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

[Amy Sabo]

hello arielle and all,

this is a good topic indeed and, i will share some of my accomodiations that i used when i was in school. from kindergarden through 6th grade i had ot for my blindness and also for gross motor skills due to my syndrome. but, i didn't get a tvi to assist me until i was in high school. the tvi enlarged handouts for me, and worked with the teachers to assist me in school.

i didn''t use too many alternative techniques when i was in high school or middle school because i was in denial of my blindness and, i didn't accept my blindness until i was out of high school. all of my alternative techniques that i now use i learned on my own. i didn't find the nfb until 1995 and, i didn't start my college career until 2000.

thanks for asking this and, i will talk to you all soon.


hugs,
from amy	

----- Original Message -----
From: Arielle Silverman <nabs.president at gmail.com>
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Sent: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:27:07 -0000 (UTC)
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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