Story of the Day 8/23/2010

This is a story about Biology class.
I hope you are sitting down.
It is about tarantulas.

Of course, it is kind of connected to the story from yesterday. That is the story that I never wrote. It was also about Biology class and the interpreter, and the funny look Sarah got after she made a comment to her lab partner - the sort of funny look that told her that her words had been mistranslated. But that story was not about tarantulas. And sex.

Yesterday, when the teacher asked her if she wanted to have a lab partner or to work alone, Sarah told the teacher that she wanted to work alone. It is much safer than having her words misinterpreted to another student who will then think that Sarah is either weird or retarded. But the Biology teacher was, apparently unfamiliar with the wonderful jobs the interpreters have done with these situations in the past and gave Sarah a lab partner.

Sarah should have known better than to think that she could give any input and rely on it to correctly interpreted, but she must have been feeling lucky, or maybe just like taking a risk and she actually ventured to try to say something to her lab partner.
But as we could have predicted, it just earned Sarah one of many strange looks she has gotten as a result of some of these interpreting gaffes.
Yesterday, when she told me about it, I asked her if she had tried to get the situation corrected, and she told me, “No.”
I asked her if she was going to tell her TOR (teacher) about this, but she told me, “No, I am too tired of all of these problems with the interpreter. These things happen every day, over and over. And it s hard to remember to tell her these things because they happen over and over all day long.”
And I sighed.

That was yesterday.

Today, she came home, puzzled.

She was, once again, working with her lab partner. They were answering a series of questions about tarantulas and other creatures.
Tarantulas. You know those big, ugly, furry spiders that only sociopaths keep as pets. Well, them and some of my least favorite relatives - the same relatives that I would also have to describe as big, furry and ugly.

One of the questions was, “Why is this organism covered in fur?”
Sarah was digging in her memory. She knew she had learned something about this back in 5th grade. Then her partner very excited said, “Oh, I know this one! They are covered in fur for sex!”

Sarah was writing down the answers. She carefully controlled herself and did not raise her eyebrows. But she looked at her partner and didn’t write the answer down. She was sure that was NOT the right answer.

Sarah’s partner started writing down the answer on the paper.
And the interpreter’s face turned red.

And the interpreter said she had made a mistake and misheard. The word was “feeling.” The tarantula had fur for “feeling.”
Sarah came home and wanted to know how the interpreter could mishear the word feeling and think she had heard sex.

Now, this interpreter is not a very good interpreter for expressive or receptive high school level things, but she is also not a psychologically disturbed person who would think she was hearing words connected to sexual things when she was not. Seriously, based on the selection of interpreters that Sarah has been exposed to at the high school, this interpreter is not spooky, scary nor someone who should not work with kids. So, I thought a moment.

“Sarah she meant ‘sense’ or ‘sensitivity’ and she misheard that to be ‘sex’ or ‘sex activity’.”

And then I had to explain to the deaf kid that sex and sense sound almost the same- even though they are not spelled at all the same- no “same ending” – which is the only way Sarah has to easily recognize that two words might rhyme or sound similar.

And Sarah is now worried because all she put down for the answer was “ feeling” not ”sense of feeling” and the teacher may mark it wrong- but this is all the interpreter told her- , and I am feeling slightly mischievous and sort of wish she had put down “ sex” , so the teacher would get some idea of what is going wrong in that corner of the room.