 Our guest speaker is named Clayton Valley. This is his name sign. But I am accustomed to using this name sign. We entered NTID together at the same SVP in 1971. And we had another name sign for him at that time. This name sign was given to him because he had long hair, wore jeans with patches on them, and there was a beatnik. So we would call him by this name sign. Years and years later, when he went to Gallaudet University and became involved in poetry. This is a sign for poetry. It became known by this name sign. The other night, he told me about that. And it's because he is such a strong smoker. And that's why he got this name sign. He's smoking. So he moved the name sign over to the side instead of actual smoking gesture. Anyway, I'll explain about his background a little bit, where he graduated, which colleges he attended. And right now, he is working at Gallaudet University in the Department of Linguistics and Interpreting. He's a full-time instructor there. At the same time, he's studying for his PhD at a college in Cincinnati. And that is named Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, I would like to introduce Clayton Valley. Thank you. Thank you for everything for today's presentation. I feel a little bit out of my element. I typically write very elaborate talks about culture, or poetry, or linguistics. And they're often very scientific and very involved and complicated. But today, we're not talking about this at all. I'm talking about myself. Oh, my goodness. I really like this. This is a very different experience for me. And why not? So I wrote down a number of notes about things that have happened to me as I've grown up. And I titled this, Finding Myself as a Deaf Adult. As a kid, I was exposed to so much and surrounded as if in a cocoon, I didn't really see who I was. So finally, I read myself of the trappings. And I have to admit, I found some silk is left. But at any rate, let's rewind the tape quite a ways. I'm not going to tell you how long, but I was born deaf. My parents are hearing. And my brother came along a year later. And we're both deaf. We also found that my mother's sister had a deaf cousin. My mother's sister had a child who was deaf. And we considered him a brother. The three of us really grew up together. From the time I was born until I was three, I really don't have much of any memories at all. I have no idea what was going on. I can't tell you what happened. Sorry about that. But at the age of three, I went into a type of school. It was called the Beverly School for the Deaf in Massachusetts. In Beverly, Massachusetts. My mother brought me to the school so that I could learn how to use my speech and the breathing and how I could communicate with my parents. And that was the type of program that it was. I don't remember much about it, but she's filled me in on the details as I've gotten older. At the age of four, she put me in the School for the Deaf, the Austin School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vermont. Time, there was no school for the Deaf in New Hampshire. And that's where we lived. My parents were very disappointed that they have to put me way over Vermont. It was quite a distance. But my father made the determination. And my mother, no matter how she complained and struggled and denied it, that's where I went. I really am very grateful to my father for taking that strong stand because so many things influenced me when I went to school there. I remember when I was a little just arriving at the School for the Deaf. And my first experiences, I remember some of my first teachers, they often wrote on the board. They would write a sentence like, it is, and then put a space, and then a period. Or they'd write, Bob has a new space, period. You get the idea, that kind of simple sentence. And I'd look at those, and then I would shout, now is Wednesday. So it is Wednesday. And she would say, yes, very good. And no matter what the type of weather, we always went outside. So I could always feel like it is sunny or like what is new or like. So I copied a lot of language. And that's really all I remember. I don't remember really learning it, and I would copy it. I did send letters home on a weekly basis though. And this would be some of the stuff I'd learned in school. Despite that, I really had not a very good rapport with my teachers. I was in trouble all the time. And my teachers were sick of me in short order. I was always causing trouble and doing something. And I found myself in detention more times than I can tell you. They'd send me to the principal's office, and I'd get serious lectures on a regular basis. And one time, I'll never forget, the teacher took me out to the principal's office and he was finally fed up with me. And he put me in the basement where it was dark. And I'll tell you, that's an experience I'll never forget. And from that point on, I got much worse. I was a real mess from that moment on, emotionally and every other way. With teachers and with friends and with students, I was causing trouble in all arenas, everywhere. And I'll explain a little bit more about that later, about what my behavior was really indicating at that time. So during the time that I was in Otstein School, finally New Hampshire decided to establish a school for the deaf. And so my mother was thrilled because there I could commute back and forth to home. But in Austin School, I really had to stay and I couldn't come home on the weekends. I only got home at Christmas, but so my family made the determination that I'd be moved to New Hampshire and I could come home regularly. Now the New Hampshire School was an oral school. Now Vermont used American Sign Language and with my deaf friends, I communicated easily. And that was the normal world to me. Of course I caused trouble, yeah, that's true, but it was still a normal world. When I got into New Hampshire, this was all I saw, you know, as soon as I used Sign Language, I was immediately the focus of attention. I couldn't figure out what was going on. And in the classroom, I went and sat down and I got a new teacher. You know, it was a new teacher and a new student alike. So she looked at us and used her best lip reading skills. And I raised my hand and said, I don't understand you. And I just kept saying, I don't understand you. And I started to really do a slow burn. And eventually that turned into full-fledged tantrum. I had never done anything like that before, but I pushed the tables over and I jumped on top of the tables and the teacher freaked out, came over and grabbed me and threw me out in the hall. And then started signing at me. And I looked at them and I said, you know Sign Language? And they said, shh, this is a secret between you and me. In class, you know, this is an oral school, we have to follow the rules. But one-on-one, you and I can sign to each other, but you have to keep it a secret. Oh, as soon as I knew that, she had my full trust. Until that point, I had never trusted an instructor, but now finally I found one that I felt that I could really deal with. And after that, I would ask teacher questions and I became a radically different student. And my behavior problems dwindled to a minimum. I felt that the other teachers were before her were lousy. You know, for example, with a social studies book, we would look at maps and plans. So, you know, the science books, you know all the other teachers. Well, we would sit in class with the headphones on and the teacher would open her book and start reading all of this stuff and fix her bra strap as she was reading. And I would just sit there and study her. You know, the teacher's clothing. She had old-fashioned clothes with polka dots, big earrings, and moles, and I can tell you every single little tiny feature of this teacher, let me tell you. You know, and I'd just sit there and couldn't wait for class to be over so I could get out of there. So, every day was the same kind of experience. You would read the book and we'd have on the headphones. The other teachers didn't know much of anything about the sign. They would be very lax and they'd be, you know, I would get entirely out of control and become the class clown and, you know, the kind of thing that happens. But that one teacher really earned my respect and really influenced my life from then on. Another class helped me become a linguist. I imagine at the age of 12 and 13, I was already a linguist. Let me explain this. You know, of course I had speech reading and instruction all the time growing up. At this age of 12 or 13, they handed us out notebooks with white paper in them and we didn't know at all what these are for but then they showed us all of the letters of the alphabet. Let's start with B. And it showed how you use your voice to make that sound and until that point, I didn't realize that there was a difference between a B and a P. Like that the one use of voice and one didn't. Oh, I thought that this was fascinating. B used your voice and P didn't. And so we draw diagrams and draw the mouth making all of these little shapes and draw the tongue coming in and out in the various constructions of you had to manipulate your voice box into. And then I would make P using the same drawing but I would color it blue because then there was no voice used. So blue meant voiceless. And I would construct these sentences like Bob is something. So with B, I would use the red and make this very clearly voice and boy, I feel like I really became a linguist from a very early age. I could demonstrate A through Z what everything looked like and also the vowels with A, E, I, O, and U. I really remember working on those. So I had this very thick notebook and now that I'm a linguist, I really do thank her. Of course that particular course I happen to fail but oh well. The reason I failed liberating was because of 4-H. I was a member of the 4-H club and as were all the many deaf students within our school, we used to have wonderful conversations and learn how to tie knots and ropes and go see various farm animals and I really loved 4-H. Well at one point they sent all of us to a big convention and I said, oh of course I wanna go. I had no idea what it was but it got us out of school so I got to go to this convention and they said now you have to present something in order to do this. So I thought, oh photographs would be a real good thing for me to do. Well not actually photographs but I made pictures of like a, from a chicken's eye view, a bird's eye view of what was happening so I'd make various pictures comparing the way we see. You know, and I was about 13 and I was so incredibly proud of my project. You know, I did a lot of work on it. And the teacher said, oh this is great, now you have to practice presenting this with your speech. I said, talk? No, I can't do that. She said, oh yeah, you've got a really good speech kills. And at that point I said, uh oh, I'm stuck. And I just didn't know what to do with the project and I really got over it and worked about it and I said, I really can't use my speech. Well the two of us struggled on and on and I kept complaining that I couldn't do it. And so it was four pages and she wanted me to write out and I thought that, you know, we thought that we could copy it big, you know. So what I would do is I would write it out on the board and then follow along and try to write it that way. Well, I just couldn't do it but I really felt trapped in the situation at this point. So I practiced and practiced three or four different teachers listening to my voice and came to help me practice and so it was time to go to the convention and I got up there and I was the same age as all these other kids and they were all hearing. And at that point, you know, well before that it was all the ladies in the lab who said, oh, how good, your voice is so nice. You know, that was my only previous experience related to my voice, you know. But at this point I realized that all of these people were 12, 13, 14 and they were the same age as me and I got up on stage and I put up my cards and I put my pictures up front and I started to try to say this and the expressions of the kids' faces was terrible. They were looking at each other and said, what is he talking about? And at that point I knew immediately that the teachers had lied, you know, and they kept saying me, now lift up your chin and I kept trying to talk and all of the people in the audience looked worse and worse and I think that I was screaming by the time we got finished and I think the whole dreaded experience lasted about 15 minutes and I was sick when I got finished with it. I got off the stage and people just looked at me in a manner that indicated that they really didn't know what to do with me. So pretty soon awards were up and I got a blue ribbon for first place. Imagine that now I understand the reason that I got it but back then I thought it can't be because of my speech because, you know, and then I started working through a lot of difficult concepts. The fact that I was deaf, I suddenly realized that they'd given me the blue ribbon because they felt sorry for me and that was the first experience that really opened my eyes to communication issues like that. But I didn't know what to do with this blue ribbon so I just tossed it out and then went back to school and the speech teacher started encouraging me to use my voice and I just wouldn't and I haven't used my voice to this day. My voice turned off right at that point. Okay, as I got a little older, I felt that I wanted to teach and in the summers when I was home, my father would finish work and he'd come home and sprawl out on the sofa and that's all that I saw all the time. Now he worked in the factory and he was absolutely exhausted when he finished work and I felt that I didn't wanna look like that when I finished work as I got older but again, I need to go back to that one teacher who really strongly influenced me and that was really where I got the idea that I wanted to become a teacher. Now I graduated from the school in New Hampshire and then transferred back to the Austin School and life was pretty miserable. I came back and I said, Hi, I'm your old friend and I was your friend way back then and everybody did a double take and took right away from me. I thought did I say something wrong and for a week, everyone avoided me. I couldn't figure out why. And then we came, I had to take an English test. This was mandatory every fall to see whether our skills had improved or gone down during the summer. So we finished this test and it came time for all of us to be assigned to different groupings and the teacher announced that you know, all of you can make fun of New Hampshire now because you Vermont students all did excellently but are one, oh, you all make fun of New Hampshire but really the student from New Hampshire did the best and they announced my name and they said, No, this is impossible. When you were younger, you were a real pain. And I said, what are you talking about? And they started telling me some of the things they remembered me doing. For example, when I was little, I used to pinch people. You know, with my friends, I just come up and pinch them and they'd get really upset. I did this all the time but honest to God, I don't remember ever doing that. That was one of the reasons everybody stayed away from me when I first got back but then I suddenly understood why. Another thing that they told me that they remembered about me that was that I was always mischievous and in trouble and they recalled many interesting episodes but I couldn't remember any of those things and suddenly I realized it was because I was emotionally, I was blocking that period of my life and that meant I must, as I look back now, I must have had some really serious problems. Now of course I'm fine and here I am up on the stage but they realized that I had grown up a lot when I came back to the Austin School and I regained some of my old friends and actually I became president of the student council and I was involved in many sports, basketball for example and high school life was really wonderful. It's interesting that I scored so highly in English because it was all based on writing. My writing scores were wonderful but my reading scores were miserable. They were at the opposite end of the spectrum and so the teachers kept encouraging me to read but see I was very good at memorizing sentences which meant I could write very well but I didn't have that sort of natural everyday facility with a language to be able to use it to communicate. I felt that the sentences were just sort of just very clearly accessible to me. I don't know if you're familiar with the Fitzgerald key. It was a method to teach reading to deaf students a number of years ago but like the first word would be what and the second word would be a verb. So it was very simple like one would be a noun, verb and then we'd have why and then another segment that would be how often and certain like one area would be yellow and you know as I looked up I would be able to write things and be able to put them together because they were all color coded so I'd be able to manipulate sentences that way. So writing sentences was a snap and the teachers thought I could, I understood what I was doing but I was just using this key and really my reading wasn't anywhere near the level of my writing skills and so a teacher finally worked with me long enough to bring up my skills and reading to that point. Also related to reading, if I read the sentence for example, he was dead, I would sign he killed because that's what I thought and then I'd always be wrong and then I'd get angry and I'd say he was killed you know and you'd have to say someone killed him oh but then it took somebody who was deaf who really understood English to explain it to me because I wasn't getting it from the hearing teacher and actually I learned English through my friend who tutored me instead of from the teacher directly. Now I'd like to talk about the junior NAD experience that I had. I was chosen to go to a conference in DC in 1970 I think so I went to Gallaudet and was on that campus for the first time and at that point I certainly decided I was going to go to Gallaudet certainly when I graduated from high school and knew some friends from Maine and Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Vermont who attended Gallaudet and I met one friend from Maine when I went to visit the campus and I was talking to him and he just gave me a funny look and then left. I thought gosh he was pretty neat before now all of a sudden he's pretty arrogant and then I thought you mean if I go to Gallaudet I'm gonna become arrogant like that I certainly didn't want to and then I saw some other friends who are all incredibly impressed with themselves and I thought Gallaudet had done this to them so my opinion immediately changed and then I thought well I'm not gonna go to Gallaudet even if they force me. Then I heard about NTID I figured well NTID is fairly new that problem can't be there yet so I found out that NTID and Gallaudet had both had problems they were different from each other but they both had them so I entered NTID well actually let me go back in high school as I told you I was involved with sports and I was involved in activities and when I arrived at NTID I suddenly became very quiet there were only about 200 students in NTID at that point now there are something like 1,000 oh 1,300 at my time there were 200 to 250 and I felt extremely in the minority and NTID required speech training at that time it was required and I said I went through speech training all of my life I am not gonna go to class this was a one-on-one experience but I did go meet the teacher and they explained a little bit about it and then I left and wouldn't go back they called me again and again and they gave me an F and said I wouldn't be able to graduate but every letter I got went into the trash so eventually I went to talk to the counselor oh and they said well why haven't you come to see me? are you having problems? and I really felt overwhelmed I thought that everyone was on my back and really putting into my business a little bit more than I wanted the speech teacher and the counselor I can't remember maybe the two of them got together to try to figure out what to do with me but finally the counselor said why don't you feel why don't you write down how you feel about NTID I didn't want to waste my time with that and they said no you can use art to express this I said oh well that's an interesting challenge to express my feelings about NTID through art later when I was eating lunch the speech teacher came up to me and said I want to see you and I was really sick of this I felt like they were chasing me at this point but I went to meet with them and the speech teacher said please I don't want to see you fail I want you to graduate why don't you just work with me and I had the type of attitude where I just told them I've had enough of speech I've had enough of lip reading entirely well if you just they said she finally said if you will just make a speech sound I will give you an A so I made a sound and she said okay I'll give you an A I felt like I bribed her I felt terrible and on the surface I I thought that I might have felt really wonderful about that but really I didn't feel very good about it at all now back to the counselor when I was I was working on this art project I drew fish in a bowl with a lot of people around this bowl and the fish had a hearing aid and I said that this is how I feel I feel like I'm in a fish bowl you want me to talk you want me to do things your way and you're all standing around looking at me I remember drawing this and I don't know where this piece of artwork went I hope it's still here someplace but I have no idea where it went but I did present it to the counselor as time went along in school I wasn't involved a lot in sports I got a lot of good grades I really had no problem studying at all at NTID when I graduated I got a job oh wait a minute let me step back a bit I was on the major photography and I thought I would go around and take pictures and produce them and develop them and they would be my art my artwork is what I had in mind that is not what happened at all actually I was working in a process company somebody else would take the pictures I would be given the role take off in the dark room take off the metal part develop it in the machine dip it in after it was dry I'd cut all the little pictures all the negatives and hand it off to the next person it was in the production department in printing also I would be involved in printing process sometimes I would also develop the pictures and produce them and hand them off back off to the photographer that was my job that is not what I had in mind at all and I would just struggle with the teachers no I want to take pictures and they would say oh you should try to maybe go into RIT cross register over there that very creative art photography and I went over there oh it was beautiful and that's what I wanted to do I talked with my teachers about that I said well it's very difficult you're not really ready to go into RIT because of all of these reasons there were very negative about it they said I can't can't can't do it I said but that's what I want they said well OVR might not support you maybe you'll have to leave I thought well I can't just leave because my parents wouldn't move that certainly so I stuck with it graduated here at NTID and got a production job in photography NTID was very good it helped me find a job after graduation I worked in Boston my career counselor called up and got me a job right away it was very good about that 95% of the graduates get jobs here it's really very good reputation here at NTID and at that time I had no problem getting a job with the help of NTID I worked for the Polaroid Company the Instamatic Polaroid Company and I worked in the dark room with the machines developing films I thought this is not what I want to do for my future at all I thought what are my dreams what am I going to do in my future I'm certainly not going to be working with these chemicals all the time at that time the energy crisis hit I think it was in 1973 or 1974 right around there and New England was really hit bad with the energy crisis it really had problems with gasoline, electricity everything and there were lots of layoffs in New England and I was one of the people that got laid off they had no job one of my friends was working in Nevada at that time and he worked with a chimp teaching him sign language and told me a job that I could teach that sign language as well as take pictures with a combination kind of job and the job was open he contacted me I applied and got that job in Nevada also at that time I want to mention a little bit about how I became a poet I told you about a poet when I was 12 or 13 in one of my English classes my teacher gave us all a poem and I read that and I thought oh that's quite an interesting poem I really liked it I tried to toy with writing poetry myself and I thought it was quite good the teacher said yeah that's fine I didn't get the encouragement I expected it all so I just kind of dropped it and NTID felt very isolated and felt inspired again to try to express myself in poetry and I tried to write poetry and didn't feel successful with it but tried to play with it with sign language with American sign language and really started to express myself in that manner and I would just write down the glosses in English on paper so I could remember it I never told anybody about that I just get that to myself now back to moving to Nevada with my new job with teaching the chimp and also taking pictures there I was really struck again with the term ASL people were debating the issue what is ASL and what the value of it was and I thought what is ASL I didn't know a friend of mine started telling me about oh ASL is wonderful you need to support it it's a language in itself oh how ridiculous I but I started to discover oh my goodness it is a language and it really started to give me an idea of my own identity my own culture and the shrimp project I really there were a lot of problems with that I quit that job and went to the University of Nevada in the social psychology program and got a bachelor's degree I was the only deaf person in that program I was really into that major when I graduated I realized that all through my upbringing I thought I was very bright people gave me such low expectations had such low expectations I would just take advantage of that at the University of Nevada I was forced to study diligently every night weekends for two years until I made it until I graduated I wish I had had that experience all through my education so that it wasn't such a shock I really missed a lot really was awakened to that realization after I got into that program in Nevada I realized deaf education is really not that successful that's one of the impressions I wanted to express some of my hearing friends I had supported me I talked about ASL one of my hearing friends supported me but then he got married and I must say that for a long time I hated hearing people just hated to spy anywhere away from them there was just too much for me I didn't want to have to deal with them I would avoid them in any manner I possibly could I realized as I was growing up they told me so many things and I just kind of agreed with them and I thought oh we're all the same actually when I was growing up I thought hearing people were smarter than I was we're all different and I want to thank I really feel thankful to my friend and his wife for encouraging me and helping me understand that we're all the same someone told me I should teach ASL to hearing people I thought no because hearing people are so much smarter than me and everything now someone still encouraged me to do that and then I tried to do it I was willing to do it I was so nervous about teaching this the first time these fingerspelling as we went along I taught them a different vocabulary ball and bowed I was so awkward about teaching it hearing people trying to learn sign language as soon as I started teaching ASL I really got into that I really started to figure out what I was teaching and how I socialized with other people I really started to understand language and ASL as I started to teach it as I got into that particular occupation I also started working at VR part time you know, VR, OVR people anyway I put up with that kind of job for a while just to earn extra money and one time at a party I had to go to this office party and I met one of the one of the administrators of OVR he was one of the state executives one of the administration of the state I suppose a woman and she started to sign to me in a voice a little bit she said why don't you use your voice please she asked me to use my voice I almost agreed to do so until I realized why would I do such a thing I almost started to and I had this little inclination I said no I had this awful internal struggle about it she said you should use your voice and I thought no I am deaf I will not use my voice I thought how rebellious should I be about this I decided to quit OVR I quit that job right after that and I decided to focus on teaching ASL now that woman I remember her because I will mention her again a little bit later the ASL program I was teaching I really started to expand and as it was growing I was definitely growing as well I was really surprised I went to a workshop the NCPTSLI is a big word for the national consortium for sign language instructors and this was held in Tennessee in 1980 I wanted to learn how to be able to teach ASL so I went to this consortium oh it had such an impact on me I learned so many things I learned more about ASL deaf culture deaf rights so many things while I was at that consortium and I started to have a much better identity in my own self-esteem I met Ella May Lentz do you know Ella she is from California and she is a well known deaf poet she knows that she was an ASL poet I never met someone who was ASL poet I never shared that I was a poet to anyone else I mean this has been 9 years that I had kept that quiet and here was a person who announced it out in front of everyone I said you're a deaf poet is that true so would you mind setting up a time to meet with me I'd love to talk with you more about that so we did after we had that discussion I felt so good and I also talked with Carol she told me that they had a deaf poetry they needed a deaf poet for a convention and would I be willing to perform I'm going to show my poetry in public that's my own private that's something that I keep in private but Ella encouraged me to do that and I thought why should I do that I kind of aggravated with the whole thing and then another person asked me a person from Massachusetts I heard that you're a deaf poet why don't you perform at this convention finally after the third person approached me I agreed to do it I thought after a while why have I agreed to do this a few days later I went to Boston somebody asked me to go to Boston for the National Consortium on Sign Language what is the acronym Research and Teaching that particular convention that was in 1980 held in Boston in Massachusetts and I was asked to give a performance and I said what me in front of a large group of people I would never I would never I thought I tried to avoid it tried to make up all sorts of excuses why I couldn't do it but they were still persistent in asking me to perform there and then I thought about it these three people seemed to like it seemed to like my performance that's step try and do it so I agreed and I said oh I should have said no I can't believe I went ahead with this anyway as the time got closer and closer for the convention I got more and more nervous and I found I thought I broke my leg I tried to think of different excuses how I could get out of the whole thing oh I thought I need to go I really do it then I would think oh I can't I thought maybe I could ask the doctor give me some value can you imagine I was going through all of this trying to figure out how I could possibly relax and perform but I tried to think positive as much as I could the time arrived and the convention began I was in a daze oh these people were signing all around me I had no idea what they were saying but one night that I would perform just walked around dazed the time came I went up on stage Carol started to introduce me she said we have a person here a special guest that will be performing for us went on and on about the introduction she said here and here he is and I got right on to stage no problem I was so surprised I thought this is me walking up on stage 500 people in the audience felt fine I started to do my ASL poetry I thought this is impossible that I'm doing this well I'm starting to express my poetry perform I was all finished and people went wild in response I left and fainted off the side of the stage I thought this is impossible that I just did that I just couldn't believe it Carol came up to me I said come on we want some more back up went on to stage thank you very much performed one more poem went off the stage I thought I'm so glad that's finished from then on though I really took it much more seriously it was a really strong impact in my life as time went along I worked in Nevada in the ASL program a linguistics department a linguistics department was established at the Gallaudet University and I thought well I want to check that out and I did I moved to Gallaudet to DC and got a master's degree in linguistics in 1985 took me three years to get that degree and during that three years I was involved in work and studying and that was it I had no time for other activities performing nothing at all just study and work school and work that was it in 1985 when I graduated I needed a job I thought oh I don't know if I want to work at Gallaudet it was not into simultaneous communication at all I did not want to support that I wanted to use American Sign Language and I thought if I get a job there I'm going to have to sign and use my voice at the same time I thought do I have to if I'm teaching maybe I won't have to do that and I thought was it worth the risk and I went through quite an emotional time about it I applied for a job had the interviews had a panel of interviewers I was nervous but I signed as clear as I could very formal sign language it was very important that I needed to be aware of everything American Sign Language I wanted to get all the information I was aware of during the interview and the interviews were impressed but at the same time I could tell their facial expression was a little bit unnerved or something I thought I don't know I don't know if I did well I knew another person who was very good at simultaneous communication I thought oh they'll probably be given the job I thought they were kind of a brown nose but then I discovered that they picked me for the job I couldn't believe it I thought they seemed to know I use American Sign Language at Gallaudet they still accepted me accepted that my job opportunity was in the ASL department it's alright if you just use ASL in the ASL program and I thought that was alright that didn't bother me at all later I transferred to the linguistics and interpreting department I've been working there since the last couple of years in that department at Gallaudet I've been working with a language proficiency interviewing checking out different schools traveling and interviewing I use American Sign Language other interviewers use simultaneous and other people use English and oralism we have different people who interview different programs and I was really impressed with the center central institute for the deaf in St. Louis it was phenomenal I thought oh it's just a regular school CID when I got there I started to interview the students I would sign to them in American Sign Language and they would respond to me with oralism and then I couldn't I put down zero and student after student I knew a little bit of sign language from school for the deaf experience I had before I went to that school but it was very resistant in using it and I met other people the staff at that school at CID I started to realize I was very much alone people were not not socializing with me at all I got a lot of strange looks I did not feel welcome at all for 30 days I had never felt so lonely and I realized that that world is very different I learned something it's good to see that something from a different perspective people would not even look me in the eye if I tried to gesture and communicate with them I had absolutely no communication ability with them they would look at me we wouldn't be able to communicate so now we come to 1988 for the deaf president now uproar I was heavily involved with that and trying to get involved with the activities and I thought well this really signals a change everything stayed the same we just scratched the surface and that was another big impact for me before that I was also a contentious young man and interested in debating all of it but for all the work that we did we just scratched the surface and that was a really important lesson to learn then in 1989 two years ago there was another uproar at Gallaudet called ASL now it was ANC campaign and that was focused around the whole communication policy they were talking about English and sign communication and simultaneous communication for all faculty that all faculty must use SIMCOM and I think that there are for although there was also a statement about ASL and English being equal languages and equally valid languages and they probably brought a lot of attention and there caused a lot of meetings to be called and the faculty met and hashed out the issue and they said English and ASL are equal in equally valid languages but so then it was placed to a vote passed and that's another thing that really amazed me just this past fall there was the English 50 there was this course called English 50 and many deaf people really did not enjoy taking this course you had to pass it in order to get through like you know if you fail this course four times then you're out of the school but that was that particular system and the deaf students wanted to change it but then one of the deaf students died he was one of the leaders involved in this organization and kept going back and back to try to fight it in one particular day he died as a result of the conflict but after that there was a lot of since then the issue has been pretty quiet and English 50 in the books and I realized for my meetings and discussions and workshops that's really not what's going to do it publications is what's going to do it so now I've been I've focused my attention on writing because meetings fade away but writing remains and so I'm working in that avenue to get this how much time do I have left I'm done gosh I've got to catch up on a lot in just a moment here to summarize first of all remember the woman from VR I just ran into her again recently it was at the airport there was a deaf contingent going someplace and the group of us all signing and I looked at this woman and she came up and she said I sign can I help you and I looked at this face and I thought where have I seen this face before and then suddenly it hit me that's the VR woman and I was on fire immediately and I thought no I can control this some of my deaf friends said something wrong what's wrong with you I said no I'm in control so we all got on the plane and I knew that I had to confront this woman so I kept myself in control and I walked up to her and actually I followed her for a bit of a while and she said oh you're Clayton she fingers felt nice and slowly and I thought my god she remembered me I remembered her but I didn't know that she remembered me and so I started signing to her and talking to her and she was just sort of looking all over the place and I said remember Nevada and I worked there and on and on she got out of her business cards and handed it to me quickly and I said oh you're still in VR how amazing and then I kept talking to her and she didn't understand what I was saying at all and so I signed quickly and I finished and then I walked away and I have to admit it felt so good and I realized now that I wasn't the cowering chicken that I thought that I was so long ago so in summary now I'm going to schools for the deaf to allow children to understand where poetry comes from but you know that schools for the deaf are under state programs and so they have the younger children separated from the older children there's not any interaction there and so now I'm focusing my energies on trying to get you know I'm causing a stir in fanwood and in Delaware and I'm trying to cause more and more of a stir in different places to get all the students together now finally what do they all call me and they call me an ugly deaf American but I accept the title because I'm striving for progress and I am a deaf person and that's it thank you Clayton for questions he's going to be in the visitor's center which is down the hall and around the corner from two to three is that right? okay that's the right time secondly I want to thank our two interpreters for today Marie Bernard and Martha Shippey thank you very much and thank you Clayton