[nabs-l] come to you or go to it

[Patricia]

Hi: 

This is definitely an interesting topic, and it's also interesting to hear about others experiences. For me personally all of my schooling was in the publicschool system, and like many of us who went to public school, I was the only blind person in my school. If I could do it over again, I think I would still go through the public school system because although there are certain aspects that were difficult for me like I didn't have a very comprehensive physical education program and it was often harder to make friends, I have one really close friend from my school days whom I've been friends with since the third grade and I wouldn't give anything up for that. 

For my elementary school years I had a local O and M instructor who also happened to be my vision teacher. Unfortunately he was extremely discouraging and thus I didn't learn much from him despite having O and m for that time once a week. Anything I did wrong he would react with some nasty comments, and was extremely hard on me. As a vision teacher he even told methat I would essentially never amount to anything and that by grade 7 I would be in the lifeskills program (which was not the mainstreamed academic program) because I needed too much help. And here i am going for my Bachelors in Psychology, to graduate next year. I didn't have O and M in the 7th grade as my vision teacher now became a school teacher thankfully. I was so happy not to deal with him again but because of that my O and M suffered. I had O and M again from grades 8-12 but it was only once a month for half an hour a month, or sometimes for 2 or 3 hours on rare weekends (I'm usually mentally spent after an hour and a half of O and M). Before entering college I only had one lesson before I had to start classes, and only saw my new instructor maybe four times in the two years that i was at that paritcular college. At the school i am at now I've had maybe 10 lessons over the past three years. So needless to say it's slim pickings over here and I'm not the most confident independent traveller.   

I really haven't had all that much lifeskills trainiing. My parents would try to teach me things but aren't the most patient people, and now mom's getting this attitude that it's up to the professionals to teach me, which I don't fully agree with. I did get the opportunity to go to a month long independent living thing, but it didn't focus exclusively on O and M/other lifeskills as I would have liked it to, and at the end of it the coordinator told my parents that they had to keep an eye on me because I wasn't very motivated... way to encourage! I was just getting out of my shell by the end of that month, and technically it wasn't even a month. I guess the most that I have learned has been as a result of living on campus, where you have to do things on your own because nobody else is going to do them for you. I am lucky though because I am only an hour and a half from home if I truly need anything. I went from going home even two weeks in my first year away to going home only for holidays and reading break now. After only three days here in my first year I was completely exhausted and pretty much slept the weekend i was home just to recoperate. 

I've been reading the posts about the training centres, how does that work? Do you have to pay to go to them? where are centres located? I'm really thinking i need to get some independent living skills and think that would be a perfect opportunity before I head off to grad school. The only thing I know of here is Balance in Toronto, do you know anything about that, Sarah? 

Anyway that got a little more rambly than i anticipated, but you brought up such an interesting topic, Nicole.

Patricia