I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a topic that I am interested in and plan to write about over the course of the semester for my directed writing assignment. That topic is tutoring for the deaf community. This topic interests me because over the years while I can not sign I have become friends with numerous people from the deaf community. Even more interesting to me is how that came to be. I have a good friend that does sign and has worked throughout the deaf community in different ways. We both are in bands and perform live music. During the course of the years playing out we have found a large group of deaf people coming to our shows to watch and listen to the bands. We have performed at multiple Michigan School for the Deaf functions and parties creating wonderful relationships along the way. I have always found it fascinating how we communicate sometimes with little use of words or with help from interpreters. These experiences have brought on the idea of looking at how to better communicate between tutors and deaf students.
My plan of action is to seek out articles and information on working with the deaf and build upon strategies already in place to improve communication between hearing tutors and non hearing students. I hope to look beyond what we already know on the subject and try to fill in the gaps in areas that need more investigation or pose new questions and possibly reach for answers to situations that have been over looked or unaddressed. The goal will to be to write a paper presenting what we know, the what ifs and how tos, that can hopefully create better insight and more inquiry and collaboration on the subject.
If you have any ideas or suggestions on this topic, please feel free to let me know. I am interested in all of your input. See an article let me know, have a thought let me know, you get the idea.