[nabs-l] Personal aides and other services in school

[Rob Blachowicz]

This is a very interesting topic.  As we all know personal aids are often 
unqualified to be aids and are sually hired by the district to do other jobs 
and then are replaced as aids (sometimes even cleaning ladies).  My 
education was horrific from k-5 until I finally left the district and then 
finally learned bBraille and O&M.  A lot of the issue is not the school 
district lacking to provide the services but the lack of qualified 
professionals and the lack of knologe of the school district to find the 
proper professionals.  Parents also need to know what their child in 
particular needs and make sure they attend the IPE/CSE/ESE meeting depending 
on which state that parent may reside in.  On the issue of other services 
such as PT and OT a lot of us might have other disabilities or muscular 
issues and may need these services and may even need them adapted cbecause 
we can not see.  I've always thought that maybe there should be another 
department for the blind and related services bbecause generally the special 
ed department (called different things in different states) may not 
understand the needed services.
Rob Blachowicz


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From: "Arielle Silverman" <nabs.president at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 6:27 PM
To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [nabs-l] Personal aides and other services in school

> Hi all,
>
> At this year's NFB convention, improving education of blind children
> was an especially prominent theme, and for good reason-we would all
> say that the ability for the blind to be fully participating members
> of society starts with a quality education. I am on a couple of
> listservs for parents of blind children (the NFB parents of blind
> children list as well as another one that's not affiliated with any
> organization), and discussions frequently come up about the myriad of
> special services that parents often have to fight school districts to
> get for their kids in public school. These special services range from
> Braille instruction and provision of Braille learning materials, to
> O&M, to technology instruction, to having a teacher's aide assigned to
> help the blind student with visual tasks, to auxiliary services like
> occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), speech, etc. When I
> take part in these discussions as someone who grew up blind, I always
> wonder which of these services are absolutely critical to helping
> blind students get a sound and effective education, and which of them
> may be nice, but not necessary. For example, I think it's clear that
> quality Braille instruction, cane travel teaching and tech instruction
> are top priorities, but what about the other services?
>
> I'm just curious to know what kinds of services those of you who grew
> up blind received, and if you think these services were adequate,
> inadequate, or superfluous. In particular, I'm curious whether you
> guys had classroom aides (or someone besides your TVI) help you with
> classroom activities or getting around and if you think this kind of
> help was appropriate. When I started elementary school (kindergarten
> in 1990), I had a classroom aide in kindergarten and first grade and
> then the aide was discontinued in second grade and thereafter. From
> what I remember (although I know memories from kindergarten can be
> notoriously inaccurate), the aide basically served as my sighted guide
> but didn't help me with classroom activities. In hindsight I wonder if
> not having the aide would have forced the O&M to teach me independent
> cane travel at an earlier age. But, more importantly, I didn't have
> someone in the classroom describing things to me except when the TVI
> was there, which I think was only one or two class periods per day in
> the beginning and eventually she basically served as a braillist. I'm
> therefore a little surprised to hear how common it is for blind kids
> in this generation to have classroom aides working with them, offering
> verbal descriptions of visual activities, etc. I feel like my own
> education was relatively good, in part, because I didn't have the
> luxury of getting so much information and I had to learn how to follow
> what was being taught using nonvisual techniques, as well as actively
> gathering information from others (like the teacher and fellow
> classmates), skills that are critical for success in college. But, I
> can also see the argument that having someone describe goings-on in
> the classroom to a young child might give them an advantage and help
> them gain a stronger understanding of visual concepts. What do you
> think?
>
> Arielle
>
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