By Jacey Samic
Over the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to participate in and complete the National Court Reporters Foundation (NCRF) second Court to CART Grant. Under an experienced team, I was able to grow so much on the way to becoming a CART provider and far faster than would have been possible on my own.
After shadowing the wonderful captioners involved in this program, I realized even more how intense the field could be, and my respect for all CART providers has grown immensely!
Despite the incumbent challenges, CART captioning has been a dream of mine since before I began a court reporting program in 2021. I have loved reporting for a county court for the past year and a half, but my captioning dream has remained. Before the training, serving the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities with captioning still seemed so far away, but the capable grant team, organized by Patricia Graves, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC, brought it much closer.
Graves kicked off the training with a meeting that provided an overview of the progrm. Following that, a second meeting included Heidi Thomas, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC, where I was taught the operation of programs like StreamText and other CART technology.
In the next meeting, Graves and Thomas were joined by Toni Christy, RPR, CRR, CRC, and Rebecca Tallarico, RPR, CRR, CRC, where they covered the various events they have captioned and specifics regarding each one such as sports, graduations, college classes, and conferences. Very importantly, they also thoroughly went over their own methods for job preparation.
All the sessions were eye-opening and exciting! Completing NCRA’s CRC education modules by the early stages of the grant also supplemented and helped me better absorb the insights of the trainers, giving me a broad, solid foundation of information I can keep building on.
The Court to CART grant has afforded me invaluable connections to veteran members of the captioning arena. These connections will be especially important as I move forward into the captioning field.
Over the course of the following weeks I spent my time job shadowing. I don’t think I could pick a favorite event that I shadowed; each one had different elements that were interesting and at times challenging for me, but all the captioners took the shadowing in stride. They were inspiring to observe! On several occasions, some took the time to debrief with me afterwards and answered questions about the event, technology, and other things I should take into consideration.
At the end of the grant, I submitted my own file from one such event. The trainers evaluated it, and then we had an informative final meeting to go over what went well, what could be improved, and how to move forward.
The Court to CART grant has afforded me invaluable connections to veteran members of the captioning arena. These connections will be especially important as I move forward into the captioning field. I don’t think I can fully express how grateful I am for their time, perspectives, experiences, wisdom, and advice that they generously imparted.
Thank you, Court to CART grant team and NCRF, for this one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn!
Jacey Samic, RPR, CRR, is an official from Doylestown, Ohio. She can be reached at jacey.samic@gmail.com.
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