I was surprised when Ms. Amy Cohen Efron thanked me for showing her video on my previous blog a few days “After the Cochlear Video, Thoughts” and invited me to contact her.

In my mind, Amy is one of the giants, a Deaf woman with influence through her brilliant vlogs, and I felt so humble that she wanted to talk with me. Today we finally saw each other on our web cameras and had a wonderful chat in ASL about her work, who she is, and upcoming Deaf fund raising event in San Francisco that I am going to try and attend.

For those who are wondering about Amy Cohen Efron, she is an alumni of Gallaudet University with a Master’s in developmental psychology and is a specialist in school psychology. She is also involved in Deaf Prexy (President) Protests. She was in the first protest, in 1988 when I was a young teenager in sixth or seventh grade. I remember thinking it was a no-brainer that Gallaudet should have a Deaf President. I had always assumed Gallaudet had a Deaf President until that day. Ms. Cohen Efron is currently a school psychologist at Atlanta School for the Deaf in Atlanta, GA.

When I first saw her videos on her blog Deaf World As Eye See It, the first ones I saw were the original four-part series of The Greatest Irony in American Sign Language. I showed these videos to my mother, and my mother said it would be valuable with voice interpretation for those who don’t know ASL. And sure enough, Amy did it!

I doubt Amy ever thought that this video would have taken a life and gone around so much on the Internet! Now N.A.D. (National Association of the Deaf) has seen it, and Ms. Sheri Farinha Mutti has seen it. I thought it was fabulous that Ms. Mutti had seen it, considering I had just seen her in March at NorCal Center on Deafness’ 30th Anniversary party. Ms. Mutti is also known locally in the Yuba-Sutter area for her Deaf Advocacy works. Ms. Mutti is the CEO of NorCal Center on Deafness, which is headquartered in Sacramento and has a branch here in Marysville through our Ms. Kimberly Dethlefsen.

Here is the post with N.A.D.’s response to Amy’s video “The Greatest Irony.” Also listed on her blog are links to important web sites.

I hope that we will be seeing Amy’s video as part of awareness for parents of Deaf/Hard of Hearing children in advocating ASL for Deaf children. Now I am also wondering about who is on our California State Early Hearing Detection and Intervention panel (EHDI). Deaf community members and professionals in each state are encouraged to be on the panel. Anyone from here?

________________

Thank you, Amy for sharing this with me.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.