Motivation

As an interpreter your role as a motivator changes as the participant you are working with gets older.  For instance, when you are working with someone on the elementary level, you do much more in the role of helping to motivate the student, than you would if you were interpreting for a college student.  In class one person said how it never helped when teachers would be like, "we will get through this" or look bored and not interested the entire time.  As an interpreter you have to leave your own feelings and biases out.  If you don't like a subject or don't care for something you are going over, you cannot let that show.  The reason for this is because your attitude can contribute to the motivation or the participation of the student you are working with.  You do not want your feelings toward something to impact the learning of the individual you are working with.

As an interpreter, you have to match the feelings and emotions of the teacher, especially on the elementary level, because they can be very animated.  The reason for this is to provide the student with the most accurate interpretation as possible.  You do not want a student to get an interpreter with no emotion, interpreting a book the teacher is super animated about.  However, there are times interpreters have to use their better judgement.  What I mean by this is, there are going to be times when the teachers are not very enthusiastic or motivated about certain subjects.  When working with elementary kids there might be times an interpreter will have to add a little more enthusiasm to the interpretation, especially around story time or things like that, than the teacher is showing.  

There are many reasons for this.  One is because the student might not like like the fact that they have an interpreter.  They might not like to pay attention to him or her, therefore the child is not learning the best they can.  If the interpreter can add a little more animation and enthusiasm to their interpreting, that might be what the kid needs to get them to pay attention and learn the material better.  Also, on the elementary level it is part of an interprets job to help keep the student focused and on task.  I do want to point out that I still feel teacher need to be a motivator to the student as well, not just the interpreter.  So many teachers forget that they still have to motivate and encourage the students because they believe the interpreter will just do it all the time.  Yes, the interpreter might be a motivating factor, but none of it will matter if the deaf or hard of hearing student doesn't get any encouragement from their teacher.  I think this is important for teacher K-12 to remember if they come across a student with an interpreter in their class.