I spent the last two days at TerpExpo (staying overnight Friday), enjoying time with my friends and colleagues and taking advantage of a great professional development opportunity. TerpExpo is a traveling interpreter conference that rotates cities throughout the year, with the goal of providing interpreters the opportunity to engage in professional development and earn CEUs at a reasonable price. Although I only attended Friday and Saturday, those two days were jammed packed, as I earned 1.95 CEUs:
Friday
Facing Your Interpreting Nightmares Through Safe & Supportive Peer Supervision: Dr. Alan Marcus
Ethical Fitness: Shannon Simon
My Father's Gift: Windell Smith, Jr.
ASL Trivia Night: Keith Wann & Crom Saunders
Saturday
Team Interpreting: Shannon Simon
Creating Classifers: Crom Saunders
I have to admit that I attended the Ethical Fitness and Team Interpreting in preparation for two VRID events that I am putting together. I will be leading another Ethics and NIC Interview discussion group in April and am considering how to re-vamp the discussion group, to better benefit the participants, based on past feedback. I was looking for another perspective on the NIC Interview Rubric and the ethical decision making process. I did not get that out of this workshop, however, there was still great group discussion on ethical dilemmas and I was reminded of several great resources. The biggest take-away for me was that the root of the word "confidentiality" is confide. The presenter expressed that the profession has taken confidentiality in one direction, rather than acknowledge the need to talk about our work. While it is important to maintain confidentiality about specifics, sometimes interpreters do need to talk about our work in order to improve our product and decision-making process. I was disappointed in the Team Interpreting workshop because there was a heavy emphasis on listing best practices, rather than spending time discussing how to address and solve team interpreting issues. However, this workshop did help me better conceptualize what I was looking for and give me ideas for the VRID Community Dialogue on Team Interpreting.
I enjoyed the other workshops, but my favorite was Dr. Alan Marcus's "Facing Your Interpreting Nightmares." An interpreter friend in New York is involved with peer supervision in her area, and the concept has intrigued me, especially after taking a course in mental health interpreting and learning about supervision in the mental health profession. Peer supervision goes hand-in-hand with Shannon Simon's point about "confide." During this workshop, we discussed the format of peer supervision and practiced mirroring. Throughout the workshop, from the fish bowl discussions to mirroring practice, all of us had to take a look at each other and ourselves. Peer supervision is not about problem-solving but rather, lending support as an individual works through a scenario. Often times, as interpreters, we work in a vacuum and have a sense of isolation. However, there is comfort in knowing that other interpreters have experienced similar situations. Even with situations that we have not experienced, there are common feelings of powerless-ness, frustration, exhaustion, anger, anxiety- but a support group can lend the emotional support. This workshop has increased my desire to set-up peer supervision in my area.
I immensely enjoyed the time with my colleagues, but I am glad to be home!
