that just because it’s too close to home, but I might at a later time, choose to do that not because I’m in favor of what the perpetrator has done or in favor of what the defendant has done, but because I value the system of justice that we have that allows victims to have their day in court, that allows for a jury of peers to listen and determine, right? Like so I’m I’m not value. I’m not aligning with the defendant. I’m aligning with the system that has a way so that a victim can have a voice, so that a process can be gone through so that, etc, right? I feel a little bit like this is veering away from attitude. But I actually think care and attitude are quite connected. Because if I believed that, if my attitude was such that I only dealt with consumers who I agreed with. I’m not sure that’s a good attitude, which might be a little too blatant, too bold, because in that case, I’m only in this business for me, I’m only in this business to feel good about me and to feel good about the work that I provide and the ways that I provide it like it feels like a very selfish thing if I’m only going to work with people who align with me.

And I think that interpreting is a higher calling than that. I think interpreting is value. Access and valuing connection and then the autonomy and agency of the individuals that we serve. I’m not suggesting that you have to go and seek out things that are counter to what you believe, but I’ve interpreted for a lot of things that I don’t agree with and don’t believe in, but because I value access and agency and connection. The service I’m providing, the attitude behind the service I’m providing is, yeah, you have a right to say what you want to say, too. You have a right to connect in the ways that you want to connect. You have the right to do this and that and the other thing, right? And I think that I think we talked a little bit about values in the last episode or two episodes ago, and our values really do permeate through our actions and through our behaviors. So if I only value my ability to feel good about myself and the things that I’m doing, or I only value serving people who are just like me. That’s going to show up in my attitude, right? If I value something higher than that, something deeper than that, which is this, I think we could also go to the ethics of Beauchamp and Childress, which I will put in the show notes as well. They talk about principles of biomedical, bio medical ethics. I think I’m saying that right. And they have four core principles of Biomedical Ethics, but they can be applied to any profession. So beneficence, doing good, non maleficence, avoiding harm, autonomy, honoring the autonomy and respecting the autonomy of the individuals that we’re serving, and justice, which is can be thought of as the highest amount of good for the most amount of people, roughly speaking. And then autonomy, having both positive and negative obligation. Autonomy, this idea that non interference is the negative obligation, autonomy, where I don’t insert myself into the situation, I don’t insert my opinions or any of those kinds of things. And so it’s just a kind of hands off non interference and positive obligation, autonomy, being this idea that someone needs to have sufficient information and access to information in order to be able to act autonomy, autonomously. So if you think about informed consent for a surgery, for example, I can’t consent without being informed about the risks. So if the doctor just said, Is it okay if I do the surgery that’s not actually offering me autonomy, because I don’t have enough information to answer the question with any knowledgeable or educated, informed way, right? They have to, they have to inform me of the risks, the benefits, the potential outcomes, etc, before I can actually make an autonomous choice.

So what does this have to do with attitude? It’s a good question. I think our attitude, both pre service and in service, needs to be informed by our values, and it needs to be challenged by our values. So when I’m in a situation to say something that I don’t believe in, or to say something give voice to or give sign to things that go counter to our internal kind of morals, or the ways that we would live our life. What do we draw upon to be able to continue to do that? And if my value, if my highest value is I like to sign, I’m not going many places with that right, because I’m not thinking about what do these people need in order to interact and connect? What do these people need to be able to have access and have informed autonomy. What do these people need? Right? I’m just thinking about, Look, I get to sign. Isn’t this fun? If that’s my highest value, I’m not going to make it very far, right. But if my highest value is a care for humanity, a care for connection, a care for the dignity of everyone, then I’m going to have a lot more resources at my disposal in order to serve that purpose. Right? If I can see people as individuals, and I can see them as individuals who have independent you. Unique needs in the world, unique viewpoints on the world, thought worlds, on the world, et cetera. And I can think about, how do I adjust myself to meet their needs? And I don’t mean myself as an individual like I should adjust and agree with everything that everyone does. I mean, how do I adjust my practice to still serve them my values and morals and those kinds of things are not at risk if somebody else disagrees with me and I give voice to that right that is living out one of my values, which is that everyone has a right to their own everyone has their own space time, all of those kinds of things to be able to process whatever they need to process at any given time. I can get myself out of the way.

I think one of the best things we can do for aspiring interpreters is to help them to get in touch with themselves and their values, their value systems, Their motivations, as we talked about in a previous episode. I think that’s also something really beneficial for in service, interpreters, interpreters already working in the field, because we have to have something that grounds us. We have to have something that tethers us, or we will be at the whim of either anything that comes about, or only what I like. And neither of those are great, right? I need to be grounded and tethered to my own values. And one of my values, high values, is access, human dignity, etc, autonomy. Thus I act that out by providing access, service and connection, right? I’m not actually sure if I’m going to publish this. I feel like I’ve gone a ways from attitude in the ways that we typically think about attitude in the work. I think attitude sometimes gets wrapped up in being right or the maybe the threat of being wrong. So sometimes attitude looks like a strict adherence to a rules based model, a strict adherence to black and white thinking. Because that’s the only tool they have in their toolbox. Thus my encouragement that in pre service, we help students actually connect on a deeper level. And in fact, I was just let me see if I can find my notebook in a coach training this last week, talking about a number of things, but the thing that I want to pull from, they were talking about, kind of the trajectory towards healing, and I think it can also be the trajectory towards learning, or trajectory towards wholeness, maybe.

And what, what they were talking about was this idea of we move in the direction so from rigidity to flexibility, from structure to organic, from stagnant to evolving from context to process, and the idea being we don’t want to calcify our minds, was the actual phrase that this trainer used, that toward healing, towards wholeness, towards learning is not allowing our brains to be calcified. And I talked about that a little bit in the last episode, when we were talking about the learning process of reactivating an experience, confirming or disconfirming that experience, and then reconsolidation is what it’s called in the brain, but practicing to kind of cement those ties deeper together. And I. Think that that’s essentially what what they’re talking about. And what I wonder might be a a potential way to address attitude, is that I think sometimes the attitude that gets talked about is this rigid, structured, stagnant, prescribed way that people interact as interpreters, very rule based. And we want to encourage people to move toward fluid, organic process, kinds of things, which also makes me think of DCs, the demand control schema and one of Dean and Pollard’s articles that they wrote about was a best practice process, as opposed to a best practice right? So a best practice process, having a process for thinking through things, having a process or looking at things from different angles, which would move their attitude from a stagnant, rules based place that I’m just looking at right and wrong, which is an illusion in and of itself, but we can, we can function in that place, to a place of looking at the totality of what is happening and how we fit into that totality, and then adjusting ourselves accordingly to serve the highest purpose of connection and access and autonomy. And you know what the goal of this particular setting is? Those kinds of things, right? And to make decisions based on that.

I think that one of the other kind of commentaries that happens in our field is that you can’t really teach attitude. And it’s it’s similar to the idea in the larger world of this idea that there are, like, those soft skills, quote, unquote, that can’t be taught. They just are or they aren’t. And I think that there’s an element of that, certainly. But I wonder if we could create circumstances where people have an opportunity to grow and develop and are in an environment or a context that nurtures that to give them the best opportunity towards that, even if it doesn’t result in in them necessarily being a fit for the field, or this being the best place for them, or growing beyond what they’re capable of doing, as opposed to, again, I think about this scale that I just talked about, as opposed to rigidly thinking like, well, you either have it or you don’t. What if we created a space, a liminal kind of space that allowed for exploration of, is this something I can grow? Is this something I can develop? Is this something that I can hone? Because even for those who, quote, unquote, have it, they need space to hone, develop and grow those skills as well, even if it’s something inherent, you can still grow that and be more intentional about it. So I wonder if one of the ways to address attitude is not with more language lessons, not with more vocabulary, but with self awareness, self knowledge and self development in service of others. Because I realize that all those selfs could sound like I’m saying to be self centered again, but I actually mean more developing the self and then using that in service of the others when we are engaged in interpreting work. Those are my thoughts on attitude. Like I said, I’m not sure I’m gonna publish this or not, or I might edit it quite a bit. We’ll see. I’m curious your thoughts on attitude, and where you think it stems from, and what you think it’s kind of related to, and how far off the mark you think this is, as I was just making some notes about it ahead of time, and then just talking kind of stream of consciousness. This is the connection that came up for me, I’m curious what other connections you all have. I’m not suggesting this is the only connection, or even the only connection I have. It’s the connection I had today between around the topic of attitude, curious. All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. Again, I want you to think about anything that might have sparked your care if you felt moved to action questions that arose for you, and any insights and connections you’re making, you can find the show notes and transcript at arsmith studios.com and click the podcast link in the navigation bar in the upper right corner. You. I would love to hear from you about your insights ahas and questions, so feel free to reach out to me at AR Smith studios@gmail.com and you can also sign up for my very intermittent newsletter at ar smithstudios.com by clicking on the newsletter button in the upper right menu, you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Conclusion

And again, I want to, I want you to think about anything that might have sparked your care if you feel moved to action questions that arise, what insights and connections you’re making. I’d love to hear from you about those insights ahas and questions. So feel free to reach out to me at arsmithstudios@gmail.com and you can also sign up for my very intermittent newsletter at arsmithstudios.com and click on the newsletter button in the upper right hand corner. So let me go back and answer some of these questions.