Yakima event seeks to recruit trilingual interpreters.

The Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing participated in a first annual outreach to potential trilingual interpreters at Davis High School in Yakima on March 12th. Earnest Covington, III, Director, and Berle Ross, Sign Language Interpreter Contracts and Resources program manager, presented on current public and private efforts to recruit, retain, and support sign language interpreters to high school students from Davis and Selah High Schools and Deaf Studies students from Central Washington University (which is considering adding an Interpreter Training Program).

“I talked with a few students afterward,” said Earnest, “and learned that there are several students who are passionate and goal-oriented about becoming sign language interpreters. The students we met were fascinated and eager to learn more about the opportunities to work as interpreters. In fact, one of the high school students emailed ODHH the next day to continue asking more about what they could do. This was a good start to plant seeds of interest.”

“Now we know students are interested, and that’s what matters to us,” said Berle. “Even if there is just one student, having four or even five interested students are encouraging. And it is amazing that these students are already bilingual in Spanish and English. We were also able to share additional resources related to DSHS’ language and testing center.”

The presentation was a good opportunity to expand the pool of local trilingual interpreters in Washington. Earnest shared that four of the five students who expressed interest in learning more about the interpreting pathway are local BIPOC students. And all of them were interested in local opportunities to continue networking with the local Deaf community in Yakima to improve their skills.

Davis High School ASL teacher Glen Petrites, who hosted the outreach event in partnership with the Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, plans to expand the outreach next year to include Eisenhower High School. This will bring more students together to network with deaf and DeafBlind people while keeping a focus on continuing technical education pathways for students.

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