[Blindmath] Teacher with Vision Loss Teaching Sighted Undergrads

[Ryan Thomas]

Dear Christine,

   I'm a graduate student myself.  I'll be teaching sighted undergrads
in just over two weeks.  As a graduate student, I find it highly
unlikely that you'd be given a teaching assistant yourself.  Typically
that sort of thing is reserved for full professors or instructors.  I
know that some of the other students have hours of tutoring in our
math resource room.  My plan is to ask one to do my grading in
exchange for grading some of my students homework.  If you make some
sort of trade like that then you're helping others and not expecting
sighted people to take on extra work on your behalf.
   I do feel it's highly inappropriate to talk about how you
accomplish things as a blind person.  Your class is on
psycholinguistics-not on blindness techniques.  I would tell them only
what they need to know such as "If you have a question call out
because I won't see your hand".  Otherwise, you can inform students
that they can ask you any questions they may have during your office
hours or at other times since the classroom is not a suitable
environment for that type of a discussion.  Then you can move forward
with your material, students don't feel hung up on the blindness since
you don't make a big deal of it, and they still realize that you're
open and approachable with your vision loss and with the required
information.
   Please feel free to write me offlist.  I'm sure I'll have a lot of
struggles this semester and seeing as we're in the same sort of
situation, maybe experiential learning will help both of us become
better teachers.  Good luck to you and your class.

Sincerely,
   Ryan

On 8/9/11, Christine Szostak <szostak.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Thanks, I really like these ideas.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>
> To: <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 3:25 PM
> Subject: [Blindmath] Teacher with Vision Loss Teaching Sighted Undergrads
>
>
>> Christine,
>>
>> I would encourage you to do two things.  First, spend some time talking
>> about yourself and how you deal with your vision loss, etc. Your students
>> are very unlikely to have ever had a chance to interact with a blind
>> person before and I think that the quicker they feel comfortable with you,
>>
>> the quicker they will forget about your vision loss and be able to focus
>> on the subject matter.
>>
>> Second, ask your students for advice and ideas on how to handle the issues
>>
>> you asked about. Many, many years ago, when I was teaching AP high school
>> chemistry, I divided the students into several small groups and each group
>>
>> had to choose a lab experiment from suggested resource material, perform
>> it, and then write out the directions so each of the other groups could
>> perform that same experiment.  (They, of course, provided me in advance
>> with a list of the needed supplies.)  I at first felt a bit guilty making
>> the students do something I thought perhaps I should have done but it
>> turned out to be one of my most successful teaching experiences.  The
>> students loved it and it really brought out their creativity.
>>
>> HTH,
>> SusanJ
>>
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>
>
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