David jots down notes, paying close attention to her lips and hands.

"Over the years, I've had to develop the skill of taking things through my ears and letting the information run through my hands," said Mabe, 52, of Spencer.

For 30 years she has worked with the deaf, autistic and mentally challenged. She has spent the past eight years of her career working as an interpreter with deaf students in the Rowan-Salisbury Schools system.

Relying on her lips, hands, facial expressions and body movements, Mabe said, she works as David's ears.

"I give him a Reader's Digest condensed version (of information) and have to pay extra attention and listen to the teacher talk while I'm also focusing on David to see if he has any questions," she said.

David, who can hear some things with his cochlear implant, said, "I listen to the teacher first and try to understand what he is saying. If I don't, I look at her and then she will sign and then I'll look back at the teacher. ...

"She helps me a lot. If I have a question for the teacher she will ask the teacher for me. ... She's my best friend."

Mabe has worked with David since his freshman year. She spends more than 40 hours a week with him in his classrooms and at tutoring sessions, as well as at his varsity basketball practices and games.

She said the school tries to pair an interpreter with a student. The interpreter stays with the student throughout the student's school career. The interpreters are paid by the school system.

Special communication cues

Inside the English class, Graff paces around the classroom with a stack of printouts on writing techniques."Notice how each sentence gets a little more specific," Graff said as his students followed along in their handouts and workbooks. "What is the purpose of that sentence there?"

When David is stuck on a sign he doesn't know, Mabe said, she'll spell it out for him letter by letter and give a description of its meaning.

Graff said Mabe and David also use special cues to communicate.

"She will shoot him a nonverbal look, like `Did you get that?' " Graff said. "If she wasn't there, it might make it a little bit more difficult to try to get ... some of the abstract ideas across to him."
Basketball games

Mabe's job becomes more challenging when she's working at the basketball court for David, who is a varsity point guard.

"A teacher lecturing across the room, that's pretty easy. It's a piece of cake for an interpreter," she said. "But when you go in a group and everyone's talking all at once, I have to decide which voice is the most important for my student to hear or to know what is being said."

David said he depends on Mabe to be his ears when he plays basketball.
"I depend on her more on the court, because I'm not wearing my (cochlear implant). I can't hear anything," he said.

Mabe said she grabs his attention from the sidelines by making broad arm movements and stomping on the floor twice. He can feel the vibration through the floor.

"He can feel the difference of how the floor moves with my stomp from how the ball moves and people running."

Telling secrets

Mabe said her interest in sign language developed in the third grade while growing up in Western North Carolina.

She wrote a book report on Helen Keller, the famous American writer and advocate for the blind and deaf. But she discovered she was more intrigued by the manual alphabet than the biography inside the book.

Mabe, who grew up in a family of six, said she often communicated with her younger sister in sign language.
"I thought it was kind of neat to be able to tell secrets to my sister," she said.

After graduating from high school in 1971 and completing a semester at Brevard College in Brevard, Mabe said, she quit school to find work.

She learned formal sign language and interpreting by enrolling in classes and workshops, and also earned a bachelor's degree in interpreting from UNC Greensboro in 2001.

Mabe spent several years working at residential schools for the mentally challenged and group homes for the deaf and autistic. Then she landed her current job as an interpreter in the China Grove attendance area of the Rowan-Salisbury Schools.

By Lena Warmack
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/north_carolina/counties/cabarrus/13938935.htm