Disclaimer: All information posted is solely my own thoughts and opinions or those of the professionals interviewed. I do not speak on behalf of my employers, educational institutions, or professional organizations past, present, or future.
I first met Adrielle when we worked together in 2017 as teachers for the Come Read with Me summer program at USC. She was a recent graduate from her master’s program (the same one I attended). Because we both had a long commute that summer, we got to spend time together each day walking to and from the train to campus. There’s a lot to be impressed by Adrielle: she is bilingual, she was working at the time as a medical Spanish interpreter, a test prep tutor and beginning her first year as a DHH teacher. I really enjoyed working with her and over the next couple of years before she moved to New York, we would run into each other periodically at conferences or district meetings.
Adrielle is smart, funny and incredibly driven. One of the things I love most about her is she always has multiple things cooking–we are similar in that way but she is next level and her hustle is inspiring. Even when I reached out to her to do this interview, she said, “I’ve got four jobs right now (PLUS her PhD program), so let’s find a time that works.” Each time we talk, I feel motivated to keep working towards what I want. Adrielle is excellent at that, and at much more.
As deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) educators, we can get stuck in our niche of what we’re good at–mainly because we jumped through a lot of hoops to get there. We get our credential, many of us get our master’s degree–then we clear those credentials, some of us pursue LSLS certification and while we may take courses here and there to advance on the salary scale, I find that our pursuit for higher education in any form often gets squelched by the day-to-day load of teaching.
Personally, one of my big dreams is to earn my doctoral degree and work in teacher education in some capacity. My goal was to interview a handful of DHH educators who have gone on to pursue various forms of higher education to remind us of what else is out there.
Adrielle is a second-year doctoral student at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. We sat down via Zoom this fall to catch up and she told me all about where she is now and where she plans to go.
Tell me about your journey between the last time we talked (about 3 years ago) and now. What brought you here? What are you studying? If you could create your dream job for when you’re finished, what would it look like?
Adrielle: Around the time that we met and we were working at Come Read With Me, I realized I had a fervency for being involved with research and applying it.
There is a big gap between the research that is meant for teachers to read and apply and then what teachers are equipped to read and apply.
I felt very trapped by the organization of the profession of education. When I was considering careers, I thought, “I like to work hard and see results.” If I work hard at something, if I’m good at it, if I spend enough time I want to see that I can move forward. But education is one where they do not trust us, you need to “do your time.” I felt trapped by how narrow-minded education is, even at the master’s level. You’re not respected, I would hear “wow it’s your third year you’re still just starting!” and I’m thinking “I’ve been in school and a professional for seven years so it’s weird that I’m still ‘not knowing anything.”
So I thought, “how do I know something? and how do I get respect? How do I get to a place where I say, ‘hey this doesn’t make sense?’ and someone listens to me?” Or I say, “hey, we’re doing a lot of identity reinforcement with our students of color on their hearing loss–how about incorporating something about their skin tone? Or their native language, or their native land?” Because it could be kind of confusing that we are supporting all of these ideas like, “you have a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss” but we don’t say, “you’re also a native Spanish-speaker,” those are all things that are of self and if we are treating the whole child then I think all of those cultural, educational and all types of identities that we have are important to put together but who do I present that to?
The education system is designed for teachers to talk to their principals and the principal can talk to another person and ultimately you’re not going to be heard. I knew I wanted to do a PhD because I knew that was the only option for upward mobility from having a Masters in Education.
I wanted mutual respect and also the ability to put together what I was interested in and apply it to education. Right away, even applying to Columbia I noticed I was being validated on my thoughts. They would tell me I was asking great questions and “here’s a research article about this topic.” This is what I wanted. I knew there were others doing this work, for example, “I wonder why teachers are still teaching six hours a day when there was a study in 1980 that told us it wasn’t effective?” * There’s just such a disconnect. We’ve been talking about Hart and Riesley for years and it’s been debunked for years. There is no 30 million word gap and we keep talking about it!
We need to think about how our assessments and standardized tests and grades and languages surrounding those things are very racially charged. They are meant to marginalize groups of people.
What I loved about Columbia is that everyone was very candid about the situation. When I went into my interview, they told me, “you are here because you’re doing great things and you have great dreams and ideas about what you want to do but also, this representation is going to be amazing in and of itself.”
Nobody really wants to point that out or tell you that. Everywhere I go, I’m the only one that acknowledges, “hey, I’m the only Black teacher here,” or “hey, there’s this many bilingual teachers here,” or “there’s this many teachers that specialize in this thing,” no one is really being frank about that but I noticed with this school culture it was very out in the open. New York City’s public school system breakdown is about 75% black and brown–I don’t know the exact numbers but I’m sure it’s very similar to LA. These are the two largest districts in the country and we should be talking about these things because ultimately when you wheel in the bottom of the barrel, everyone’s education will improve.
I was very attracted to the idea that I could do something that would propel me past answering to someone with my ideas not being heard and nothing being novel. When I got to Columbia I was blown away by all the different opportunities that no one knows about in education. We really don’t get that type of exposure, no one tells you what you can do with it.
I have recently been very interested in teacher education and dismantling some of the microaggressions that exist in the workplace. It was so important to my development in grad school and again in this New York system I felt like we are losing so many people who are well-intentioned who have great skills because no one cares to think about how to keep teachers–
you can recruit all of the people of color that you want–but how are you making them feel welcome? What are you providing, what are you doing that’s retaining these teachers in your school programs?
I appreciated the candidness of that being important because I had never felt that expressed before.
I think if I could choose, (aside from being Secretary of Education), would be some type of diversity/inclusion consulting. So many schools are just out-of-control with how they address their parents and students and how they interact with each other or how administration interacts with the staff. All of it can be cringe-worthy. When we think about when our education systems were set in place, very much like law enforcement, these systems were set in place when America was not for everyone. So, think about all of the things that are integrated into the system that are not for everyone that need to be bent a little bit, they need to be fixed.
Tell me about your specific area of study at Columbia.
I’m in a deaf education PhD program however, whatever I study or publish as my dissertation is based on the comprehensive classes that I take and what kind of research I want to put out. The lens is deaf education and special education is the umbrella of that, but I’ve been looking into neuroscience and using that as a reference point for special education. Under that umbrella I’ve been interested in qualifying environmental disparities as special needs.
What do you love most about your program?
I was never a straight A student or anything like that. I was never at the top of my class. Every time I progressed my education a little bit more, I thought, “Ooh, here we go!” I don’t feel like I’m some special scholar. But, with that, I love that I don’t feel out of place at this school. Everyone has experiences and something to offer and everyone’s ideas are validated. I remember my first semester and I felt like, “why are people asking me what I want to research when I don’t know? I’m here to learn!” and they would ask, “why are you positioning yourself in a place of not knowing when you got here. You know so much already, now it’s time to combine your experience with all the literature we have available, all the faculty members.” I really like the encouragement and validation that you should be there, you do have ideas and this is important work.
What is your least favorite part about being a PhD student?
At the PhD level, you aren’t taking some after-school classes while getting your degree. It’s a full-fledged program, I’m spending a lot of time reading, studying and writing. It can very well be its own thing on it’s own. Working and doing this at the same time is heavy on the mind. I work 4 jobs right now on top of taking classes and it’s a lot to consider and a lot of steps and it would be easier if I could just focus on my program. Unfortunately, a lot of the funding that we had for programs like this have been liquidated with our current administration** so it’s hard to do this work and try to support yourself in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re back in undergrad eating Maruchan and have a normal life and still do it.
Also, if you’re not very proactive with asking for help and what to do next, it’s really your discretion on how you move forward. What you put in is what you get out and that is a lot of freedom for some people so that can be another challenging piece.
Were there any other routes that you considered to reach your goal? What was your deciding factor?
My ultimate goal was respect. I felt like after the intensive, accelerated program I did, the message was, “in order to get respect, now do your LSLS,” which was another 3 years.
“But I just finished grad school! Isn’t that worth anything?” “Actually, no.”
I also felt that speech pathologists were respected so much more. I have a background in communicative disorders because I thought I wanted to go into speech first. I did all the credentialing for SLPA and when I transitioned to DHH, I felt that it didn’t receive the same amount of regard or respect (and money, I added, laughing) and I just felt stuck again. I knew I needed more education to transition out of deaf education. There’s not a lot else you can do with the degree other than be a teacher.
I considered speech pathology, maybe a doctorate in communicative disorders. I’m very interested in things like language development but I didn’t want to be a clinician, I wanted to research and put out journals and conduct studies that are accessible to teachers instead of all of these things that cannot really be applied. Maybe one day I could influence how the districts operate in terms of how long school is and other things that are arbitrary that we do because we’ve always done them.
I considered a PhD in neuroscience but I quickly realized that it was more science-based and the people I was competing against had gone to MIT and I have no background in engineering. I’m interested in cochlear implant production but more so the results, the cross-modal reorganization, how the brain adapts to new sounds, what the predictors of success are but I’m not getting in the lab to make the implants.
Mind you, while I’m considering all this I am emailing hundreds of faculty members because my understanding of PhD programs is that you need someone to be your advisor: someone to vouch for your degree. Your dissertation is not just “by Adrielle Turner,” it’s “by Adrielle Turner and these five other people who say you know what you’re talking about,” and they aren’t going to say you know what you’re talking about if you don’t. So you really need people to be interested in what you’re studying and to support you.
I even considered med school at one point, I was kind of all over the place. What allowed me to narrow it down was talking to the people who had gone through the program that I chose and hearing about what their careers are now. After the PhD level, it opens you up to so many niche jobs within education that it’s really hard to have a set goal of what you want to do with it. I learned that a lot of them are doing research, some have gone back to be superintendents or work as a faculty and run a deaf education program and those are all things that I’m interested in doing.
Where do you see the largest areas for growth in deaf education?
Early intervention. I don’t like that it’s kind of classist because… [as the parent] are you available to be off work for them? Are you comfortable with people entering your home and interacting with your young child? Do you have enough information about what’s going on with your child to trust someone’s opinion on how to navigate this?
I think there’s a huge gap in early intervention and also on the other end of what happens when we miss the mark. What do we do when we’re in a spoken language program but we’re significantly behind in terms of language goals?
I don’t want to see a student in 3rd grade with speech goals to approximate /a/. That to me, is mortifying so, I would like to see us clean up those oversights of how to help parents in the beginning and what type of intervention happens when we miss that sweet spot of early intervention to 2nd grade. Is this student intellectually delayed or do they just not have access to their thoughts because they don’t have language? And that’s a huge oversight.
Me: This conversation is already so validating in so many ways. As teachers I feel like we never get to address language deprivation, whether with research articles or just by talking about it. When we see students where we have missed the mark, as teachers we have no idea what that family’s early experiences were like. What conversations were happening throughout those early years? So when I see them, I can see that the parent is missing basic information about hearing loss, device use, all of that. Is that an issue of retention? We know that with trauma or even just in dealing with having a child with a disability, we can miss a lot of information that’s provided. We have to hear things over and over. Or, is it a matter of bad teaching? Is it a combination? And what do we do for those students and those families? It really does feel like we have these families who are the “model families,” the ones who fit the model of what LSLS say they should be. The family is super involved, they’re doing everything they’re told, they are doing the language modeling, they’re going to the classes, they do AVT, speech and the kid does awesome. And they are the ones that get presented before other families when we talk about kids who are deaf/hard-of-hearing and “successful.” Then, every time a new parent has a child with hearing loss, we are going to show them this kid and say, “look! Your kid can be like this!” But then, we are holding the disparity of what this family has and the other family has and we are applying the same formula to both families. And we’re asking why that other kid isn’t making the same progress? Maybe years of generational trauma? We aren’t addressing any of that, we aren’t talking with the parents about that or treating them as individuals. So, I’m glad to know that I’m not the first person to have these thoughts.
Adrielle: We have so much research on how different families with different resources are maneuvering and we don’t take that into consideration at all. In my background, generally African-American people are not very open with dealing with disability or mental illness or any type of medical condition, it’s usually just like “oh, we’ll work with them, we’ll read more, we’ll fix it.” So when we work with a family like that and we spit out all these resources like, “go here, go here, go here and do this,” it doesn’t really work the same way. Plus, mistrust of Western medicine overall. When you tell them, “make sure you schedule all these appointments,” there are people who are just afraid to go to the doctor or don’t trust the audiologist or things like that. We have to start there.
Have you experienced any passive-aggressive judgment with families? “She’s doing the best she can but she does sit her child in front of a computer screen for four hours a day.” Okay, so with that, what are we going to do instead of judging? While keeping in mind those different family homes and what they look like. That article that I sent you about hidden talents*** is really just using those home environments as building blocks for skills instead of positioning children at a point of deficit just because it’s not a “white model,” it’s not an “affluent model.” Positioning the kids in a way that says, “these are your resources and with your resources, here is what we can do.”
The other thing you mentioned about students who you didn’t know their story in the beginning. So it was both they missed the mark with early intervention and now also are suffering in being really far gone and not knowing where to start. I don’t want to say majority because that may be an overestimation, but in my experience of all my classrooms I feel like I’ve had maybe one or two “golden children” in each class and then 8-10 others are a hotchpotch of not knowing we can speak to them in Spanish or not having books at home, retention issues, and things like that. To me, a majority of the students look like that when we put this on a pedestal. With that is also thinking that is the only way success can look, and to me that is the antithesis of special education.
To me, special education is positioning a student to do the best they can with their resources and their skills, not compared to other students. There shouldn’t be that kind of comparison.
Me: What really pushed me over the edge was getting my LSLS. You have to really put your professional experience aside when you’re taking the test and think of what you would tell a white, affluent family. And that has literally never been my experience. These students in our classrooms are the students that need care and need us to be good at our jobs. Now I have this certification so I know how to work with one type of family. Now what do I do with the families that are in front of me?
I grew up going to private school as an only child and we had a lot of resources. I’ve always been valued for my education and what I can produce in that way. Then I started my career being grossly culturally incompetent and was thrown into working in East LA with all these students who are looking at this 23-year-old white teacher who is wondering why I’m having a hard time communicating with families. And it’s taken me 6 years to realize I’ve been applying my lens of what is “right,” what these kids “should be” able to do because that is what my education told me they should be able to do. And now I’ve gone through my LSLS certification and realized this whole thing is backwards. I’m the one who needs the training and to figure it out and learn how to communicate with families of a different background than myself. And I’m not trying to avoid the responsibility, but I am frustrated that I didn’t feel prepared for that. So that’s what I’m taking into my next step is the change that needs to happen for so many teachers that are going to end up like me and be doing these families a disservice, just like I was doing them a disservice.
Adrielle: I completely agree. We focus a lot on what we can do with someone who gets implanted as soon as it’s approved by the FDA and definitely has early intervention. Or on the parents who can afford to privately pay a teacher twice a week and have an audiologist come by the house whenever there’s an issue and all these devices that they can replace whenever they need. That’s the student that we put ahead. There is just so much missed there. Our graduate program had a large therapy component that had zero diversity and inclusion incorporated.
I think this project we did to learn about different cultures sticks out to me. There was a pamphlet of all these different cultures with 10-15 bullet points with stereotypes for each culture. It was such an important unit and I was blown away by how poorly it was carried out. I remember being the only Black student in my cohort, and maybe the school’s history. When we studied statistics about Black people, people always wanted my thoughts. But, when we finally arrived at this unit a lot of people wanted to present on African-Americans. So everyday, people asked me what I thought about things, and here was an opportunity for me to present it. They assumed every Black person in LA was from Compton and had a single parent home. I had to remind them multiple times I was from Chino Hills and didn’t know what LA life or single parent homes are like. With the whole idea of cultural competence, the most important thing is to ask questions. The more you understand about the people around you, the more you see there are so many different types of people around you. If I know this family is Black, that can mean so many things– that can mean they are Jamacian, Brazilian, the list goes on. In New York there’s a high percentage of affluent Latinx people and all these different cultures have different values. You just need to ask questions. Even within the Latinx community, not everyone is Mexican. There are so many different cultures.
Communication standards are different culturally. In my culture, it is respectful to not initiate conversation with adults. So if a kid comes in and she plays with her peers and doesn’t talk to her teachers and they say “we’re going to put that on her IEP,” when in my family you speak to adults only when they speak to you. So things like that are useful to learn. It comes with research, not just a pamphlet from Google about stereotypes. That’s not useful.
What does it mean to and for you to be a Black woman in a field that is largely dominated by white women?
From my experience of being in different seminars and also my time at AGBell, I remember sitting in the room and assessing the crowd. And I remember counting three Black people and there were probably around 900 people total. The diversity in the field is so small that all the Black Deaf Ed teachers in [our previous school district] know each other. There was a 25 year gap between the last Black deaf/hard-of-hearing teacher being hired and myself. And again, obviously there are white-passing and I am sure there are other Black-identifying teachers in the system, but there is a difference in regard to visual representation of people of color. That was a pre-judgement and stereotype that was interesting.
In grad school I noticed a lot of push back and having to prove myself. Even my admittance was contingent on me passing all of my CSETs and I had to take a picture during my interview and had a phone call training, which other students were not asked to do.
I remember having a phone call which was to assess my voice to see if I spoke with significant AAVE. I was asked where I’m from because of my accent, which I don’t think I have but apparently to them I did. And I remember having to take a Phonetic Level Evaluation (PLE) assessment where we had to read the sounds and then repeat. And I was interrupted during my presentation and told I couldn’t pronounce the UH sound because of my accent … from Southern California, Chino Hills. Apparently I have an accent I don’t know about.
Things like that were always in the back of my mind. There is always an implication of access and exposure and there’s not a lot of us pursuing this work. When I talk to other students of color that are now in the Masters level at Columbia they tell me of their experiences that are very similar. And it is probably a skew within itself for people of color who can withstand that type of environment and still continue on. I feel like some people might experience that and get the hell out and say “this is not for me.”
People ask me when I share these types of experiences how I stayed. And I say that if I quit when I experienced this type of pushback, someone else would have to be bombarded with their “otherness” in the way that I did, which is so repulsive.
To me, I recognize that special education and education in general is rooted in privilege. And it just seemed like because I’ve come so far already I want to position myself to help others get through. The hope is that not only more people of color, but other teachers who are willing to learn and understand what’s going on and be supportive of each other. And that doesn’t happen if we’re not openly acknowledging what’s going on.
Thinking about my childhood I don’t think I had any Black teachers. Not a single one. So to me, this might be their last time to have a Black teacher and I think that’s really important. It doesn’t seem like a big thing, but in your educational experience you had teachers that looked like you and whose lens reflected your lens. So in small ways, like when I would have people come in for career days, one of my students told me she wanted to be a bus driver because she looks like her. And there’s nothing wrong with that profession and everyone has their own goals and dreams, but I hesitate because that’s not something you see white children talking about. They don’t aspire to transportation. It’s like “hey, I bus every day and this person looks like me and they’re nice to me and talk to me and when I get to school no one looks like me. So now this is something I would do.” It’s the little things like that I would think about wanting to bring in doctors and police officers and nurses that look like our class, and also have hearing loss. Adding another layer.
What words of wisdom can you share with other deaf educators who want to pursue higher education?
There is a lot of imposter syndrome amongst teachers because they like to remind us that we don’t know anything and we’re always here to learn. I would encourage everyone to really lean into their valuable experiences. Not everyone in a PhD program has taught in a classroom. So those are experiences that I can apply to what we’re learning that are very, very valuable. Even if you have the feeling in your staff meetings that you are really interested in something that is happening, beyond your everyday classroom, listen to that small itch. There’s no “scholar” that deserves more or is smarter than you or will do better than you can. This experience of teaching in the classroom is really so rich. That combined with you wanting to learn more is enough to really just go for it.
What is a day in the life for you now?
With COVID closures, I am in the virtual classroom. In the first year of my program it was my first year in New York so I had to do a lot of transferring of credentials and get my conditional license at the same time. So that meant taking standardized tests and doing trainings and the whole thing you would typically do in grad school and at the same time was teaching. The school I worked for required formal lesson plans every single day and I was blown away by the amount of paper tracking we were required to do. That just wasn’t my experience before it was much more evidence-based-practice and what you see fit and apply IEP goals and state standards. That was not the case with this school.
So that whole thing was going on for my first semester and it was crazy. I was very burned out. Then coming into the second semester with COVID closures, it was very tiring. Something happened at my work site where I proposed a diversity chair position at their school. There was one HR person who was a white woman and the whole year I was experiencing things that just weren’t right and I never felt comfortable going to her because I knew it wouldn’t be validated. Along with that, there was a conversation where I supposedly “verbally elected” to end my contract early. And I never signed anything and never said that I was and it wasn’t my intention to leave and I saw a lot of work to be done and wanted to stay. And they were like “why do you want to stay? Show us that you want to stay.” And I was like “what?” So I really burned the midnight oil trying to figure out if I’m not here, what can I do.
And amidst COVID and all these different classroom environments, itinerant teaching popped up in the form of remote learning. So now I am an independent contractor and I work for the state where students and districts can contract me as a sole provider for DHH services. It’s almost like my own business, I do my own billing, invoicing, everything and I don’t work for anyone in that respect. I work with people but not for anyone.
On top of that I’m also very interested in diversity inclusion and teacher ed and feeling like I am serving my purpose in that way. So I work for a non-profit organization called Teacher Opportunity Corp. It’s for teachers of color in graduate/Masters programs at Teachers College. The state gives us a grant that Columbia matches and basically gets those 20 graduate students that I work with. I mentor them, talk to them about their school experiences, talk about how it is navigating a white space, all that type of training you were talking about.
The reason it feels like four jobs is because I’m working with three different school districts and also working that Columbia job, and then class.
Me: That’s a lot. It’s really cool you’ve found a way to use everything you’re passionate about and you get to be in all those different areas. You’re not just teaching DHH all the time, you get to do this other thing that you’re really good at. You have strengths in that area and you’re still using your degree over here while you’re getting this other degree and it all kind of ties together.
Adrielle: That’s 100% how it is. I was mostly thinking I will keep teaching to keep my experience, but it’s also nice to have something lighthearted, I love working with kids. I think a lot of times when you’re pursuing higher ed you get into this research and forget the students and the way my schedule is organized it’s all mixed in. I have a class, a student, a call with a graduate student … I’m always constantly going in and out of these different roles. Every time I meet with kids or pop into their classroom and hear their little voices and thoughts and what they’re excited about it just reminds me why we’re doing this.
Me: I think something that really worried me when I considered starting a PhD program in psychology a couple of years ago, because that was the direction I was thinking of going (it’s not anymore), those programs were all 4-5 years full time. I couldn’t imagine being away from deaf ed for that long. When I would come back, my skills wouldn’t be current. LIke you said, being able to do that at the same time is key.
Adrielle: I think that this model should be somehow incorporated into teacher ed. Going back to that gap, when you have teachers pursuing higher ed it does help to have some kind of real life lens, instead of leaning on ideal situations and then having to apply them to real life, which don’t always match up.
It’s also exciting to read something and then have the opportunity to try it out because you have the students to do so.
Me: I resonate with a lot of what you said about respect. That has been something that has been really challenging for me every year of teaching. It doesn’t get easier. The respect doesn’t change with getting my LSLS, I feel exactly like what you said. I’m not treated any differently than I was in my first year of teaching. And don’t get me wrong, I really like where I work. They treat their teachers exceptionally well, they pay well, even still, I feel like I don’t know anything. When we were talking the other day, it gave me some more clarity. Being an educator is part of my identity, but what I really love is when I just get to do the things that I’m good at and I know what I’m good at. And I think I’m coming to learn it more and more, but when I have to do all this extra stuff on top, I don’t enjoy it. I actually do really enjoy writing IEPs and that’s a strength, I like when I get to design my own stuff and work with the kids, I love doing that part.
Distance learning is a perfect example. I kind of feel like you where this whole time I’ve been like, “what can I do to get respect? What can I do to be an influence at, like you said, a more macro level, and how can I stop my experience from happening to other teachers who have this life experience and come and try to work in these different schools and are wondering why am I not connecting with these families with different cultural backgrounds?” Maybe because I’ve never been prepared for a different cultural experience, I’ve just been passed on through this white educational lens saying you’re good and doing everything right, straight A’s, keep up the good work. And then I’m thinking, “Wait, you said I’m good at this and now I feel terrible.” And I’m not saying any of that to be like “woe is me” I just don’t think that should be the case.
Adrielle: Going back to what you said about earning that respect and feeling stuck. That was another piece for me too, I didn’t understand the purpose of doing things that didn’t serve any purpose. I can’t really get behind doing things just because we’ve always done them. And that comes from good education. You’re in a position where you’ve gone through college and know you have agency and have learned things and why should children’s education be any different.
All of these things that were arbitrary and had nothing to do with the actual success of the students … I couldn’t continue to do it. Most recently, due to my experience at my former school, now not only can I not do things that don’t make sense to me, I cannot be under or work for anyone that does not value my worth as a teacher or does not value what I know.
We have to change the narrative of education, meaning that only if you’ve been here for ten years do you know something. That should not be the narrative. It should be, “what work are you doing in your classroom and with that work what can everyone learn?” There’s so many moving parts of education and like you mentioned we have so many different strengths and every teacher knows how to play to those because that’s what makes their job fun and easier. That’s basically what you get to do pursuing higher ed. You can focus on those pieces that you enjoy and then figure out a way to prevent other people from experiencing this.
My hope is that when our students become teachers and doctors and whatever they want to be, we’re really far from this idea of “just do it because everyone’s done it” and are closer to what makes effective learners and that should just be our model.
Me: I really, really, really appreciate you talking to me. This has been really helpful and not just for this blog, but also personally because I have a vested interest in what you’re doing. I think it’s awesome and I can’t wait to see what you do.
Adrielle: Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. This was a really positive exchange of thoughts and collaboration and I am always excited to collaborate with other deaf ed teachers who are really passionate about the work and care about where it’s going in the future.
*this article calls into question the 30 million word gap, frequently referenced in deaf/hard of hearing education and offers a different perspective
**this interview was conducted in October, 2020
***this article is the “Hidden Talents” article that Adrielle references in the interview
****this video describes the framework for education that Adrielle is using for her summer literacy program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF3U3UnTSNA