Transcripts of Jane Fernandes

Most deaf children who are successful, I believe you will find the tie back to their mother. And activism or support of some kind. I think that's common. Yeah, I mean, I should mention another thing, just about the geography, who could predict it? But my home was like, right here, and then there was a fence, and my school was right there. So the school couldn't get away from my mother. She was there, you know, when we went out to play, if the teachers were out there on yard duty, my mother would go over and talk with them. It was a good close relationship between home and school that helped a lot. Well by the time I got to High School then really I was more on my own, It was done. So whatever foundation was going to be there, that was over. And High School was a ways. So when I got to High School, it didn't have any support. But at that time I really didn't need it, I was doing Ok. Were there people at either the Elementary or High School, that either made things more difficult than they needed to be, through their own attitudes or efforts. Or people who really proved to be mentors and supporters? And how did they do that? Always support. I never had, I don't know if my mother did, she did have some battles but not with the school. I don't remember anything, it was just support, and the people who wanted to do the best they could, and tried to help. Maybe I should say, I think something unique about me, is that I learned foreign languages, I started learning foreign languages in Junior High School. And then eventually in college I majored in French. 

And then in my PHD, I got a PHD in comparative literature. I studied French and Italian and English and American Sign Language. One of my memories from High School literacy, that you didn't ask me about but now I'm telling you, that's Ok? My High School literacy is back to my bed, right, before I went to sleep. But then in High School, I would get up at 4, and, for example, I would have a French novel, and really I was not fluent in French, So it was a laborious process. It was not intuitive for me to learn this. So I had the book, I would read it as best I could, then I had a French-English dictionary and I would go through every word, and there was a lot of words, (chuckling) quite a few. And I made a list of them, and I read the English word, then I had a French dictionary, and then I would have the same words, and I would read it in French, then I would go back and read the page, just again in the novel until I made sentences out of them. That's how I taught myself French. But I believe I could do that because of how I was taught English. When I was young I had the, the strategies were internalized, and then I used those as I was older on my own. How did that affect ASL, and learning ASL? When did that enter into your literacy practices? So I never learned ASL when I was in my family. I graduated from High School, and I graduated from college. And actually I... I just about finished my Masters at the University of Iowa. And that's the first time I met deaf people who sign. And it was really a freak accident where my roommate was hearing, and she was trying to learn Sign Language for her degree. So she was taking Sign Language class, and she had to go to visit a deaf club, that's part of her class. She was scared, she was nervous, so she asked me if I would go, so I said sure, I went with her. 

But I didn't, I went to support her, not because I felt it had anything to do with me. So did, if you didn't know signing did you finger spell, or what? I mean... No. So when I went in, she knew Sign Language, and I went in, I didn't. I just, you know, gestured and talked. But I want to say the truth is that I understood many of the deaf people well. And they understood me at some gut level. Even though when, like I would say I'm deaf, and they would be looking at me. There are deaf people who have a completely different experience than I do. So they went to Iowa School for the Deaf, and it was a separate school, they lived in a separate community. So I said that I'm deaf, and I remember this man, David Leg, would say, "No..." Yes. And he would be going "No..." And he couldn't believe that it was possible to be deaf and look like me. Then over time I became very fascinated with American Sign Language. And it was a long struggle, probably it was a very deep struggle, to understand that American Sign Language probably should have been my native language, should have been. So I made a choice when I could that I would try to learn it as best I could, even though it was already too late. Would learn it as best I could. So I would, deaf people invited me, almost every weekend, I would go to different towns in Iowa, I would get on the Greyhound bus, to Sioux City, or Cedar Falls, or Council Bluffs, Waterloo, different places. And different deaf people have me in their homes. And that was the best way to learn any language, is with people who speak that. 

So that's how I learned Sign Language. Eventually I incorporated that into my PHD studies, I studied the story-telling traditions of deaf people in ASL, in Iowa. I really dropped everything that I had been doing. Studying French poetry, modern poetry, renaissance and baroque drama in England, France, and Italy. I just dropped it. And I (noise) into ASL. Trying to show that there was a non-written story telling tradition, that could be considered a literature. That's what I worked on. You said that you got, was it your Masters in comparative studies? Yeah, comparative lit. Comparative lit, has comparative literature, have comparative literature programs at all opened up to the idea of including ASL literature in their curriculum? Some do, yes. And the University of Iowa has a much stronger program. They have several deaf PHD students now. And yes, I know many universities have opened to the idea that ASL and deaf studies are critical aspects of their fields. I just want to add that, that story about the bus around Iowa, the tour is just like the perfect place to start a memoir. That was wonderful. Start a what? Start a memoir. (Laughing). I had never heard that one before. You want to talk about technology but not, yeah it probably does apply. The kind of cameras I used was absurd. I mean now I see deaf studies students with, they pop out a camera like this, and they put it in their computer and it's done. Ahh. I had this bag, it was like this, with like a huge strap, it weighed 125 pounds. It was a camera it was a tripod, it was a box for the tape. I had the cords and everywhere I went, I went all over Iowa to try to videotape different ASL storytelling traditions. And it was using, I say it was cumbersome technology to do it. My program also didn't have things to support what I wanted to do with film and video. 

So really I was left on my own. To make tapes, to find ways to watch them. I wanted to catalogue everything, so that I could go back, I would know where things were and go back, and not have to sit there for days and go through. "I know it's there," going through the tape to find it. Now the University of Iowa has a full floor with video technology and equipment for graduate students doing film. So things really have changed since my time. For doing that kind of research. (Laughter). Actually, this is just a brief question, that has to do with a student in one of my classes, who was working on ASL poetry, but the class was trying to create online editions of texts, and hers of course flipped the script, because her original text was a video of someone performing. And she had to figure out how to make that accessible to non-ASL speakers. So she had to figure out what the standards were for annotating ASL, for translating it into English. And that I suppose would be a challenge, for the kind of data that you're talking about collecting. How do you make that accessible to others? Well there's one area in terms of researchers, and how we transcribe, there's a whole a lot to say about that. I did a lot of work in that, it's old fashioned now, compared to what we have now. But for access, that's an important question you're asking. Because when I said before that I thought that the internet was not accessible, web's not accessible. It's also true that deaf people, more and more, are able to put their videos on the web. And it's a phenomenon called vlogs. That deaf people are using extensively. And most of the vlogs go on the web in sign, with no translation. And there's not really standards, and I'm not sure that there will be standards. I would personally encourage either transcript, so someone would either read it or watch it. And at the end, after the whole text, you would have the same message. Or captioning... 

But, you know it means that deaf people themselves, right now, themselves, have to translate, when English is not a strong language for many of them. They're not really interested in translating. I don't think we have standards for accessibility on the web that we should have. Yeah, I want to ask, let's see, how exactly I want to ask it? You know the way that literacy comes full circle, so you start with your mother, so now can you also talk about the impact on your family, with your children? I believe you have a 16 year old and a 14 year old, and they are hearing right? So, you know, are there stories that you have, from when they were younger and helping them with their literacy development? Does that stand out in your mind? And technology? Using technologies too. Ok, both of my children are a little hard of hearing, but they're functioning as hearing. Well, I was happy I didn't have to translate all the books into phonetics, (chuckling), that was wonderful. I just provided lots of books, because I loved reading, my husband loves reading, we have no problem buying books, and going to the library. And actually both of my children have very strong literacy and academic skills, and very strong computer skills. They both know Sign Language, they know ASL, they can understand any deaf person that they meet. Their expressions, probably not perfect, but deaf people can understand them. But the important thing is no matter what a deaf person signs with ASL, they understand. I can remember, I think, that one big important thing when you have Sign Language and English together in a home... With hearing children, it may be the same for deaf children, but with hearing children, I remember finger spelling was a big booster, I felt that that gave them a benefit, gave them an edge in literacy, that children without signing did not have. Because it really forces them, when they're young, to break the words into letters. And they can hear, so it forces them to break it into letters, and now that's what they hear, with the... 

So I recall, you may know one, I think Brenda knows a teacher, famous literacy teacher in deaf education, Dave Schlepper. He was visiting us when we lived in Hawaii. And he would come over to my home once in a while, so my son started saying "Bye, Dave". And he started, the first thing when he was spelling his name, he would go "Bye, Dave" he would just spell "V" and that's all, nothing else. So I thought, well that's strange. I kept notes of it all, I wrote down everything that they did. And then the next thing I know, he added "Dave, DV" Added it was later, months... Dave... And then next he had a D-A-V-E, Dave. So I could see his brain, how his brain was working. I think finger spelling really gave them an edge. Right now, I don't know, my children are phenomenal, I can't even understand them, their brains are fantastic. They excel in literacy, in math, in science, social studies, everything. They get A's in hard, rigorous classes. They're all on the computer all of the time, Ok? And so I'm like "Get off the computer!" Not sure it needs to be all the time. But clearly the computer has given them a huge literacy boost that I didn't have. I know it's giving them tremendous benefits. My daughter comes off, she has vocabulary that you wouldn't believe, but she got it from a computer. From online discussion groups. My daughter could read when she was very young. And she never wanted to admit that she could read. So she would just, like in preschool she could read books, but she wouldn't tell anyone that she could. Why? I don't know, I don't know that. She wanted to be the same. (Laughter). The other children couldn't, so she didn't want to show that she was different. But, see I think that's still there now, she's a freshman in High School, I think she's up here, but she's going along, trying to be the same as everyone else. But, whatever.