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37. Moving On
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157 37 Moving On WHILE WORKING ON MY DISSERTATION, I STARTED TO apply for administrative jobs all over America. I thought with my experience and degrees, I would be offered a principal’s job in a school for the deaf in no time. I was living in a fantasy world just like when I had applied for teaching positions in India ten years earlier. There wasn’t even one response to my applications. I had applied for all levels—supervisor, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent— but no one asked me to come over for an interview. I was puzzled, but Dr. Delgado, who was still the dean of Gallaudet’s graduate school, and Dr. Edmund Skinski, chairman of the department from where I was getting my degree, weren’t. Skinski called me to his office and jokingly told me I should change my name. “What is wrong with my name?” I asked. He was a funny guy and I really liked him. He didn’t seem to be joking. Ed Skinski told me that he was following my efforts to get a job and had talked to two superintendents who had contacted him for possible candidates. Ed had proposed my name and never did get any positive feedback. One of them finally did confide in him. “Look, Ed, you want me to hire someone whose name I can’t even spell or pronounce?” This was 1982. All superintendents for the schools were white men. There were one or two deaf superintendents. Here I was, an Indian deaf man asking for the top job. It was obvious my degree didn’t help. There were some superintendents who had only an MA degree. But they weren’t deaf or people of color. I had never thought of ever being discriminated against in America. At Gallaudet, I had forgotten that I was from India and looked different from other students. Neither teachers nor students had ever let me feel that way. Now, suddenly someone who meant well was asking me 158 d e a f i n d c to change my name to something like John Smith or Richard Jones. Of course, Ed was joking, but his joke spoke volumes about the problem. Dr. Delgado had another idea. He knew several superintendents and decided to contact them, asking them to give me an internship at a nominal salary. He thought that once I got one foot in and impressed them, I could get a permanent job there. He wrote letters to six superintendents he knew well. He told them about me and how it would greatly benefit me working with them for a semester. Two of them showed some interest , but later said they didn’t have any money to pay or a place to stay. So Delgado’s plans to get my one foot in some place didn’t work. During my final year in the program when I was working on my dissertation, I started working full-time as an assistant for long-range planning in Dr. Schuchman’s office. He was the provost then and knew me since I was his student. I worked with Dr. David McGuinness, a mathematics professor who was on loan to the provost’s office. Working with Dave was a great experience for me. He was very creative and imaginative . I learned a lot about planning, much more than I had learned in the classroom. I liked the job and thought if nobody wanted me out there in schools for the deaf, I was going to stay here. The salary was good and the opportunity of working with top administrators was fulfilling. I learned which deans were so good and hard-working and also which deans didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care. How they had risen to their respective positions was a mystery to me. The Deaf world is a small world. Everyone knows everyone else. This smallness helps people and also hurts them. I got my first taste of this smallness when I applied to the Texas School for the Deaf (TSD). The superintendent of TSD was Dr. Victor Galloway. I had met Vic many times when he worked at Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD); however, we were only on greeting terms. I saw the advertisement for the supervisor of the middle school at TSD. I thought that supervisor was not a high enough level for a person holding a PhD...