A message from your president, 

Jennifer Shearer:

Hello WYRID Members!

Spring Conference: Our spring conference is fast approaching. It will be held April 17th and 18th in Lander, Wyoming. Due to the forthcoming educational interpreter standards, our primary workshop will be "Evaluation of K-12 Interpreters: The Process and the Practice" with Dr. Bernhardt Jones. However, to include everyone, we also have an exciting secondary workshop called "Explanation and Introduction to CD Rom Workshops" by Jennifer Shearer. This will include a viewing of "Second Language Proficiency" CD Rom workshop from Signs-of-development.org. For more information about the spring conference, call Paula Copeland at 307-547-3916(voice). I look forward to seeing you all in Lander.

WYRID Needs to Know: We recently send out a statewide questionnaire to everyone we are aware of in the interpreting field. Our goal is to gather information about who we are, our training and experience. This information will aid in the educational interpreter standards process, as well as, determine what kinds of resources interpreters in Wyoming need. Thank you to all those who filled out the questionnaire and returned it to us. If you missed the deadline, please complete the questionnaire and mail it to us anyway. If you or an interpreter you know did not receive one, please contact Kathy Andrews at 307-672-9131(voice). The more information we have the better we can serve you.

Take Steps Forward: Often when we look back at all we have learned and how far we have come, we feel proud of our accomplishments, as we should. However, we must guard ourselves against the temptation to be satisfied with our success and feel that our skill is now sufficient. We must continue to learn, develop and improve our interpreting. We must strive to make our interpretation consistently more accurate. In doing this, our success must not be measured by how far we have come, but by how far there is left to go. In the field of interpreting there is always a far distance left to travel. There is so much to learn that it requires a lifetime.

I challenge you to improve your interpreting skills as I improve mine. Pick one or two areas of interpreting and focus on those. Every time you raise your hands to interpret remind yourself of these areas and practice improving them. My two current areas are lag time (staying far enough behind the speaker to really understand what they are saying), and specialization (specifically changing space each time the speaker introduces a new thought or idea). What are your areas? If you don't have any, I challenge you to pick one or two today! If you have any questions about this, please call me at 307-265-7553 (voice). Let's all strive for excellence and take steps forward!