Has anyone read the book by Andrew Solomon, “Far From The Tree”? It talks about vertical vs horizontal identity. There is specifically a chapter focused on Deafness and Deaf horizontal identity. If you are reading this book, I’d love to discuss it with you.

I just got back from Alaska and the farm I visited up there has a hard of hearing employee who signs. So, if you happen to be in Alaska, reach out to me and I’ll give you the deets.

It’s interesting to see deaf people portrayed in literature by hearing authors. Victor Hugo wrote “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in the 1880s—the same era at the Milan Conference which exhaled oralism and condemned sign languages. Deafness proved to be a strategic limiting factor, getting the Hunchback thrown in jail and another time fired upon while defending the Cathedral. Yet, literature focuses on his visible disabilities and the love story. I didn’t even know that Victor Hugo dedicates vast amounts of pages to discussing deafness until I picked up the book.

What are people doing this summer to help offset the “summer slide”? What are people reading? Activities with kids?

Summer is almost here. Does anyone have a summer bucket list?

I was flying on Delta recently and wanted to watch an in flight movie. Only a select group of the available movies have captioning available. Does anyone know why? Wouldn’t all of the in flight movies fall under closed captioning laws because they were at one time shown in a theater? Are there separate regulations for movies shown in planes? Does it cost more for airlines to order movies with captioning? Are airlines only required to have a percentage of movies captioned? Does anyone have any answers?

I guess I'm the first person up here. I've been interpreting in k-12 for about a decade now. And while I'm going to present a conundrum, I'm not looking for a right/wrong answer. I'm looking for more tools. The situation I'm going to present can be handled correctly in many ways--a lot depends on the exact situation in the class and the age of the students--but this is something that comes up a lot. Situation: your Deaf student is asked to read the directions for an assignment aloud. S/he signs the directions while you voice. But you notice s/he fingerspells quite a few of the words. You ask her/him, "Do you know that word that you just fingerspelled?" They respond no. I have some tools to use in this situation. I'm just curious what other people do as well. Thoughts!