IW 162 SPOTLIGHT Zane Hema Part 2: Oceania Interpreter Training Project

How do you do that?! We're not sure.

Zane Hema takes us behind the scenes of the project in Oceania. We learn about the weekly lessons, how plans have changed, who is working tirelessly, and why. Plus, he gives us a sneak peek into what's next when this project comes to an "end".

Lovely to speak with our colleague Zane Hema again. Enjoy.

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Transcript

IW 162: SPOTLIGHT Zane Hema Part 2: Oceania Interpreter Training Project

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Wherever you are, this is the Interpreter's Workshop podcast. I'm Tim Curry, your host. Here we talk everything sign language interpreting the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the sideways of interpreting. If you're a student, a new interpreter, experienced interpreter, this is the place for you. If you want to know more, go to interpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28 Tim

Let's start talking... interpreting.

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

00:00:34 Tim

And now the quote of the day by Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia and The Czech Republic.

00:00:44 Tim

“If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.”

00:00:57 Tim

Today we finish the spotlight interview on what Zane Hema is doing in his hemisphere and the project of training interpreters in Oceania. The quote fits those who are behind the scenes doing the day-to-day work, the paperwork, the teaching, the training, the planning.

00:01:17 Tim

And it also fits those who wanted the program. Each group, each team is working at their capacity, going to the unknown, what's uncertain to figure out how to do this because they have something driving them that need to know more to become a better interpreter, to help support other interpreters even when they don't know for sure how to do that. And that's what it's all about, that curious adventure of life. So, let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:02:00 Tim

How did the weekly lessons look? Did each teacher have a course with them that week? Or was it one teacher each week? How did that look?

00:02:09 Zane

We had one teacher, we called the lead teacher, two support teachers, and then two administrators. So, we had a team of five at every lesson and often more. [Tim: hmm]

00:02:21 Zane

Often more, and that was because we had a schedule where maybe the teacher for next week wanted to pop in and just have a quick what's going on in this week's lesson to get handle on their lesson for the next week.

00:02:33 Zane

And the reason why we had such a big support team is it's online.

00:02:38 Zane

We needed people to administer the connections. We had to get people to change their names from Samsung 200 to whatever their name was. [Tim laughing]

00:02:48 Zane

But we had to do the register.

00:02:50 Zane

We had to have opening prayers, so we had a roster of opening prayer.

00:02:54 Zane

And then we had someone to monitor the chat.

00:02:57 Zane

And so got this huge team, the lead trainer just trained. But behind the scenes, the others are being support to the trainer [Tim: Mm-hmm] taking part in any, I don't know…

00:03:11 Zane

They're called role play activities that we hopefully got the students to do that.

00:03:16 Zane

And so yeah, it wasn't just one teacher and 40 students. It was three teachers, and a backup administration team for every lesson.

00:03:24 Tim

And each teacher or trainer was taking on those roles in at different weeks or [Zane: They were.] OK.

00:03:31 Zane

In essence the curriculum was divvied up in a special way.

00:03:37 Zane

It's your specialist subject and your availability. So, we, you know, we wanted our people… on the team interpreting right… We had someone who's, who's just got his PhD, well, she's a doctor, a doctor does the team interpreting. And she's very engaging. So that was a perfect fit because she was available, and she was the right person for the job. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:03:59 Zane

And by and large, I think 80% of that has happened.

00:04:03 Zane

We sent out the curriculum to all the trainers and go, “Hey. Here's the date. Here's the curriculum. Where might you be able to help?” And everyone responded to that. And so, we had it. But of course, as the nature of the beast is…

00:04:17 Zane

“Sorry, I'm sick. I can't come” or things could happen. Life got in the way and so there had to be some last-minute adjustments. [Tim: Mm-hmm] But I don't think it's been to the detriment of the program because, umm…

00:04:29 Zane

In the team of the operations, we've got one person, and her job is scheduling the training.

00:04:35 Zane

Nicole Clark, […] and she's done a fantastic job putting the teaching schedule together, but also managing it in the event teachers come, can't come and they need to be replaced.

00:04:47 Zane

We're always planning two weeks ahead, so when we have our operations team, we reviewed the current week and we forecast concerns for the trainings for the next three weeks. Umm, and then there’s [chuckles] on WhatsApp, we have used WhatsApp to death. [Tim chuckles]

00:05:00 Zane

Because we have had, you know, “session week two team” “week three team” and have conversations going back and forth [Tim: Mm-hmm] because we wanted to have a space where trainers could have a chat with each other [Tim: Mm-hmm] so that we could like, I don’t know, hand over. Help me here. Or so we had a separate little offline (well, it was on- online but separate from the course) the trainers could interact.

00:05:29 Zane

And we also had a Google Classroom. So, we've got our assignments, announcements into the Google Classroom.

00:05:37 Zane

We did this lovely thing.

00:05:40 Zane

Not on the early stages. We did do it later at that online engagement.

00:05:44 Zane

We would go, “OK at the end of lesson. Your next week’s lesson is answer the question. They'll be put into the classroom. We'd like you to go into the classroom, have a think about or answer the question. The teacher will come on the Tuesday before class, which is on the Wednesday and just begin to respond to your…” And that was really, really helpful. So, we're engaging them, you know, not just online in the classroom, we're doing it offline in the Google Classroom.

00:06:13 Zane

And then there's messages or queries we're dealing with all the time, and the administration team deal with the administrative part and we deal with interpreting course-related messages and that’s important.

00:06:25 Tim

Was there a time where the students themselves came up with an idea that was really helpful for them to do something different or to add to the curriculum?

00:06:37 Zane

Yes, I'm just trying to think of good examples.

00:06:41 Zane

We as the operators would be open to bend over backwards to be as supportive as we can. And very early on it became clear that internet connections are not stable in some of these countries.

00:06:57 Zane

And so, we would have a lesson and then we get messages, “Ohh my connections going in and out” and all of a sudden disappear. [Tim: Mm-hmm] So, technology was a bit of an issue for us.

00:07:08 Zane

And we could see people's attempts to connect to the class.

00:07:13 Zane

So, we record the class. People who had a bad experience connecting or couldn't connect could at least go and, and watch the program.

00:07:22 Zane

We open the door for them to at any time to say, “If you want to contact and talk to a trainer about the lesson and there's not enough time in that 2 hour, you're more than welcome.” And we had a roster team, mostly operations team, really just be made available to go and respond to any query.

00:07:41 Zane

We found that certain countries were more at risk of bad connections than others, particularly the Solomon Islands.

00:07:49 Zane

And so people…

00:07:51 Zane

They used to drive hours so that they could get together to connect on one device to come to class.

00:07:55 Zane

Sometimes that connection wasn't that reliable. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:08:01 Zane

Then we found that when we went to breakout rooms automatically some people would disappear. And we did not know why.

00:08:08 Zane

So, we had to do some investigations with the technology. We found out that sometimes the people had a device and often they were joining on their phone, not laptop, but they weren't on an updated version of the app.

00:08:19 Zane

And that wasn't even the, the strength of the signal. That was just the app, so that we had to encourage them to update their data. Some people would have to pay for their data, and they don't, they don't have a lot of money. So, there's issue around there.

00:08:32 Zane

And despite all those issues about connection, people are still struggling to come to class or they're messaging and saying, “I didn't make it today.” And so, we did not want to penalize people attendance if they can't connect it’s not their fault. [Tim: Yeah] We've got them to message in. And they’ll message in.

00:08:53 Zane

And we put them in the register that they, they had messaged in.

00:08:55 Zane

And their attendance will, will be indicative of the final awards and certificates, etc. I can't think of anything at the moment, but the only thing that I think that they asked if it was reasonable, we did. [Tim: yeah]

00:09:08 Zane

We did. Because it made life easier for them when it was already quite difficult. [Tim: yeah]

00:09:14 Tim

It just made me remember.

00:09:16 Tim

During COVID, we were all online of course, and one of my students was on and the rest of us were like, “Where are you? There's like a forest behind you.” And she's like, “Ohh, I'm camping.” Well, she had a car battery, and she had hooked her laptop up to it [Zane: Ah!] and using her hotspot from her phone to give her the internet.

00:09:35 Tim

From hearing you talk such motivation that interpreters have to learn, it's really encouraging not only the students, but for the trainers. Like you said, they were all going to volunteer first. That's commendable. We have a community that is worldwide and it and it's small. We're supporting one another.

00:09:54 Zane

I agree. It’s totally like that.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:09:57 Tim

Do you agree? Is it totally like that? Well, then, why not support me by sharing the podcast with a friend or colleague? Or support me even more by Buying Me A Coffee. Just check the links in the show notes. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:10:13 Zane

This is a professional program that we're doing, but I can't help but feel, you know from the bottom of my heart I'm ever so grateful for, these people who I think they want to make a difference. But I think they have a passion for, for sign language interpreting. They are good teachers. They know that in the Pacific islands that there's no formal training and we…

00:10:33 Zane

It's not about us in a way but we want to make a difference. And even though, you know, connection problems, linguistic problems...

00:10:42 Zane

There's a, there's a lot of energy that connects in all of us, and I think that's the reason why they keep coming. I think drive, I think they do want to learn. They want to be better interpreters. Their Deaf communities are also still developing. So, you know, the way that interpreting works in their countries has been a big learning, deep learning curve for us.

00:11:05 Zane

Where perhaps the Deaf community and the interpreting profession has moved a little bit further along the line. And that's no criticism of - it's just the way things are. They’ve got their… they’re at the, in the early stages of professional development. That's how I've told it and that's not negative at all. But for us as teachers, that's quite profound.

00:11:25 Zane

Because we have to make a mental upstairs adjustment to view things more from the way they see their world.

00:11:35 Zane

And that's not really so easy to do, but it's become easy to do because they are so open, and they are so well at engaging. You know, someone said to me, they say, “At my very first job, I, I had been learning sign language for three months. And it was my first professional job as an interpreter. And it was for a Deaf woman who was nine months pregnant, and she asked me to come and help her.

00:11:58 Zane

And so the story goes, right?

00:12:00 Zane

So, we would be in other circumstances going, “Oh my goodness!” [Tim: Yeah] And this is where perhaps people might feel a little bit uncomfortable and go, “No.” [Tim: Yeah]

00:12:10 Zane

I sort of go, to do that is to say to them that your desire to want to help given your three-month sign language is not valid even though you were asked to go in. Because maybe in those circumstances the Deaf woman who was pregnant nine months with a baby had nobody else to go to. [Tim: Mm-hmm] And didn't want to go into on her own.

00:12:32 Zane

And people would go, “Yeah, but I think that she’d be better and safer on her own, rather than someone that only sign language for three months.”

00:12:38 Zane

I go, “Well.” And that's where we have to just rethink a little bit. Because we come from a bit of, uh, what do you call it, an angle of privilege [Tim chuckling: Mm-hmm] that they don’t have.

00:12:50 Zane

I said to her, “Wow, what an amazing story.” I said to her, “So how did you feel?” She said, “Well, I was anxious.” And then said, “I was scared.”

00:13:03 Zane

And I think you need to validate those. And I can sort of get them, even though perhaps […] a side of me saying, “You probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place”, but I, I, I don't think that's my call to say to her. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:13:12 Zane

“So how did you go about dealing with these feelings of being scared, I can understand them.” [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:13:22 Zane

She goes, “Do you know what? I'm a mother. I've had a child. And my mind says I know what it's like to have a baby. I might not know sign language for three months, [Tim: Mm-hmm] but then I use my depicting terms and I use my non-manual features and I'm a mum.”

00:13:37 Zane

And so, what she was saying to me, as I was saying, she has an understanding of the context that she's just about to go into. Maybe not the linguistic [Tim chuckling] skills being only three months. [Tim: Mm-hmm] But how valuable would that experience of giving birth be as a mother. It was like a control mission for you know, “’Take a deep breath’, and she's asked me for help. If I don't help, no one is.”

00:14:03 Zane

“I've had a baby. And I've got three-month’s sign language. I can make it work. I think. It might be, you know, Humpty Dumpty, a little bit problematic. The baby was born safely, the Deaf person, was ever so grateful.” [Tim: Mm-hmm] I think we judge too quickly.

00:14:22 Zane

In countries where the state of sign language interpreting is so, so, in its early stages of development, we come from a place of “that’s not right.” [Tim: Mm-hmm] And I think that's a little bit just…

00:14:37 Zane

I think if you can, I don't know, empathize and just put yourself into… And this, this is what people can't do, and this is what we’re doing as trainers.

00:14:46 Zane

We're going to get “it works differently there”, therefore, how we apply rules are differently there until such time that they can get better. [Tim: Yeah] And I think that's the learning curve. I mean, in a lot of these developed countries, it's fine. And I, you know, it's a fantastic. I'm not even gonna knock that.

00:15:02 Zane

But it's a place of privilege by comparison to where we've been working these past 22 weeks.

00:15:06 Tim

Yeah, exactly.

00:15:09 Tim

So, with that beautiful statement, [Zane: Mmm] when this is over, what's next for them and for you?

00:15:16 Zane

Yeah. Uh, so many exciting things. I had to write a report to the funder British High Commission and, and there was a real opportunity to explore what lies ahead.

00:15:29 Zane

And there's lots of things. So, I just put down, here's the whole lot of my ideas of what we'd like to do. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:15:35 Zane

And they require money, so if we get lots of money and it seemed to me that the fund is keen to, I guess, kinda being attached to a project that's having a massive, hopefully positive effect and continue to do so. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:15:49 Zane

There is a second course that we can look at doing for the remaining 45 that didn't give them to the first one.  [Tim: Mm-hmm] That needs to be run over again. But for those who we already, we like the idea of maybe getting funding to take two of the trainers to fly into each of the different countries and do some time with them face to face.

00:16:07 Zane

I think that would be totally awesome. And so, we have built on connections we already have and provide a level of, I don't know, interaction, workshop, training, PD, that takes them a little bit further beyond what we have.

00:16:22 Zane

We are looking at possible online mentoring program for them.

00:16:29 Zane

From my observations of mentoring programs, the level of success is, is variable, but that's not to take away the fact that what we're after is to have some ongoing form of support, [Tim: Mm-hmm] whether that be a individual one-on-one or a peer group type meeting where we, every two months subsequent, we all come together online, and we catch up.

00:16:57 Zane

So, we keep those connections going. We talk about some of the things that have happened. A little briefly happened over the last two months with the focus (rather than chat) on learning or application of learning.

00:17:11 Zane

Uh, ongoing needs for learning in a particular time.

00:17:16 Zane

So there's this nice, two months in chat, but it's focused on giving an overview of what's happened, but also trying to plan together how we can support you ongoing. We've got a (uh, what other things will we do) ideas of trying to get funding to bring students to the WASLI Oceania conference taking place in August this year.

00:17:38 Zane

We're hoping to get funding for support students, participants to attend. We found out yesterday that the whole cohort in Karabas have secured funding to attend the conference. So, they'll be there. [Tim: Wow] We've scheduled a (what would you call it?) a, an award ceremony to provide certificates to those who have satisfied, they completed the program.

00:18:02 Zane

And who had satisfactory - had a level of attendance that was really good.

00:18:08 Zane

And we're talking about possible special recognition for some of the people, given that the circumstances under which they've had to go through to attend this training from, you know, driving hours to connect whatever it is that particular to this region, it shows a dedication, right? [Tim: Yeah] So, we still haven't finalized that program, but we've just got a slot at the conference.

00:18:28 Zane

And maybe have conversations with funders around, umm…

00:18:32 Zane

We have to do an evaluation and so this conversation is not quite finished because through that evaluation particularly with the participants, they're gonna articulate from their team what they feel might be the right thing. I mean, I, I've done it from our point of view, but I we haven't had a conversation with them before, because that won't happen till, till June next month. But it’s an exciting project…umm

00:18:58 Zane

I don't know. It's sort of like the template that if we can piece it all together and rewrite it, go back and just put all the adjustments that were made and why we put them in there and what made the difference and why we we, we we scaffolded differently or why we had different scenarios. Then that in a way becomes the level of thinking that's gone behind not just the design, but the adaptive design. And we'll get the delivery program for week one, right, through to week 26th, which is on the 18th of June. [Tim: Yeah] Huge project.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:19:33 Tim

Yeah, huge project. Lots of work. Lots of people putting in their time.

00:19:37 Zane

And there's a level of accountability. Because we have funding, funding requires extra administration, but extra reporting. So, we have another little team to, we’re required to submit full reports to one of the funders on three reports, the third one that’s the huge one that’s already gone to the other funder.

00:19:57 Zane

So, this is all additional work that we've got to commit ourselves to [Tim chuckles] over and above the delivery of the program.

00:20:07 Zane

What we built into our budget was payment for the teachers, payment for the support teachers, payment for the administration team, payment for meetings, because we're meeting every week, payment for marking assessments.

00:20:24 Zane

So, for example, yesterday we had seven?, six trainers working yesterday in each of the different rooms, so we budgeted uh, amount of money for grading of a student. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:20:38 Zane

And when we put the budget together prior to October, we were fairly, uh…

00:20:44 Zane

I think we well considered, but we could have been better prepared to incorporate some of the things we've found during the course that has taken our time that we didn't put in the original budget. [Tim: Yeah] So, for example, I spent four days writing the due diligence form.

00:20:59 Zane

That's a huge amount of bull, but it had to be done, right? It had to be done. And I was just going, “OK, there's anything like that that we could, from the budgeting purposes, anyway, we incorporate for the next budget. And then to the terms of delivering the designing of courses. It's just… been… massive… the learning curve for me, for me personally, but I know that’s the case for the other teachers.

00:21:21 Zane

How that after each lesson we would just sit back and go, “Wow, uh, wow.” [Tim: hmm] And then even when, I think we just had these lectures on ethics recently and that generated so much discussion that we could not contain it within the four hours that we had dedicated to it.

00:21:40 Zane

And so, what we're gathering as we go is those little things where they, they could have talked about it for so much more.

00:21:49 Zane

Let's put that and document that somewhere so it frames the ongoing focus for ongoing training. We had each education room interpreting that was also 4 hours. We huge amount of content, huge amount of stuff and highly relevant to their work across the Six Nations.

00:22:07 Zane

And we, we couldn't get it in.

00:22:11 Zane

So that's got to go across as well, but we could get connections and join this Facebook group as discussions going on. So, we're sort of, what do you call it, signposting [Tim: Mm-hmm] to things that might be helpful. I think the lesson that's so wonderful is that we've just done our best to adapt to what would work best for them, even though it may not be work best for us. [Tim: yeah] And so, that’s been the most rewarding thing. Because I think they have felt that. And they have responded to that. […]

00:22:43 Zane

You know, sometimes just rolling our eyes and going, “Oh my goodness. I’m not sure I know what to do next.” [Tim chuckling]

00:22:49 Tim

Well, I think that's a great place for us to end this because you've wrapped it up in a beautiful sentence that I think is advice for anybody who's trying to start a new program, start a course of some sort for such a diverse audience, participants.

00:23:07 Tim

If you're teaching for what they want and teaching that and working towards that, [chuckling] even if you're rolling your eyes and not knowing, [Zane: yep] you're still going for the goal that, [Zane: yep] that is actually intended.

00:23:20 Zane

…what they want. That's exactly right, and that's that has been the major – and it's my answer to most questions “It’s what they wanted.” So, for those critics out there who go, “uh..” That's what they wanted! Shush, shush! [Tim chuckling] But I would like to acknowledge some… the people on the operations team. I'm gonna name them if that’s OK. So that's [Celia Strong?].

00:23:40 Zane

Awesome.

00:23:41 Zane

She's um, oh my God. Do you know when you find someone who's whizzy with the technologies and spreadsheets and Google [Tim chuckling] and can take an idea and make this magic in front of you, [Tim: uh-huh] this is her.

00:23:53 Zane

And she has just been...

00:23:57 Zane

I don't know, brilliant talent, plus the fact that she’s effervescent. She's just been wonderful. Nicole Clark who I mentioned is the one that has been coordinating the teachers, the team, the schedule, and putting in a tremendous amount of work communicating with them, communicating stuff around lesson preparation, assessment, marking that it was all going on right now. Then the three from Fiji is and Elise – Kortini, Claudette Wilson, and Patricia Miller.

00:24:29 Zane

Those three had just been an enormous source of advice for us.

00:24:34 Zane

They live, they live in these countries. They know the world better than us as teachers and they have advised us.

00:24:41 Zane

Sometimes you know, we all have found out things that perhaps we should have mentioned earlier, but they are our prime source of support. They are the admin team, they are the consultants, and they have done a terrific job as the operations team that have supported the project from week one right through ‘til now.

00:25:02 Zane

So, I have to acknowledge them because I think I love them all and think they’re wonderful. And the trainers, I love them. And the students, I love them. I love them all. I think I'm in love. [both chuckling]

00:25:13 Tim

And we all love you, Zane. Thank you so much.

00:25:16 Zane

Thank you so much for having me.

00:25:18 Tim

I know we'll talk again soon. Good luck with everything.

00:25:21 Zane

Thank you so much.

00:25:21 Tim

Bye bye.

00:25:21 Zane

See ya.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:25:28 Tim

There's not much else I can add to this wonderful spotlight on a great project, training interpreters throughout all of these Oceania countries. Zane, everyone in the team is working tirelessly behind the scenes to get the job done.

00:25:46 Tim

And it's not just a job, it is a mission to support others, to support others like you, like me, like them to help lift up the profession to help people tell their story and see what interpreting is all about: being together, supporting one another, learning from each other, learning from ourselves.

00:26:12 Tim

Seeing the ins and outs of this program can help others start… Well, can help you start your own program where it's needed. Use this spotlight as an inspiration to not only help others, but to help yourself. 

00:26:31 Tim

Tell your story, learn from you and your mistakes, and your endeavors as a sign language interpreter. Pass it on to the next generation.

00:26:41 Tim

That's what this podcast is all about, sharing the stories, sharing your stories, sharing my stories so we all can learn and support together. So, until next time, keep calm.

00:26:57 Tim

Keep interpreting even when you're unsure. I'll see you next… episode. Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:27:39]