King Midas

Hi! So I am officially finished with my summer classes! Woo.
One of my projects was the sign a version of the King Midas story. As always constructive feedback is welcomed.

Quick Update

2 things.
1) Got 100% on that quiz. :) Even though I thought the structure was all wrong and testing the wrong way, but I will still take a perfect.
2) I biked with my friend on Sunday. We went for 16 miles from her house to the DC line at Rock Creek Park. It was an awesome ride. Lots of people on biking, running, exploring. Even some fun bikes like tandems, ones with 3 wheels, recumbent.  Tada picture! It's not my picture, I found it via google. Maybe next time.

Community college ASL part 2

Currently, I think I may be losing my job due to budget cuts, so I might be looking at more time to blog. Today in ASL class we had our first quiz. The teacher that continues to surprise me passed out a paper quiz. It was two pages front and back (long for a quiz). The first section was fingerspelling. For those of you that don't know what I mean, here is a good example.

Each letter of the English alphabet has a manual version. The quiz had us watch what the teacher was spelling and write down the word in English. This part of the quiz I actually thought was useful. Fingerspelling is hard to do and to learn to read.

The second part of the quiz, I think was a cope out. Teacher signed a word and we had to write the English word down. Luckily the teacher picked lots of common words and nouns, but ASL has a lot of signs that can be made in different ways and with different meanings in context.  But I'm pretty sure I aced it.

Here is the part I think was wrong. Part 3 the teacher signed a sentence and we had to write the meaning in English. This to me is not testing anything. It's testing my receptive skills but to what end? Say I understand the  sentence but don't think there is a word that specifically works in English for it. That happens a lot. Also this ASL class is not an interpreter class. It's to learn the language. I should not be graded on my ability to convert the languages back and forth, but in my ability to understand and to produce the new language. I am sure that not everyone agrees with me but it really frustrated me. In all my other ASL classes for quizzes we have been given a prompt, asked to converse in ASL with a partner following that prompt and then graded on not only our understanding, but our production too.

In other news, I think tomorrow I'm going to ride my bike. If that happens, I'll be sure to blog about it! Hahah maybe since I have been writing my rants about ASL class, I'll sign about my bike ride. Still taking suggestions on how to add captions about the video.

-RachZ

Hearing Teacher for ASL?

I have learned a lot in the past year about ASL, Deaf Culture, and visual communication. I started taking an ASL class at the local community college this past week. Coming from the only Deaf university to a ASL classroom at a local community college was kind of a shock in itself. First off, my teacher is hearing. She is not Deaf. That's like a huge red flag in my mind. Hearing person teaching hearing students about the Deaf's language system. Seems wrong.
But after the initial distaste, I think I like the teacher. She has shown a respect for my variations and signs and I trust her knowledge of the structure of the language. I will keep you all posted about how the class is going for the next 7 weeks or whatever.

Lonely Biking :(

My mother is out of town, my training buddy was hungover and my riding partner is mad at me...so today I rode around my area by myself. While I love my alone time, I think bike riding alone is actually quite difficult. You have to be solely responsible for figuring out where you are going, you are harder to see for cars, and no one is there to tell you to go faster. But I rode anyway!

It was a beautiful day for riding. Upper 60s and sunny. Slight winds. The route I chose I would recommend. It had some hills, a good amount of downhills, some straight parts, some windy parts, some in the shade etc. Do not go around the circle multiple times. It gets confusing. For everyone to get a better understanding of what I mean, here is the route I did via runkeeper iPhone app.

Overall, it was an uneventful, buddyless and musicless ride. Maybe someone will have time to ride with me tomorrow!

Saturday before Memorial Day

Forewarning, this post is not about biking or ASL...sorry!

Over the past 10 years I have spent my summers working for a recreation company. That's about 40% of my summers, some of those years I even worked for the company indoors during the winters. I used to have a love hate relationship with this company, but now I can say I love my job. My current position is training and teaching lifeguards the skills they need in an emergency. I also track the training sessions and audit the lifeguards to make sure they are doing their jobs. It's wonderful. I get to interact with teenagers in a mentoring capacity, learn from them as well as myself, and still be apart of the neighbor community aspects of working for a city recreation company.

But why am I telling you this? What makes this job motivate me to update my blog? Good question. One, tomorrow the pools open! It marks another summer starting, swimming into action (pun intended).  The Saturday before Memorial Day has been for me something to look forward to, something to worry about, and something to conquer all at the same time. This year is slightly different. I decided today I can use this summer to grow my social work skills. One of my favorite supervisors , who is now more of a friend and colleague, shared with me his reasons for loving his job. His were completely different than mine, allowing me to see that each aspect of my life can use some social work skills. I will never know it all, no day will ever be the same, and I can always learn from others. I also can always teach others. My friend  also irritated me slightly in that way. He gives off this vibe that he can never be wrong. Yes, he is correct majority of the time when discussing troubleshooting of a pump room. No, that does not mean my method is not going to work. But what does the irritation mean? What happens if I have a student who needs more support services in school, but the parent is a teacher and disagrees with me. How is that going to make me feel. So this year I want to apply some social work perspectives into my recreational lifeguard job. I want to recognize my own bias, add some development theory to analyze my coworkers, and learn more about what drives human behavior. Wish me luck on this endeavor.  Hopefully this assessment will make me both a better social worker and a better lifeguard instructor.

Excuses and Biking

Sorry I have not posted in a while. School decided to get way harder, I started working hours at both my jobs and it rained a lot. Lots of rain means that I did not get out much on my bike.
But this morning, I rode my bike! Again, I love that bicycle. One of my friends asked me after my previous post about why I loved my bike, here is a list:
Great value
Brand with a good repetition
Fits me as a short woman with still having 700cc tires
Support from my local bike store
Light frame
Triple Crank

That's all the reasons I can think of right now. This morning my mother and I rode. We went only 11 miles because Mom had to go to work, but it was windy, hilly, sunny, and difficult. I don't know how I rode so many miles last year. I am needing to practice more. Motivation to continue riding.

I am thinking about joining the Potomac Pedalers (http://www.potomacpedalers.org/). I have done some of their previous rides and they are well planned. Will keep you posted.