Interpreting Skills
This Interpreting Skills webpage demonstrates my skill to produce interpretations that supports student success and inclusion in various educational settings. The interpreting products are shaped by the educational team member's efforts and the educational theories and practices behind these efforts (C5).
Additionally, the products show my ability to base the interpretations on ethical decision-making, systems thinking, professional guidelines, educational team members' roles and responsibilities, and students' needs (C6). By combining technical skills with practical professional knowledge and decision-making, the interpretations and associated documentation show my ability to produce accurate and effective interpreting services to different deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing consumers present in educational environments.
School Interpreting Series (SIS) Standards
SIS Competency 6
Implement decision-making as a Related Service Provider that is based on educational, professional, and ethical frameworks. (Skill)
SIS Competency 5
Enact interpreting and other related services guided by the educational system, framed by learning theories, and influenced by the practices of the educational team in support of each student’s access and interactions. (Knowledge & Skill)
This page includes the best interpretations for:​
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Elementary Level
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This page also includes a review of my initial EIPA feedback, an overarching assessment of the interpreting skills, an overarching reflection, and references.​
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Initial EIPA Feedback
In the summer of 2024, before I started the SIS classes at UNCO, as a first step in the PSI Project, I had the opportunity to take a practice Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA). The EIPA consists of the written test and the performance test. I completed a practice version of the performance test. The EIPA is a tool that assesses an interpreter's ability to interpret the classroom discourse into sign language and the student's sign language into spoken language (EIPA, n.d.). ​
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The National Association of Interpreters in Education (NAIE) has noted that a qualified school interpreter should receive a minimum EIPA score of 4.0 out of 5.0 or hold national certification (NAIE, 2019). Not all states have adopted this guideline yet, but recently, my home state, Washington, has passed legislation that increased the minimum EIPA score from 3.5 to 4.0 (NAIE, 2025). This is a large step in the right direction, and it is my hope that more states follow suit and raise the standards for school interpreters so that Deaf and hard of hearing students have the most effective access to their education as possible.
My experience taking the practice EIPA was definitely memorable, as I had only been in classes that taught proper interpreting for 2 weeks at the time that I took the test. At the time of this writing, in the spring of 2025, I have not yet received my feedback from the test. When I do receive my feedback, that information and my reflection on that feedback will be included here.
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"Taking the EIPA provided an external evaluation of my language and interpreting abilities which was reviewed with me by members of the PSI Project. I received the following initial feedback..."
Best Elementary Interpretation
This interpretation is a sample of my work within the elementary school setting. The student consumer's name is Juan. He is a 1st Grader who uses PSE and wears bi-lateral cochlear implants. The lesson highlights the days of the week and works to solidify the concepts of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Students are also assigned weekly jobs, which supports building responsibility in students. The teacher utilizes a variety of strategies to create the lesson. He uses visuals, modeling behavior, confirmation inquiry, and positive behavior intervention (Bowen, 2012).
Prior to starting the interpretation, I reviewed the Educational Assessment work that I completed with my group. Because we did a lot of analysis for this video, I had a good idea of the discourse and what the lesson was going to include. From my work in INTR 345, I know that one of the biggest areas I need to improve is my processing time. I have become overwhelmed with other assignments trying to keep up with the pace of the discourse, so I have been dedicating a lot of my prep time and practice to speeding up my processing time. I’ve found that I can do so much prep but because my processing time is slower, the overwhelm takes over and it feels like my prep goes out the window. Because of that, the majority of my prep time has been practicing with different source texts.
My experience with interpreting is very limited. Having just finished my second interpreting class, I do not have a lot of samples to present at this time. This sample is one of my only experiences interpreting elementary-level content. I suspect this video will not remain on my website for very long, as my skills will continue to grow and this will no longer be my best work. While I am looking forward to the opportunity to learn, grow, and one day replace this content, this artifact represents my best work at this time.
One of the strengths of the work in this video is my ability to match the energy and tone of the teacher. Being able to match the teacher's affect is an important aspect of any interpreting, but especially in school interpreting for younger children. Keeping the energy and affect of the consumer as a priority in my interpretations is a skill I will continue to hone in my time in this program, but I think that this is a good start. There are a lot of aspects of my work in this sample that could use improvement. Perhaps the most prominent piece of my work that needs improvement is my management of the interpreting task. Managing the main content of the lesson, including comments from the class, proved to be a little overwhelming for me. While the pace of the lesson was not very quick in the grand scheme of things, because of my longer processing time, it felt like everything was moving very quickly. This led to omissions and compromised the clarity of my product. One of my main goals at this time is to speed up my processing time, so with practice, I am sure that the demand of trying to manage the discourse will lessen. I look forward to seeing how improving these skills will impact my product as a whole. ​
Best Elementary Interpretation- Option 2
Spring 2025: This interpretation is a sample of my work within the elementary school setting. The student consumer's name is Shelby. She is a 3rd grader who is fluent in both English and sign language. She has a unilateral cochlear implant on her right side. Her parents encouraged her involvement in the Deaf community from a young age, and she is on grade level. By the end of the year, she will be tested for the 4th-grade gifted and talented class. Her favorite classes are math and science, and she loves school. Shelby uses an interpreter in class for support, but may work independently with less support from the interpreter for smaller group work. ​​
The teacher is Ms. Barbie Brown. She has been teaching 3rd grade at Carter Elementary School for almost 25 years and was the district's teacher of the year in 2005. She has had interpreters in her class before and often provides prep materials for the interpreters. The lesson is based around similarities and differences between frogs and toads and focuses on being able to identify the main idea and finding supporting details. Ms. Brown emphasizes that she wants students to be able to tell her why the details they have chosen are supportive. Students work to find the main idea nd supporting ideas themselves, and then she creates a web in front of the class to tie the lesson and students' ideas together.
For my prep for this interpretation, I wanted to see how Deaf individuals discussed the topics in the brief. I searched for videos of Deaf signers discussing main ideas and supporting details to get a sense of how they utilized space and made the concepts more visual. I also spent some time considering Shelby and her background. I journaled a little bit about how I could make concepts clear visually while also supporting her continued English development. I thought a lot about sandwiching (fingerspelling, conceptual signings, fingerspelling), ways to include referencing, and approaches I might take when students are included in the discourse, and overlap potentially happens. Additionally, I thought about adjusting my lag time so that Shelby would have the opportunity to be involved in moments of participation, just like her classmates. In previous interpretations, I've had a pretty long lag time, and it wasn't always conducive to student participation. I wanted to be sure that I was working toward adjusting that in this interpretation.
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I also considered Ms. Brown's potential approaches to achieving the goals of the classroom and lesson. I completed this interpretation before completing my Instructional Assessment, so looking back, I realize that I could have spent more time considering how my interpreting strategies can support the goals of the lesson. I look forward to considering these factors more in my next interpretation.
This interpretation is one that means a lot to me because I believe it marks somewhat of a turning point in my perspective of my skills. As seen in past reflections on my page, I have a history of being pretty hard on myself and having low confidence. I'm not quite sure what changed for this specific interpretation. Perhaps it was because I had to do it during a busy week, and I was tired, but it felt like most of the negative self-talk that usually fills up most of the space in my brain during an interpretation fell away. That freed up brain power to be able to think intentionally in the moment about what would best support an effective interpretation for Shelby. I was able to make decisions like when to fingerspell and expand, emphasize comparisons and contrasting ideas through the use of space and role shifting, and referencing the materials that Ms. Brown was using. I finished the interpretation, and even though it wasn't perfect, I felt satisfied with my work because I felt as though I was in control for the majority of the time I was interpreting. I also had fun completing the interpretation, so by focusing less on judging myself negatively in the moment, I was able to allow more creativity into the interpretation, and I think it served the overall work well.
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My feedback from my instructor brought up some really interesting points, many of which I had not yet considered. One thing that I am going to look further into is Tiered Vocabulary. This is a concept I haven't heard of before, but as my instructor mentioned, being able to determine which level the terms being used in the classroom are is important, so that I can adjust my approach to match. For example, are there specific terms that should be fingerspelled repeatedly and expanded upon, or is fingerspelling and expanding on the concept once enough? I look forward to building my knowledge in this area and implementing it in my next interpretation.
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Another concept that I hadn't heard of before was signposting. Along with this concept is providing more narration during moments in the classroom when the teacher is just observing students working. Both of these strategies add more information to keep the DHH student informed of what is happening in the classroom. With signposting, it can be clearer that it is the student's turn to either respond or begin working. With narration, the student is kept up to date with what the teacher is doing. Finally, I want to work on becoming more comfortable with teaching strategies like Initiate-Respond-Evaluate (IRE) and how my interpretation can better support that approach. I am going to continue thinking about this, but I look forward to working on all of these aspects.
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Overall, my feedback was very rich, and I find myself going back to it often to continue processing it and thinking about how I can continue applying it to my work. This interpretation was a very positive experience for me and I am grateful for all of the opportunities to learn it provided me.
Best Secondary Interpretation
The work below serves as a sample of my best secondary interpretation. Again, my interpreting skills are still developing and my experiences with interpreting school content are still limited. I predict that this video will be replaced before graduation as I know my skills and best work will look very different. The student consumer in this classroom is Emma. She is a 9th Grader who uses ASL and is from a multi-generation Deaf family. Emma is mainstreamed with interpreting services. She has no other need other than her deafness which means the TOD does check-ins once a week with Emma. This cued me to try to use language that was more ASL on the signing spectrum. Additionally, I knew that I would not need to make any other language adjustments because it was not reported that she had other disabilities (physical, learning, or cognitive) to consider.
Being that we have worked with this material before, I knew that after my analysis, I wanted to start warming-up the vocabulary words and the concepts on my hands again. As I was doing this practice, I realized that a lot of the choices I was making felt very similar to the previous interpretation that I did. I went back to that video and watched it to see that it was true and it seemed that I was stuck in certain ways to approach certain content. Noticing this, I went back to the discussion board where we all posted our videos and watched a few of my classmates’ videos. Seeing the different approaches helped my creativity open up again and I felt more ready in my ability to make different choices if I thought it would be more effective. One goal I had was to increase my processing speed, especially compared to the first recording of this content, and so I also practiced with other source materials.
Similarly to the elementary school interpretation, I know that my skills in processing and analysis need to improve to be faster. At this time, my brain is still putting a lot of time and power into all of the steps of the interpreting process; the steps are not automatic yet. Once they become a little more automatic, I use more of my brain power to consider other aspects that influence the interpretation such as discourse management, lesson goals and objectives, and student autonomy and learning preferences. These are all things I am considering now, but once managing the process becomes more overwhelming, they become slightly more secondary. I do think that I was able to match the teacher's energy and tone, making that part of the interpretation effective.
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Overarching Assessment of Interpreting Skills
Fall 2024: This fall, I completed my second interpreting skills class, INTR 345. My skills and processing ability are still emerging as I work through solidifying my understanding of Demand-Control Schema, Role-Space analysis, and how to move through the necessary stages of interpreting as a whole. While I am practicing these skills as much as I can, I think part of my improvement will depend on time. I am putting the time into practice, but a factor that is at play is my lack of experience and time interpreting. Until I have more time and experience with interpreting and my practice, I will not feel that this page is complete. I view the current videos as placeholders as I continue on this journey.
Overarching Reflection
Fall 2024: At this time, completing this page was very uncomfortable for me. The samples are labeled as my "best" work and while these videos are the only options I have right now to present, I do not believe they represent my best work. I had to do some work internally to accept that this page is a work in progress and that these videos are just placeholders until more effective work comes along. Solidifying that understanding for myself was an important step in my battle against perfectionism.
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This overarching reflection asks me to consider how this work represents and demonstrates my competency in the SIS competencies. At this time, I don't think these videos represent my competency and rather work to show my lack of these competencies at this time. As I work to improve my ability to work through the basic demands of interpreting, I am not always the best at approaching the additional demands of school interpreting. I will continue working on improving my skills and I look forward to the opportunity when I can put content on this page that truly demonstrates my best work, knowledge, and skill in the SIS competencies.
Spring 2025: As I mentioned in my reflection on the interpretation for Shelby in 3rd grade, I felt like my skills have seen improvement since the fall. At this point, I'm not sure if it is fully showing through in my product, but it felt different as I was interpreting, and I hope that I can replicate that brain space again for future interpretations. I feel encouraged to continue refining my skills and adding more layers as I practice. I look forward to seeing how my skills continue to improve as I get off my own back and allow myself to be creative and intentional in my work.
Spring 2025: Previous instructor feedback let me know that I was being fairly hard on myself during previous reflections. Looking back, I can see that. It is interesting to see my past reflections and previous work because I can remember how overwhelming it was at the time to do the work, turn around and analyze it, and then reflect on it here as well. It is nice to see the growth and look at it through that lens. Now that I am able to manage the process with less overwhelm, it is less of an emotional experience working through the analysis and reflections. I hope that this continues throughout the remainder of this program and even my career, as it creates a much more pleasant and educational experience.
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I would say that this work shows emerging competence in the C5 & C6 areas. I am beginning to consciously bring concepts learned together to intentionally approach my interpretation. This includes recognizing important aspects of classroom discourse as the teacher chooses the strategies that best fit lesson objectives and adjusting my interpretation to match. I look forward to the rest of my SIS courses so that I can continue to grow in these competencies before graduation.
References
Bowen, D. (2012, February 22). Kindergarten / 1st grade calendar time part #1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwXyopaMmtw&t=334s
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EIPA Classroom Interpreting. (n.d.) Assessments. https://www.classroominterpreting.org/assessments
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National Association of Interpreters in Education [NAIE]. (2019). Professional guidelines for interpreting in educational settings (1st ed.).
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National Association of Interpreters in Education [NAIE]. (2025). Washington: Standards for permanent credential. https://naiedu.org/washington/
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OpenAI. (2025). Images generated by ChatGPT [AI-generated image]. Not publicly available.
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PSI Project. (2024). About the PSI project. University of Northern Colorado. https://www.unco.edu/psiproject/about-psi/#sis-competencies
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Massachusetts DESE. (2015, October 27). 9th Grade biology [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9kyl_WPFhU
I loved seeing this progression of growth, especially as someone who has been with you for about a year and can see the skill coming through. For all of us in the work of self-improvement, it feels a lot like a seed that you plant and water and wait - thinking it's never going to sprout. Then, all of the sudden it's poking out of the soil...and then the next day it has a stem and then a leaf! You are doing it and I see the bud of a flower right now! Summer will make you bloom!
Ms. Megan, I think you are a bit harsh with yourself in your perception of skill. While your best work will continue, this is where you are, and the next set can show growth. Use these examples as reflective practice. What demands were occurring in the moment? In the next interpretation, you can compare and share personal and professional growth. Talk to yourself as you would another professional. It is not lack of competency it is showing opportunity for growth and real-life potential application of how you can learn to discuss the process and give yourself grace.