Barb Digi and Professionalism

Barb Digi publicly resigned from the DBC in a YouTube notification to viewers a few days ago after only a few years in the organization. Despite the numerous controversies regarding the organization she made a point about pursuing an area with greater professionalism in her video if you read the transcript at the end. I agree. Professionalism is key to maintaining and keeping one's own integrity. I've noticed that she has tried to keep Deaf politics out of the way and focus on exemplifying on the positive on how signing can help babies, deaf or hearing, to communicate more effectively with parents.



The simplest approach is to show the positive side of signing (not necessarily "ASL" but signing in general) to parents of deaf and hard of hearing children and leave it at that. I produced a video showing an example of how a simple YouTube of my 1 year old hearing daughter signing at her 1st birthday celebration can carry more weight on delivering a simple message...communication can be understood between a one year old baby and adults.  That simple video message alone carries more weight than for highly visible members connected to an organization to go on a rampage, attacking people and other organizations because their views do not agree with that of DBC.  Once you employ yourself in an organization, what you do or say reflects on the organization's standard of professionalism. Once you abuse that then that organization loses its integrity because of the strong association with an organization and presents a very negative image of that organization. Leaders of any organizations must have a goal in mind on ensuring absolute professionalism. Once you lose that professionalism then any message or goal in an organization would lost or damaged.

Parents simply need to be informed and with that information they can make an informed decision. The parents still hold the trump card because they are the ones who make that crucial decision whether going for a cochlear implant or a hearing, using cued speech, SEE, ASL, SE, PSE, SimCom, or oral-auditory approaches. Even the decision to employ the help from John Tracy Clinic, AGBell or NAD. The key understanding here is that it is ultimately the parents' decision for their deaf or hh child on what they feel is best. The decision does not rest with the DBC. Not Gallaudet University. Not NAD. Not AGBell. Not John Tracy Clinic. They do not own babies with hearing loss. All they can do is provide the necessary information so parents can make an informed decision. Politics will simply turn parents off. That's what professionalism is all about. Informing parents and not let politics get in the way by harassing people for their decision or opinions on other mode of communication or educational approaches that people think are good.  By publicly going after people for having a different opinion or approach would push any message about signing for babies out of the window. I think Barb Digi understands that. So does Amy E. Cohen.

And with that, I sincerely wish Barb Digi all the luck and successes in her professionalism goal and new opportunities in helping parents understand the value of signing for all babies. Politics is not the answer. A simple positive message is the answer. Step into that mud puddle of politics, then you risk tainting your own professionalism and an organization's  own standard.

Good luck, Barb. I mean it.

The Mysterious Disappearance of "Deaf Dynamic Duo!"

My reaction to last week's "Deaf Dynamic Duo's"suggestive responses to my earlier vlog where I praised their creativity but their videos have mysteriously vanished after only barely week! Why? Even the YouTube "DDD" channel disappeared as well and started to rack up subscribers, too! The video by Barb Digi and Dawn Schriver was an amusing video. But I'm disappointed. Why has the DDD team disappeared? What happened to the last of the DDD's funny video "Holy Tank Tops!" ?

Addendum: I removed the videos since it'd be pointless to have my video up if the DDD's video isn't up to see what the joke is all about.

Sorry folks.