T. Alan Hurwitz, President of the National Technology Institute for the Deaf; Vice President and Dean of the Rochester institute of Technology for NTID presents: “Teamwork and Inclusionary Leadership” at the ALDAcon, 2008. Used with permission. Filmed and transcribed by LaRonda Zupp

Transcript:

Alan: I feel honored to be here at this wonderful club with these wonderful speakers. Yesterday, we heard Christine Seymour’s presentation, which was an excellent talk. Then, we followed up Dr. Davilla whose speech was also wonderful…

…I was born profoundly deaf. Both my parents were deaf. Apparently, on my father’s side there were several deaf or hard of hearing family members. Our son is hard of hearing. I’m deaf. My father is deaf. His sister is hard of hearing. How it came about, we don’t know. Our family came from Russia so we don’t have a lot of history beyond my grandfather, but there has been a lot of deafness in my family.

When I was born, my parents know immediately that I was deaf. So, my mother grew up in a strong oral environment, and had a very wonderful education. My father, however, had a very late start. His parents were from Russia and when they found out he was deaf, they didn’t know what to do with him. He was sort of left to the side. They owned a grocery store business and they left my father in the back of the store until he was 13 years old. But then, they found out about Iowa School for the Deaf and they put him in that school. That was the beginning of his formal education.

So, later, my mom and dad met. My father was by then proficient in ASL and my mother didn’t know how to sign. How they got together is a mystery. Love is blind. They got married and then over the years, my mom developed ASL skills.

When I was born, my mom knew right away that I should get an early education and she encouraged me to read. She read to me and told me stories and encouraged me to read books when I was young. As I was growing up, my mother was always taking me along with her to meet other deaf adults — deaf and hard of hearing adults; people who were successful in their jobs — farmers, teachers, factory workers and those who worked in different fields. She always encouraged me to go up and meet these people and talk with them.

Often times, my mother would take me with her to deaf clubs where they would have meetings — business meetings. They would have officers such as president, vie president, secretary, treasurer, and as I watched, I was fascinated at how deaf people could run these meetings and make some decisions. So that was my early exposure while I grew up, from the age of 4 or 5 through 8 or 9 and son on, to the deaf world. I attended those clubs and watched, observed, and talked with deaf adults.

My parents would often take me to the bowling alley where they had deaf tournaments, and the basketball tournaments. And, I would continue to meet many wonderful deaf people. And often times, my mother would find wonderful written stories about successful deaf people who had become leaders, such as those who became president of the National Association of the Deaf, or those deaf people who had become involved in different areas. Deaf people who had become chemists or engineers.

My mother would always say, “T,” … (I told Lucy the secret of my first name: T…. anyway, that was a secret between my mother and myself.) … but anyway, my mother would always encourage me to read stories about successful deaf people. Often times, my mother would say, if they can do it, you can do it! So I incorporated those things and that influenced my life as I was growing up.

Alan: …Become involved in organizations who are made up of various communication skills, and different attitudes, different ways of thinking, etc. As a result, you will find different ways to communicate with different people.

…Give responsibility. Challenge yourselves. Often times, certain people tend to take over and do too much by themselves. There is an art of delegating responsibilities, which is important. We need other people to be involved. We need to motivate them to take on some of that responsibility.

…Fundraising… Fundraising is a challenge! By nature, I’m not a good salesperson. For example, if a deaf group asks me to sell raffle tickets, I don’t like to ask people to buy them. I will end up buying them all myself! So fundraising is important. What you need to do is find people who have those skills, those people who are good, “go-getters,” people who know how to sell! That’s important.

Now, in my present position, one of my major responsibilities is fundraising and development. I have a person here in the back of the room named Brian Hansel. He’s my development officer. He’s over there. (Hand waves)… I have had to learn how to work with my development team so that I could accomplish my goals. That’s an important function for groups like ALDA, for local chapters, or wherever. That raising of money will support your ongoing activities.

…Make contact with key people and determine your priorities. That’s so important.

…Rewards. You must find ways to praise people, to thank people for their donations and recognize people for what they have done to support your organization to become better.

(Alan on crab theory:) We, deaf people, need to support and encourage each others success. When we become successful, then we reach out and pull up other deaf people so they, too, can be successful. That’s something that we need to think more carefully about.

…Often times, people tend to work in isolation. They have that “I know it all” attitude. they think that everyone supports them, but they find out they don’t have the alliance they think they do. They don’t have that support. So, it’s important to share the vision and get more people involved so that you can make more progress.

…And then there is that Me, Me, Me attitude… We need to change ME to WE. We are all in this together. Imagine, maybe in some rural town, there is this huge tree that needs to come down. The people of that community take turns chapping and hacking away at that tree trunk. For years and years and years, they chop at that tree, each taking turns, sharing the effort to chop away at that trunk, over and over through time. Then, all of the sudden, there comes a man on a white horse, in his white clothes and white hat, who rides into town. he gets off his horse, looks up at the tree, pushes it over and the tree falls to the ground. He then turns to the townspeople and says, “Hooray for me! I did it! I did it!”

And the people of the community turn to each other and back to him in shock and say, “Wait a minute. We did all of the work ourselves and he gets all the credit?!”

So that’s an example of how we need to make sure we recognize the entire community and the contributions they make.

…I can vs. I can’t…. often times, we ask people to get involved only to hear them say, “I can’t.” “I can’t.” But, you have to think of a way to get people motivated and included. When I grew up, my mother was always saying, “You can! You can! You can!” She would tell me those stories of other deaf people, saying, “If he can, then you can!” I never heard the word, “You can’t!”

So, often times, when there are organizations that are developing and people need to be involved with different areas, we see the same group of people running the show, over and over and over. Why are other people not involved? Well, I commend you, ALDA, because you have a practice of changing your president every couple of years. That’s one way of getting people involved rather than having just one president who runs the organization year after year after year. With that kind of set up, other people would continue to say, “I cant,” when we ask them to do something. They would say, “I don’t know how. I can’t.”

So, keep this in mind. you all have a shared responsibility. I commend ALDA on their leadership.

Posted by LaRonda on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 am.