Season 2, Ep. 6 – The Teaching Interpreter: Why Teach Interpreting

Watch in ASL

Welcome to the Amanda’s Musings podcast. This season we’ll be discussing teaching interpreting where teaching interpreting serves as an umbrella term for mentorship. Coaching, coaching, classroom teaching, workshop, training, and continuous professional growth. I’m Amanda Smith and I will host this space where we dive deep into the art and science of guiding the next generation of interpreters.

Whether you’re in the classroom offering one-on-one support or creating impactful trainings, in each episode, we will explore. Mindset, real world strategies, emerging research and lived experience from across the interpreting education landscape. And the best part is that your voice shapes the conversation.

I will feature questions and topics submitted by listeners like you through. Uh, the Google form that is in the show notes, so feel free to share your questions or thoughts or musings on a teaching of interpreting. So whether you’re a seasoned mentor, new to teaching, or somewhere in between, you’re in the right place as you’re listening to this podcast episode.

I’d love to provide some framing with some kind of reflective prompts that you could think about. Um, so three questions I have for you as you’re embarking on this podcast is

• what is connecting you to your care about the work we do as educators and interpreters?
• What, if anything, is sparking your curiosity and driving you to find out more?
• And what activate what is activating your creativity? Can you experiment with something today or this week?

So keep those in mind as you’re listening.

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In today’s episode, we’re gonna start embarking on the why of. Interpreter education, why we got into this business why we care to invest in this place.

And it may seem a little bit odd, but I actually think a question came through in the Google form that is actually gonna relate to this as I’ve been chewing on it a little bit. So the question that I got in, um, the Google form is kind of around this idea of how to handle situations where there’s an agency or a stakeholder in the community that is.

Known to quote unquote cause harm to others particularly to newer interpreters coming into the field. So, um, a reference in the question to this idea of do we eat our young right? And how educators and or programs might navigate. Interacting with that agency or not, or et cetera. Like how, how, how and where do educators and programs fit into the larger kind of community that we are as, as interpreters and interpreter educators?

It may seem like a tenuous connection at this point, but I do think that there is a connection between why we wanted to become educators and this idea of where do we fit in to the larger kind of community of interpreters and what our functions are. Which you could interpret as responsibilities or opportunities in the engagement with the larger community.

So I am gonna answer the question or attempt to, I’m gonna give some thoughts. I’m not going to answer the question ’cause I don’t think it’s that simple. But I’m gonna share some thoughts, um, about this question. While I’m also talking a little bit about why we choose to become interpreters. Um, if you are a formal interpreter educator, meaning that you teach in a an academic environment in a classroom, for lack of a better term, you might have done some exploration around, um, your teaching philosophy where you have done some reflection and.

Really worked to articulate why it is you do what you do. And then some of the other topics that were gonna come up, come across in this season, which is the how and the what of of our teaching. And I think that there’s a who in there too. I do wanna spend some time talking about who our students are.

And I think that some of the first episodes do also address that as well. Maybe talking about particular kinds of students. But I think exploring who the students are is also a good thing. And I wanna spend some time on the who being not just. Pre interpreting students in a classroom, but the who being practicing interpreters who are moving through the stages of their career, who are newer but have some experience and are honing or specializing or those sorts of things.

And then through the various stages of our careers. So I think some questions to think about in terms of why you are doing what you’re doing. That I think will then frame how you would engage with someone in the community who is perceived as doing harm and or you’ve observed, observed them doing harm to people that you are influencing and or educating to people that you care about, et cetera.

Right. So one of the first questions I think is just the very generic, why did you, why do you want to be an interpreter educator? For me, I chose to pursue interpreter education. One, I was encouraged to from really early on in my career, but I also knew that I wanted to have a say in shaping the next generation of interpreters.

I wanted to be a part of that conversation. I wanted to be a part of that transformation of our field into the next iteration and the next iteration and the next iteration, depending how long I stick around, um, in the field. And I wanted to be a part of the conversation and bring my own experience as well as my studies and those kinds of things to it.

And I would say initially my motivation came almost entirely out of wanting to ensure that quality services were provided specifically to deaf consumers. So I wasn’t consumer driven in the broad sense. I was very deaf, consumer driven, and wanting to see quality services provided to them. So the care that I initially brought was for the outcome of the said education for a particular stakeholder group in the interpreting experience or interaction, I guess I should say.

I think another question might be, what do you have to offer as an educator, leader, mentor, trainer? What do you bring? To the conversation. And that might be something like a particular perspective, a particular specialty a particular sensibility, right? So there are some. Educators, and again, I’m using educators very broadly here, but there are some educators who are very academic and technical minded in the sense of like, um, the linguistic basis or the cognitive process of interpreting or some of those kinds of things, right?

So they bring that sensibility of that analytical ness and those technical aspects of the work that get into the real minutiae of. The interpreting work. There are other educators who bring the sensibility of maybe interpersonal decision making interpersonal skills, those kind of soft skills, things that then impact the decisions that we make that can lead into ethical conversations and consequences and those kinds of things.

There might be other educators who bring, um, a sensibility of. Care for the practitioner. So those intrapersonal aspects of the interpreting work and how we care for the worker who is doing the work. I’m sure that there are more sensibilities. Those are the three that I’ve, I’ve come up with right now.

And I think that in my own journey as an educator, I have gone through multiple, i’ve woven through multiple of those and back again, it’s not that you only have one sensibility, right? So I think initially I really wanted to, again, it was very, I was very interested in the quality of services and the quality having to do with that meaning transfer component, that technical component.

So I think I, I lean on that a lot. I look, I learned a lot about the cognitive process. I learned about models, I learned about, um, how to look at people’s work and how to break the task up into, um. Maybe bite-size pieces. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to say that. Um, but bite-size pieces so that people could practice the different elements within the interpreting process.

And then I added in slash kind of moved in another direction of looking at the ethical elements of how you make decisions and that. Larger idea of if I care about the people that I’m working with, then I can make communication happen, um, and relying much more on this decision making of paradigm.

Uh, DCS would fall into that demand control schema as well as some of the, the theories that underpin DCS I’m particularly thinking of rests for, for component model where this idea of moral sensitivity, do you even know what’s happening? Can you even identify what’s happening in front of you, um, to then go into, you know, the other aspects of the four component model that would eventually lead to, um, decision making and kind of responsibility in that aspect.

Um, and then I did some, uh, research on interpersonal aspects of, you know, the interpreter as a person and as a practitioner. Um, and really thinking about caring for the practitioner, particularly seeing the burnout, um, in our field and some pre burnout that I started hearing about people who weren’t even out of programs but were feeling burnt out, um, at the magnitude of the task that it is and the responsibility that it is to be an interpreter.

And these aren’t these sensibilities that different educators bring to the classroom or to the training environment, or to the mentoring relationship are not static or distinct necessarily. They overflow, but you might lean on one more than the other depending on a particular situation. So I think something to think about is what is it that you bring to the teaching of interpreting?

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I think another question might be around what do you hope to get out of teaching? And I think you can think about that from an internal perspective and an external perspective.

So what do you hope to get out of it? Or what do you get out of it if you are a practicing, uh, educator again in any of those formats in a classroom, in a trainer position providing one-off workshops, mentoring, coaching, any of those things. So internally, what do I get out of it? So that might be something like satisfaction, accomplishment.

Any of those kinds of things. But it also might be, it actually hones my practice to be in this space. Um, one of the things that I, um, highly value though I wasn’t able to do it entirely in my career. Um, but one of the things I highly value is that as an educator, I was still a practicing interpreter.

And I did maintain that throughout, but I did not. Um, necessarily do as much interpreting as I would’ve liked. Interpreting is great. Um, but there, you can’t always fit it into your schedule. But one of the things that I noticed as a practicing interpreter. Who was also teaching in the classroom and teaching pre-service interpreters particularly is that they informed each other.

So the things that I would teach my students, I then became responsible for in my own practice. So I couldn’t teach them to do something I wasn’t willing to do. And then also. The things that I did in my practice came back to the classroom by way of stories or examples or like, here’s how a decision kind of got made, or here’s where I got stuck with this or that, or the other thing, right?

So they kind of informed each other. So that would be an internal thing that I got that also is external, I suppose, when we get to that category. But an internal thing that I get out of teaching is also that it hones my skills as a practitioner. And it informs my practice as a practitioner. Then externally, what do you get out of it?

Um, and that can be, you know, whether that is. Status in your community that could also, I guess, I guess be an internal thing. But I think there’s might be an external element to that. Um, the thing when I labeled it external that I was thinking about was more like the product of my teaching. So I want high quality practitioners to be out in the field working with the consumers that we serve, both deaf and hearing.

Um, that’s what I wanna get out of teaching. I want to get. Working interpreters who are more in tune with their own needs and their own contributions so that they can show up and be fully present for consumers when they. Show up to work. I want to have, because I also teach people how to teach, um, interpreting, I want those practitioners to feel confident and equipped and resourced in ways that they can then teach the next generation.

Right. So what are some of the external things that you want out of teaching? Okay. So I think that leaves us with three questions, and I think that’s where I might leave it for today and then go into answering the question that came in. So the first question, just kind of the generic, like why did you choose to pursue teaching?

Um, and I think that actually the internal and external can be applicable to that question too, because as I shared with you all, I was encouraged to do so external, but also internally motivated to do it as well. Um, the second question was. What do you have to offer to, or what do you offer to uh, being an educator and then what do you get out of being an educator or what do you hope to get out of being an educator internally and externally?

So I think those are some questions to frame. The start of this conversation about the why that, why we teach, interpreting why it matters to teach interpreting. Um, and again, teach being that really broad definition from academic to peer mentoring where we’ve shared a job and we are educating each other in, honing our skills further.

I think that those, those questions about the why will inform how I respond to an agency or a stakeholder or a practitioner in my community who is doing harm to newer interpreters. Now, I’m also going to assume I don’t have this information from the question, but I’m going to assume that I’m in a position of, responsibility for these newer interpreters. They might be out on internship or something like that. They also are people who I likely have a relationship with that I have built over time. I’ve seen them grow into the people that they are now to become interns out in the field. So I care about them as humans.

I care about their feelings. I care about them. I also care about the work. I also care about our stakeholders in the community. Right.

So I think one of the ways that I might handle this, and I’ve certainly had experiences where, harm was being done. Maybe not in this exact kind of scenario that I received through the Google form, but I’ve certainly had to have conversations with people, whether that was a fellow practitioner or I was in a position as an educator.

To an agency or to a practitioner, that sort of thing. And also to students, right? Who, um, sometimes do harm to one another in the same spirit of competitiveness or scarcity where there isn’t enough. So I need to be the best. I need to, you know, that sort of thing, right?

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So I actually have a lot of questions about this scenario and I can make some stuff up to try to show my thought process.

But one of the questions is what are they responding to? This I’m just gonna make, I’m just gonna make it an agency just to make it easier to talk about than giving lots of these examples. This is not what they said, they made it much more generic. I’m choosing that it’s an agency for ease. So I’m going to wonder what is the agency responding to if I were to ask them, and hopefully eventually I will ask them what would their side of the story be like what are the values that they are attempting to uphold through their behavior and their words to students?

So that would be one question. Another question would be, actually, I might ask this one first to myself and to whoever I’ve heard this story from, or if I witnessed it myself, what actually happened, right? So my emotions got involved, I got defensive. I started feeling like, don’t do that to my people.

What actually occurred, what was said, what was the tone? What was the context and the circumstances? Okay. And can I see it from their perspective? I then might ask what are they responding to? I then might ask what values of mine got activated that it felt like this was a violation of a value, right?

Of what of. Care and compassion for the younger generation of maybe my own sensibility about how feedback is given not harshly, but factually. What is it that has, has risen in me that feels a way about whatever this interaction is that occurred?

I then probably would sit with it for a day or two and see once the emotions have settled, what is left behind that I wanna talk about. I also would the indication in the question that I got, or the tone I, the not the tone, the assumption I’m making from the question that I got is that this is a pattern, not a one off.

Um, and I, I’m not exactly sure why, even as I reread this question.

It’s not, it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily say it’s a pattern, but for some reason that’s the impression I’m getting is that it’s a pattern like this agency tends to not treat new interpreters well. Like that, that, that’s kind of the pattern. Well, then I, as a, as an educator and or a program coordinator or program member, would probably want to have a conversation with them about do they even want interns, do they not?

Perhaps it’s not a fit for their business model. Perhaps it’s not a fit for the staff that they currently have or the type of work that they currently have. It’s not a fit, so let’s not try to force it. If it is that they’re like, oh yeah, no, we’re totally interested, okay, then we need to have a conversation about kind of the philosophy of the program, the values that the program tries to uphold, and maybe they’re ill-equipped to.

Have the conversations in the ways that the program has the conversation. And there needs to be some training feels like too strong of a word, but some conversation around here are the, here’s the philosophy we have, here are the values that we have as a program. Here’s what their students are used to receiving.

And that doesn’t mean you have to do it exactly like us, but you know. C are our values aligned in this conversation or are in this endeavor of training and interns? Yeah. I think more conversation is better in these instances, and then I’ve certainly had experiences where conversations happen and behavior does not change.

So once, once it’s clear what the expectation is, then I think you can take it from there to say, okay. We don’t have any interns who will, uh, be able to work in that circumstance. So we’re not gonna be able to place any interns with you this year. We can revisit it next year or we can revisit it next term, or we can revisit it at another time.

You do get to put up guardrails around your students, uh, particularly when they’re in an internship situation. And then I think you continue modeling the ways in which, uh. You want, I mean, it’s kind of the golden rule, right? You get to model the ways in which you want these new students to be treated, um, these new colleagues to be treated and work with others who have that same.

Value and mindset as well. I’m hoping that’s not too disconnected in terms of our why for getting into it, and then being curious about their why for hosting an intern and seeing how we can get on the same page. I would say that approaching in an argumentative or accusatory way is. Not gonna get you as far as you might think, which is why I said give it a couple of days.

Because we certainly get our hackles up and we want to defend our people. But ultimately if we share the community together, we actually do need to work together. So we need to have conversations about what our values are, where they align, where they don’t align. Can I respect where their values are, even if they don’t align fully with where mine are?

And I don’t mean align like. They would be completely off, but like they prioritize something different than I prioritize. That’s okay. That just is the human experience. We, we prioritize different things, but if we can come up with a common way of having, of being on the same side of the table as opposed to opposite of each other, or adversarial with each other, because ultimately I hope we’re all there to grow qualified interpreters for the next generation to serve the communities.

In a positive way. I hope that’s what we’re all there for. And if we’re not all there for that, then that kind of misalignment might mean I’m not sure we can do business together. But if we are all there for the same reasons, but we have different perspectives on what that looks like or how that plays out, then I think we can have a conversation about it.

I would love to hear your thoughts about that. And we will continue unraveling the why’s, the how’s, the what’s and the who’s of teaching interpreting. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Amanda’s Musings in the Teaching Interpreting season. If today’s episode sparked a new idea, challenged your perspective, or gave you something to take back to your own work, don’t keep it to yourself.

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Share the podcast, leave a review, and join the conversation on social media. If you have a question or a topic you’d like to hear more about, head over to the episode notes where you’ll find the link to the Google form and you can let me know what is on your mind. As always, I would love to know how this podcast landed for you today, particularly around our reflective questions of what connected you to your care about the work that we do as educators and interpreters.

What sparked your curiosity and drives you to find out more? What activated your creativity and is there something that you’re gonna experiment with? Today or this week, I would always love to hear from you. You can email me at arsmithstudios@gmail.com.