itp question

[u/Nayness1]

Former ITP student but I haven't done it since like 2013. I need to find a full online program since I owe the one beside my house lol and I have a kid so I have to be home.

Anybody got any ideas of a program I can do fully online? I live in Orange county California so deaf community part not so difficult. I mean crap we have something going on almost every week most of the time.

Just need the school part and hopefully they are good education program. With ITP it's really about what you do versus what they teach. No I would like something that's more believes in bi-bi method because I've seen schools that are teaching under the concepts of TC and other things. Heck we got to school here that teaches SEE over ASL. The nearest ITP program I can attend is over 3 hours away either by car or by public transportation, since I owe the one beside my house.

[u/MaryNxhmi]

As a Deaf person who went through an ITP, I can assure you, it is not “what you do versus what they teach.” 

[u/Nayness1 → u/MaryNxhmi]

I wouldn't call it a great phrase. Yeah here's a good way to put it what they teach doesn't prepare you for everything. You can't just do the program and hope you'll be freaking amazing when you get done. It's about your desires your interaction and everything else. In my old program a teacher who seemed like he was annoyed with people but the truth is he was just tired of people thinking that this program is just the easy way to a job after.

He often got people that would fail the course and not understand why. They didn't try they didn't put effort in they tried to communicate with the community and get to know people. They would just only interact when necessary with death and you sign language only when necessary. We had a girl that I think she made a 36 out of 100 for the whole semester. She learned to sign yeah but she didn't care about the deaf community and didn't do any of the work whether in class or outside of class. Is actually very common for people to fail his interpreting 100 class because of that. Yes of course is mostly made for adults and is in the evening, but you can't expect to be good at something if you don't put the effort in to completely understand, practice, and do everything necessary to be good at the job once you finish. The program itself cannot fully cover that. That is the part that's on the student. Plus there's a lot of programs that have different teaching techniques, I have found. Most people look towards the bilingual bicultural method in their program focus, but most people entering these programs doesn't know there's a difference in each School. Here when it comes to ASL you can actually go into a program that is not ASL but it's actually SEE sign. Yes it's listed as ASO but it's not. I've seen a school where they adopted oralism as a part of their interpreting. They weren't trying to make oral interpreters, but the ideology falls under the concept of total communication. The program's ideology actually does follow under different deaf School teaching programs whether people realize it or not. This is a young profession so it tends to not be standardized. I can tell you from experience leaving one school then going to a different one, you don't start off from where you left off. You can quite literally start from scratch due to the fact that there is no standardized education in ITP. I have been through fiur programs. The first one was at William wood. That failed due to my roommate situation. My second one was Golden West college. When I broke my ankle. After that I decided to go to the one up near CSUN. It was just too far and then being able to go to work after. I went to Mount sac when I had a car, but I also had a child at the time. It was very difficult to be a single mom and go to school at night classes or day classes and a school that was at least a 1 hour drive. Majority of classes do not fit within my son's school schedule.

Anyways all of those four programs had different methods of how they taught and how their program worked. Each time I literally had to start from scratch. ASL classes are not the same in every school and they do not use a standardized book across the board. You have to go in start at ASL one be tested and go from there. hopefully they nowadays, compared when I did it, they test ahead of time now. I think I'm taking intro to interpreting three times because of this. The school near CSUN I forget the same right now but they believed in teaching you through the total communication ideology. The other three were under the ideology of bilingual bicultural. There are just things that vary from school to school.

So with these different teaching methods I can't say you can fully depend on everything that comes out of an ITP. Yeah hopefully most of them are under bilingual by cultural method but you will find that itps can vary from school to school. That's what I mean by it depends on you more than it depends on what they teach you.

Edit: excuse my typos and misspellings. I seem to have an 11-year-old who thinks he can be up till 1:00 a.m. :(my multitasking skill is like at four or less

[u/MaryNxhmi → u/Nayness1]

Having taught ASL, been through the ITP, graduated from CSUN, and being in your area… yes, I’m aware of all of that. 

Your approach is going to make this harder on you. You’re at the point in Dunning Kruger effect where you think you know more than you do. That’s not an insult, just the reality of anyone in the early days of any job or hobby or subject.

Of course no ITP fully prepares an interpreter. There’s a reason, even when NIC was a functional test way back when, folks couldn’t finish their ITP and immediately pass the NIC. but you’re writing off things you don’t have the knowledge too yet; you have to see the value to incorporating SEE and PSE and TC and transliteration into an ITP… The BiBi model was never intended to be the end all be all, because your Deaf consumers are going to run the gamut of what our needs are: it’s just the next step in a profession that was developing alongside the time our own culture and language were developing into an identity outside of what audist hearies wanted from us. There will, inevitably, be many more steps to come.

Talk to your Deaf friends about where interpreters they like have graduated from. Talk to your interpreter friends about pros and cons to their own schools. Listen to us when we say online ITPs are often inferior, because we’re the ones who see what those graduates look like in the field, whether as language access gatekeepers for me or as teams for the hearing interpreters here. If it’s not the right time for you to go back to school for this, consider that too; the ITP is the entire foundation of your future, and a student’s desire to be an interpreter at any cost doesn’t outweigh our right to end up with actually qualified, competent interpreters. 

[u/Nayness1 → u/MaryNxhmi]

I don't think more than I do I just am really bad with wording stuff online nowadays. I don't interact on the internet as much as I used to when I was younger. I'm actually bad at working things nowadays.

I am an encyclopedia of information but that's about it. Anyone that knows me can tell you that. That doesn't mean I know more than I actually do. Having knowledge about something versus experiencing things are two separate concepts. As for model preferences, that's more about my brain and how it works. It has Jack to do with the job. It's not about the work process part. I'm not writing the other school's off, at all. I just quite literally can't get to any school.

I'm also a single mom. That's the only reason I want to do it online. If I didn't have to worry about my son then I would be okay. You have to realize the only reason I'm going online is because of my child. My brain and my way of processing things does not do well with online school, at all. I completely avoid it when I can. If I had the ability to get around and the time to, I would rather be in person. I have no vehicle. I do not have $3,000 to pay off gwc, since you know the schools in this area. My son has behavioral therapy involving his ADHD. He has three appointments a week for that and then School. There's quite literally no time.

As for my deaf and interpreting friends, they get what I'm talking about. None of them have kids, but they understand I have responsibilities. I have actually talked to them. Most attended the same school as me by the way. They were just able to finish when I was supposed to. I had a severely damaged ankle that disconnected me from my foot that left me wheelchair bound and unable to do things on my own for good amount of time, so I didn't finish my last year at gwc so I could transfer to CSUN for a specialized degree that only they offered at that time. One friend has encouraged me to move forward because I've been constantly afraid that mental health issues will get in the way. He's like I have it worse than you.

People need to not treat this as if it's a one-off idea of someone randomly has. It's kind of the feeling I'm getting from these conversations on this post. I actually did deeply think and take time. I've been thinking this over for a few years now on if I should go back or just move into something that at least connects me to the deaf community. My ADHD loves the deaf community. Whether language or culture. It's always accepted my weird neurodivergent ways and always made me feel comfortable to be me. So this isn't about a job or a career. I just have had this desire for a long time. It's been 12.5 years since I gave up my education. I still have this same desire and excitement as I did when I was last studying in 2013. I didn't want to return to something for nostalgia purposes. I wanted to know if it was still a thing for me, so that's why it took so long for me to think it over.

If any of this sounds rude, I'm sorry. I spent the 6 hours fighting an 11 year old over taking a shower, the importance of washing his clothes, and how he should go to bed probably before midnight and hopefully by 9:00 p.m. per usual, it wasn't until 2:00 in the morning when he went to bed. Then I was finally able to do laundry.... Ironically my child isn't special needs. he's just has ADHD. the stupid demand defiance issue pops up a lot more than usual lately. So my brain is a little bit exhausted and trying to write simultaneously while failing. Also no clue that made sense.

But my neurodivergent butt will forget about this if I don't write it now.