With at least 1,500 deaf students throughout North Carolina, Virginia Madorin ‘11 serves the Deaf community in her role with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Madorin is currently an IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) consultant in the Office of Exceptional Children and co-director of the North Carolina DeafBlind Project.
In her role with the Office of Exceptional Children, Madorin acts as a Consultant for Deaf and Hard of Hearing, providing technical assistance and professional development to educators in the field working with this population. She works closely with districts and individual schools to answer policy questions and with teachers and staff to learn how to close language gaps with deaf students.
Deaf students can find themselves cut off from their families, peers, and even their entire school community because of communication barriers. Her work allows her to try to eliminate, or at least alleviate, those barriers.
Madorin said, “The best part of the job is coaching, working with teachers who are working with groups of students and trying to improve their skill set. I teach them the pedagogy of deaf education that they maybe didn’t get in undergrad or graduate study.”
The number of teachers in North Carolina who are trained to work with deaf students is lower than the demand. UNCG’s Deaf Education program, the lone such program in the state’s university system, helps to meet a critical need.
Madorin said, “There was a time that North Carolina had several programs of Deaf education and now there’s just the one. We constantly get questions from professionals who want to go back and redo their training to do Deaf education because they see the need for that.”
She spent the early part of her career in the classroom, and, while she misses the children and families, she enjoys being able to advocate for those same students and families. She is able to help support policies which allow teachers and administrators to effectively communicate with these deaf students and their parents.
Looking back at what drew her to Deaf education, Madorin notes two experiences in her life that led her down this path. First, a Deaf family friend who she saw sign. Second, and in her mind probably more impactful, was the gift of a sign language book. She said, “My whole senior year, I was learning this book. I was spending so much time trying to learn.”
As a junior in high school, Madorin was accepted to UNCG, the only school to which she applied. When reviewing a pamphlet, she saw Deaf Education as a major and was drawn to pursue the field.
Her first experience as a Spartan was walking into an 8 a.m. class and the professor never speaking. She only used sign language. She said, “I was like, ‘Wow, this is cool!’ And I knew nothing. I realized that everything I had learned in that book was wrong.”
Looking back, Madorin enthusiastically recalls the experiences with the Deaf community and learning directly from them. She fondly remembers her practicums and entering classrooms with deaf children and realizing the desperate need for teachers who can understand how to teach them.
Mentors like Dr. Mary V. Compton and Lynne Allen were inspirations to her. She said, “They both were so open and kind. I admired Lynne Allen specifically because of her signing ability. I thought she was just beautiful. Dr. Compton gave us a lot of strategies for educating children across the communication spectrum.”
After being drawn to the field because of a sign language book and a love of that form of communication, Madorin continues to work to better Deaf education due to her love of the children and families that she has been able to affect.
50 Years of Service
This year also marks a milestone: Deaf education at UNCG has been making an impact for half a century! Read more about this rich history.
by Chris Rash