By Elizabeth Richards
Dr. Regan Thibodeau, ASL Instructor
at the University of Southern Maine’s ASL Lab and a Certified Deaf Interpreter
(CDI) and Translator, is committed to helping the Deaf community get all the
resources and support they need. This is apparent in her interpreting for the
Maine CDC briefings on COVID-19 as well as in the work she has done throughout
her life.
Thibodeau has garnered a lot of attention
recently for the expressive way she interprets at the Maine CDC briefings. In a
conversation with Jeff Parsons published on wjbq.com, she explained the
importance of using such animated expression in her interpretation. “…most of our ASL grammar such as
punctuation, intonation, tensing, transitions, even run-ons, occur within the
face and head tilting. Shoulder shifting shows dialogue, for example. If you
covered a signer’s face and only had their hands shown, it would not mean
anything.” Interpreters who sign smaller
and use less expression typically are those for whom ASL is a second language,
and didn’t grow up using sign language, she added. “This means we will miss getting this
critical information to a huge group of people that need ASL access.”
Thibodeau is also
involved in a project with dpan.tv on Facebook, to be sure that CDIs are
provided for white house briefings. This project has very limited funding, she
said, and they don’t know what will happen when that runs out. “Really, the White House should be paying for it,” she said. “We
are so lucky that MEMA and the State of Maine recognizes the use of CDIs!”
In an email exchange, Thibodeau
shared snippets from her life, her views on her work, and her personal vision.
Thibodeau is bilingual, fluent in
both spoken English and ASL. Typically, she works with a Hearing Interpreter
who interprets the spoken English to her. She then interprets that expressed
signing to her team.
Thibodeau, who was born deaf, has
been a member of the Deaf community since childhood. Throughout her life, she
has encountered many different signing styles and skills. “This is an asset to
my job as it gives me language flexibility to meet my clients at their place of
understanding and their world view to better connect the two people using me to
communicate with each other,” she said.
“I am working very hard to include
and meet all the needs that I can,” Thibodeau said. “For example, those who can
read the captions or learn about what is going on via Google do not depend on
me, so I try to focus more on the visual components of ASL,” she said. Thibodeau
received interpreting training from the University of Southern Maine, and teaching
of ASL training from Teachers College at Columbia University.
Thibodeau said a difficult childhood
made her an overachiever. “I had to make a choice to unlearn misconstrued
beliefs because they made me respond out of fear,” she said. “To unlearn, I had
to read and talk. A lot. My dad made sure of one thing, though – that my being Deaf
had nothing to do with anything, much like my having brown hair has nothing to
do with anything.”
She harnessed that fear and other
difficult emotions, she said, and turned them into a form of logical,
productive energy. “I still get anxious about the power of misconceptions
amongst people who don’t really know what
they don’t know,” she said. This led her to get a Ph.D, and she was the first
Deaf person in Maine to do so.
As a Deaf expert, Hearing experts cannot tell me they know more about Deaf
people than I do,” she said.
Watching parents be educated by hearing
people on how to deal with their deaf babies is difficult, Thibodeau said. “If I, as a bilingual Deaf person, can model
that giving your deaf baby everything gives them more opportunities in
life, then just maybe they will be inspired to give their baby
everything,” she said.
Though there is a common myth
amongst hearing experts that learning ASL prohibits learning English, Thibodeau
says that simply isn’t true. “I had it all: total communication, speech
training, sign language, lipreading, ASL literacy, English literacy. It’s as
if I learned Spanish, English, and French. No confusion at all. Ask any other
Bilingual D/HH/DB person!” Thibodeau said. She added that the fear that
Deaf/Hard of Hearing/DeafBlind (D/HH/DB) children will continue experiencing
language deprivation is something she is still working on overcoming.
Thibodeau co-wrote a bill with Karen
Hopkins of Scarborough to help the State of Maine pass legislation on
Kindergarten Readiness for D/HH/DB Children last year.
She said she is
excited to have recently submitted a final version of the world’s first
textbook chapter on CDIs in the K-12 settings.
In addition to having a standard for
ASL in all kindergarten classrooms, Thibodeau
wants to launch a
pilot program to get more CDIs into K-12 settings across the United States,
with the hope that as schools experience the benefits of having Deaf and
Hearing Interpreting teams, the bilingual-bicultural interpreting model (having
Deaf and Hearing interpreting teams), they would hire the CDIs permanently.
She also has a goal for all senior citizens to
consider having sign language as a tool in case they experience aging effects,
such as losing their hearing, that make communication in spoken English harder
to use and access. “My grandmother went deaf and blind in her last years and
experienced isolation that she would have been able to avoid had she known sign
language,” she said. Thibodeau wants to develop free classes for the aging
population, their families, and their medical providers to ensure that their
golden years really are golden, she said.
Thibodeau has traveled to 16
countries, including backpacking across 6 European countries when she was 18.
She studied abroad in Costa Rica for five months. While there, she did a community
service to inspire artistic confidence in the local Deaf community by teaching
a group of Deaf women a choreographed dance so they could put on a show. “At
the time, nothing like that had been done before. It was so much fun,” she
said.
She also took college classes in
Spanish literacy taught by Deaf teachers using their native sign language, Lenguaje
de Senas de Costa Ricannese (LESCO). On weekends, she explored Costa Rica
and conducted field research to find natives not yet exposed to LESCO and
trying to document their language on camera.
When she returned from Costa Rica,
Thibodeau took a 3-week trip to Taiwan to document Taiwanese sign
language variations by those who were not exposed to Mainland Chinese
signing influence. “I feel really blessed to have been able to find these
hidden gems,” she said.
Thibodeau also spent nine-days in
Peru with Polly Lawson of Windham and Dr. Judy Shepard-Kegl of Yarmouth. “We worked together to present before the
Congress of Peru the importance of officially recognizing the sign language of
its people and how it supports their economy to do so. Two years later, the
Deaf Peruvian community could celebrate an official recognition, and of course,
more schools and occupations opened as a result,” she said.
Recently, Thibodeau has been showing
up regularly in the Facebook group “Quarantine Karaoke.” She first participated in live Karaoke with
friends at the Midnight Blues in Auburn, when she was in her early twenties,
signing alongside whoever was doing vocals. When she discovered Quarantine
Karaoke, she decided to participate there as well.
On the dance floor at Midnight Blues
is also where she met her husband, Thibodeau said. “Typically, when I went out dancing, I
preferred my own space so I could dance the way I wanted to. But I had so
much fun dancing with him that we ended up dancing all night long. The rest led
to an adventurous 16 years together.”
In addition to traveling, dancing,
karaoke, and researching languages, Thibodeau said she enjoys soccer, mountain
biking with her son, and painting.
Thibodeau and her family have lived
in the Forest Lake community since 2007. There are many things she likes about
living there, she said, including the privacy of the roads which makes it safer
for her to run, having the lake right there, and the summer people who make the
place come alive with a different energy.
“One other thing I really like about
this community is that there are many types of leaderships focused on parts of
what makes the lake living so special,” she added. “We have the Road
Association, Lake Association, and most recently we formed the Friends of
Forest Lake which was set up by a few of us who really rallied against a
proposal for a quarry.”
She said that many in the community
may have seen her speaking up rather passionately at town hall meetings on this
topic. A number of people met and developed valid, factual concerns and ideas
for her and Cathy Worf to propose in the quarry policy committee they were
appointed to. “Without them, we wouldn't
have been as successful in stopping that proposal. Most people are not aware
that Forest Lake is a back-up drinking water source for Portland/Windham
residents. Why would anyone allow any margin of risk for contamination?” she
added.
Of
her many accomplishments in life, Thibodeau said some proud moments for her
include getting her BA while working 60 hours a week, going to school full
time, and dealing with the effects and aftermath of a toxic relationship;
giving her commencement speech at the Multi-cultural graduation ceremony; and
running the Beach to Beacon for the first time despite having suffered back
injuries. Now, she added, it makes her happy to be able to do home projects
such as replacing her own kitchen sink. “And when my family says I pulled off a good dinner,” she added.
Thibodeau
said she feels blessed with the gift of life.
“It sounds corny but all the bad things that happen to us are the thorns
that make the rose that we are,” she said.
