Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. I decided this afternoon that keeping a blog might be a good idea. Perhaps it can be helpful for somebody. Perhaps it can put a smile on somebody's face. Perhaps it can create a better understanding between people. Perhaps it will educate somebody about individuals who are low vision or blind.

My background:

I graduated from the University of Arizona's Program in Visual Impairments with my Master's Degree. My first teaching position was with the school in Arizona as an itinerant teacher. I now work in another state at the residential school as a classroom teacher.

Both jobs have been good experiences. As itinerant, I drove around from school to school, working with the students in their classroom's or pulling them for a few hours to work on a variety of skills, make sure their needs were met in the classrooms, go to IEPs, work with the parents and other team members, and assess new students for services. I covered 4 districts and averaged between 20-25 students, all of different types of visual impairments.

Currently, I have only 3 (one more to be added tomorrow) in my classroom. You would think that the difference in the number of students would make a huge difference, that my job would be easier. However, I have found the opposite. Each year since being at the school, I have been with a different level of students. This means each year is like starting all over again, which is fine and adds a challenge. I still don't feel like an experienced teacher, however. I don't know when I ever will feel like one. Some teachers say you never do. A friend of mine told me a cute analogy one time: "When you first start teaching, you open your cabinet doors and little squirrels run out to help you decorate and organize. These little squirrels get into everything and aren't that helpful. When you've been teaching a little longer, you graduate up to chipmunks and so on. Eventually, you will be able to open your cabinet doors and raccoons come out and do a wonderful, organized job of decorating your classroom!" I think I'm past squirrels now, but I'm still waiting for those raccoons!

Anyway, I have served students with many different disabilities and abilities. Students who were non-verbal, second language learners, a couple who were technically deaf-blind (low vision, partial hearing), early on-set macular degeneration, cortically visually impaired, and so on. My students currently are doing wonderfully, but are below their grade level. That's fine with me. I try to work on how they learn and take it from there. I tell them all the time that we all work at our own speed, our own ways, and it doesn't matter if somebody is doing something else or if they are doing the samething.

My students come into my class at all sorts of levels. Frequently, they have been frustrated with the system and are a bit resentful. They are scared of a new school and new people. Their placement there isn't guaranteed until after a 50 day assessment time period, so they are insecure.

My goal is to help them feel as comfortable as I can. I want them to feel encouraged to work. I want them to expand their horizons. I don't want them worrying, but concetrating on expanding their strengths while I follow up on what needs to be worked on. For example, if I find they won't write because they can't spell well or don't know their braille well, then I don't stress the spelling as long as I can read it. I've found that they soon relax and I see an incredible increase on the amount and quality of work they give me.

My biggest passion is getting them comfortable reading. I want them to enjoy reading! Learning to read braille, however, can be challenging. Not for the reason you may think, however. Most people think that it is because the kids can't feel the dots with them "all running together." I often hear "I don't know how they do it, I can't feel anything." With enough practice, you learn, although it does make it tricky. It comes from other reasons as well and I will explain it another time. My basic point just being I want them to want to read. I try my hardest to expand my braille and large print library in my classroom, but its difficult. I "accidentally" leave books all over the place for them to find that I think they might find interesting (for example, I have one student who adores trains, so I went to the library and checked out some books. I've been putting them into braille and then telling him about them). Sometimes I give them a book that is to hard, but sometimes they'll take the challenge because they find it interesting.

Whatever the challenge, my main goal is to get them reading, reading, reading. The more reading they do, the more knowledge they gain about their world (remember, they can't learn from a distance), their spelling improves, the writing improves, and it affects all the other subjects. I guess that's a teacher for you.