Professor reconnects with island roots through scholarship and advocacy | Academic Affairs

Sign10 conference attendees experience the Caribbean’s rich linguistic diversity

Thompson wasn’t involved with deaf communities in the Caribbean until later, but the seeds were planted around 2007. Thompson was working on her PhD while working at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind when her best friend, Maria Tanya D. Viera, G-’03, invited her to go to the Philippines to join an event connected to the fight for national recognition of Filipino Sign Language (FLS). There, she noticed the progress of native deaf Filipinos’ work being hindered by divisions stemming from ideas of the superiority of ASL and of Western countries. “I saw that happening and realized that’s the same challenge in Trinidad and Tobago –  outsiders looking down on us,” reflects Thompson. In 2018 FLS was recognized as an official language. Thompson says, “The community really came together and supported one another. That really stuck with me. That’s when I started to wonder if the same could happen in Trinidad and Tobago.” 

After a chance encounter with another deaf person in Trinidad when she was visiting family, Thompson decided to act on her latent desire to reconnect with her birth country. She became involved with their work at a school for the deaf in Trinidad. “I felt it was my calling, and I’ve been involved in the community ever since,” she says. Thompson encourages deaf Caribbeans to be proud of their identities and value their languages, pointing to her own dual citizenship. “People think I gave up my Trinidadian passport, but no way! I value both,” she adds.

Thompson, who has been at Gallaudet since 2015, hopes to establish a Caribbean Deaf Center at Gallaudet to research its history and variety of signed languages, and to push for national recognition of sign languages throughout the region. She also envisions establishing a Caribbean Foundation for the Deaf and increasing the number of Caribbean deaf students studying at Gallaudet.

For now, she’s actively involved in organizing the Deaf Educators of the Caribbean Conference planned for November 2025 in Trinidad, which focuses on improving the quality of education for deaf and hard-of-hearing babies and children from 0-18 years old in the English-speaking Caribbean islands.

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Publish date : 2025-02-20 06:28:00

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