Teacher

Hello, I’m your teacher, Korin Riedberger (sounds like, “Foreign Cheeseburger”). When I’m not working with you, I’m an itinerant teacher for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. I serve kids who don’t go to the Oregon School for the Deaf (OSD), but go to public schools in three Oregon counties. Wherever they are, I go to them, pull them out of class, and work with them on the specific things they need.

I’m often asked how I came to work with people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. It’s an interesting story!

When I was in seventh grade, I moved back to Oregon from Virginia. As the new kid in my middle school, I was ignored or bullied for a long time. One person in my class, Seph, shared my fate. Why did they pick on him? He was deaf.

One day, I passed him a note in math class. It said, “How do you sign, ‘Nice to meet you?’” He smiled and demonstrated the signs for me. I painstakingly spelled out: M-Y N-A-M-E I-S K-O-R-I-N, then, “NICE-MEET-YOU.” That simple interaction began a friendship that lasted 20 years.

We were inseparable! We spent every available hour together through middle school and high school, and I learned sign language along the way. By the time I graduated in 1987, I was nearly fluent and Seph was like my brother. His family was like my family, and his house was my second home.

When I got to college at the University of Oregon, I knew I wanted to use my sign language skills somehow, but I didn’t know what to major in. Interpreting didn’t seem very interesting to me. Frankly, I didn’t want to be a teacher. So, I went into audiology. It seemed like a challenging, high-paying career.

Meanwhile, Seph struggled. He dropped out of community college. He couldn’t find a job. He fell in with a bad crowd. He started doing drugs. He was struggling, and I struggled, too, as I tried to find a way to help him. Nothing worked. He went from bad to worse.

All during this time, I thought about where things went wrong for him, where his troubles had started. I concluded that his teachers had had a unique opportunity to guide and support him when he was younger. Maybe they could have helped prevent his decline. I wanted that chance. I was powerless to help my friend, but I felt it might not be too late for me to help someone else.

After college, I went to grad school at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. I did my student teaching at OSD, and graduated in 1996 with a master’s degree in special education for the deaf. I got my first job as an itinerant teacher in Idaho for two years, worked for a year as an interpreter, then moved back to Portland for a job as a classroom teacher.

Meanwhile, Seph’s situation continued to deteriorate. He developed schizophrenia, like the man from the movie, “A Beautiful Mind.” He was tormented by hallucinations and paranoid delusions. After trying to cure himself through spirituality and strange diets, he finally got into counseling and on medication. The meds helped him somewhat, but they didn’t fix him. On my infrequent visits to him, I would take him out to lunch and talk about ordinary things, about our childhood together. All he wanted to talk about were the government agents who were targeting him for espionage. He was very, very different than he used to be. But, I still loved him.

In November of 1999, I moved back to Salem, where it had all started. Although I’d stayed in touch with Seph for all those years, Salem was really close to where he lived, in Eugene. I could visit him more often. I was excited to share the news with him, and to share the irony that I had come full-circle, back to our hometown.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance. He committed suicide in January of 2000. He finally gave up the struggle, and took his own life.

I never gave up on him, though. I’ve made helping him my life’s work, in the only way possible: by helping others. I’m teaching this course in hopes that, someday, you might be similarly inspired.

Korin is a native Oregonian and a devoted fan of the U of O Ducks. She is married to Ryan, a Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy, whom she adores. Her hobbies include playing the marimba (an African instrument), freelance writing, EverQuest, and training her German shepherd, Baron, to be polite.