About the Author

Hello everyone!

My name is Jennifer Renée (or Jen).  I am a 2nd year PhD student in the Literacy Studies program.  I started in Special Education with high incidence disabilities, meandered into visual impairments, and found my passion with the deaf and hard of hearing.  I currently work here at UT as a research associate on grant funded development research on writing instruction with elementary deaf students. 

In those moments that I'm able to get away from the school and work, I love traveling, spoiling my nieces and nephew, and being outside--paddleboarding, kayaking, running....though I could do without these hills!   Don't get me wrong... These mountains are beautiful, they're just much too far from the ocean!  I left behind a house and a middle school teaching position at an amazing deaf and blind school less than a mile from the beach in St Augustine, FL to return to Volunteer country.  And while I like Knoxville, I really do miss those group runs on the beach after work!  Luckily, I did find time this summer to sneak away to the beach for a weekend and catch a few waves.

I have a lot of research interests, but all of them are centered around the language and literacy development of deaf students and deaf educator training.  This summer, I had an opportunity to lead professional development for deaf educators in Haiti.  Probably one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life.  The workshop participants were all deaf adults so the entire workshop was done in Haitian Sign Language, with all written materials in French.  Leveque, the village I visited, is absolutely fascinating.  It is one of many communities established in rural areas outside of Port-au-Prince since the 2010 earthquake, but what make it so unique is that almost half of the village is deaf.  There are over 150 deaf families living there together--there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.  This fall, deaf children, who have never seen sign language before, will be coming from all over Haiti to stay in host homes with deaf families and attend school for the first time.  Talk about some research opportunities!  If I could just figure out a way to move there for a year... :-)  For now, I'm taking French classes and continuing to work in research with deaf students and deaf educators here in the states.  One day, I hope to be able to take what I'm learning here and use it to help me to conduct research in Leveque.

I'm taking this class because I'm fascinated by the things we can learn from language.  During my first masters, I did a project where I analyzed a deaf educator's language looking for examples of the types of interactions using Peter Johnston's Choice Words.  My findings were very different than my colleagues in the class.  It got me thinking...what does the language of deaf educators say about how they view their students.  Moreover, how does their language impact how students view themselves.  I think that discourse analysis has the potential to be very helpful to my research interests in deaf ed, so I'm excited to start learning more about it and seeing how I can apply it to my work.

And since I told you all about my trip to Haiti, here are a few pictures of me doing what I love to do most...

These 2 girls were the students for all of our demonstration lessons.  They had been in the community and learning to sign for a little over 2 months.  It was amazing to see them soaking up language and learning so much during our short time there.  Those smiles--they melt my heart. 

(Okay...I'll stop talking about Haiti now...Have I mentioned I want to go back?)