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

[Ashley Bramlett]

Hi Arielle,
Great topic!  In elementary school and my last year of high school I was at 
a public school with a vision resource room.  They are rare in the country; 
its a room where a few TVIs were stationed and several blind students from 
the county went to this school although the majority were mainstreamed from 
the beginning.  I spent a half day with the TVI in the resource room if I 
remember correctly.

Then I was mainstreamed in my home school and saw the TVI most days of the 
week for a short time.
At this point the TVI was itinerant and traveled to several schools.
While mainstreamed I received accomodations including alternative forms of 
handouts, alternative formats of textbooks and extended time on tests.  I 
grew up reading and writing braille from second grade; I started reading 
print.

Growing up I did not have aides.  I think students need O&M instruction, 
braille instruction and technology instruction.  Beyond that other services 
such as Ot and speech therapy are individualized and should be determined in 
the IEP meeting.
In elementary school the only tech training was for typing on an Apple 
computer.  All my assignments even homework, were done by hand in large 
print or on the perkins and my TVI transcribed them.  In fifth or sixth 
grade I received a Braille n' speak which was my first
piece of technology I took to school and used in the classroom.  I'm really 
glad to hear some students such as
Julie had jaws and a scanning program.  I did not get this instruction in 
school.  I learned about jaws and Openbook in late high school years and in 
college through someone from the Dept for the blind.

I also received mobility instruction but the quality could have been better. 
O&M was given for an hour or two every other week.  It helped me learn some 
basics of O&M such as cane techniques, orientation to school, soliciting 
assistance in stores and traveling on simple streets.  But we did not do 
anything complex nor did we cover public transportation.
Overall I was fortunate to have good services in school and feel sad to hear 
other students have to fight for something like braille texts and handouts 
when I had them automatically.

Good topic.

Ashley ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arielle Silverman" <nabs.president at gmail.com>
To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 6:27 PM
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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