Professor teaches students how to teach others
After Dr. J. Freeman King, director of Deaf Education, traveled to many universities across the country, he was drawn to Utah State. He enjoys fly fishing, taking on the ski slopes, and rock climbing, which contributed to King’s decision to come to Utah.
“The first thing that impressed me was the fantastic limestone in the canyon. I had always had to fly to where I had to climb, and I was really impressed with the rock,” King said.
King was exposed to the deaf world when he was coaching gymnastics at the YMCA in Louisiana. A 12-year-old deaf boy wanted to join King’s team. King had never met a deaf person before this time, and didn’t know how he was going to communicate with the boy.
“We wrote notes back and forth. I told him he could join the team, and he started teaching me a handful of signs. He taught me to finger-spell, and subsequently he introduced me to members of the deaf community by inviting me to a deaf club meeting in Charleston, La.,” King said.
From there he drove to Baton Rouge and visited the Louisiana School for the Deaf, attended football games and observed classes there. Coupled with these experiences and the boy on his gymnastics team, he recognized that it was something he was really interested in, and decided he wanted to be a part of it.
He applied to do his master’s at Eastern New Mexico University, was accepted and began the program in deaf education. In New Mexico he completed his student teaching and from there he got to where he is today.
“I never took a sign class. I learned from the deaf community. They were my teachers,” King said.
After all of the years he has been teaching, King has a lot of experience at the front of the classroom. He says that the most challenging part of being a professor is to “consistently turn out high quality, well-trained teachers that will get out there in the profession and make a difference in the lives of deaf children, as well as in the profession.”
Even though it is hard to imagine King doing something other than deaf education, he said he would probably be involved in natural resources if he wasn’t where he is today. He said he might be doing something in the fisheries or wildlife programs or something like park management.
King loves teaching his students how to teach others.
“The most humbling experience, and there is a number of them, is when my students who are out there teaching now or who have become teachers or college professors themselves contact me or stay in touch. And they tell me that I influence their lives,” King said.
He took a two-year sabbatical and went to Mexico, outside Guadalajara, where he trained teachers of the deaf. He got involved in this program while he was teaching at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. After teaching in Mexico, he transferred to El Salvador in the 80s during the civil war that was going on there.
“I was the only gringo silly enough, or stupid enough to go to El Salvador at this time. It was a tough time for the country, and it was a dangerous time,” he said.
Traveling all over the world, King became fluent in American, Mexican, Salvadorian and Honduran sign language, and he acquired a little bit of Chinese Sign Language. He can also speak Spanish and a small amount of French.
In his traveling to developing countries and teaching teachers for the deaf, he said that he always learns far more from them than he teaches.
When King isn’t traveling the world or teaching future teachers of the deaf, he likes to get a bite to eat at some of his favorite restaurants in Cache Valley. One could probably find him at Angie’s, Café Sabor, El Toro Viejo or at a small Salvadorian restaurant, Pupuseria.
King said the advice he would give to students at USU is, “Don’t become a clone of other people’s expectations. Become who you were intended to be, become who you are.”
– whitney.page@aggiemail.usu.edu