[nabs-l] On Getting Lost

[keri]

well said. We are all humans, and even our sighted peers get lost.
keri

"Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away; and all the things I want to 
say can find no voice. Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak 
my heart."
--Robert Sexton

"For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there 
is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to 
receive it."
--Ivan Panin

Find that guy that will pick up every piece of your shattered heart & put it 
back together; Replacing it with a piece of his.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arielle Silverman" <arielle71 at gmail.com>
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:33 PM
Subject: [nabs-l] On Getting Lost


> Hi all,
> I agree with all the above comments. I would also like to make an
> observation which I think many of you can relate to. I think that many
> O&M instructors and other authorities (parents, aides etc.) have
> taught us to believe that getting "lost" means we have failed. I
> certainly remember when I was growing up, if I messed up a route I was
> taught to memorize or did a street crossing incorrectly, it was a
> failure. Since these things tended to happen to me a lot, I soon came
> to think of myself as a poor O&M student and a poor traveler. However,
> there is another way to think about getting "lost". We can think of
> the times we went the wrong way as learning opportunities. After all,
> in order to get back to where you want to go, it is necessary to
> gather some additional information or at least to find out where you
> went astray. By discovering the sources of errors you are less likely
> to make the same mistakes again. When I am learning a route to a new
> place, I often find I don't fully understand the route until I mess up
> and get myself back on track. By remembering what I did to correct
> myself, I have a better mental map of where my destination is. We can
> choose to think of getting lost as either a sign of weakness or a
> chance to improve both our knowledge of the place where we are
> traveling and our general travel skills.
> This issue reminds me of research done by a well-known psychologist,
> Dr. Carol Dweck. She observed children's reactions to failures (like
> getting the wrong answer to a math problem) and found that children
> tended to react in one of two ways. Some children would become
> frustrated and give up or perform poorly on subsequent problems.
> However, other kids would redouble their efforts after a failure
> experience and would ultimately end up doing better. Dr. Dweck
> eventually showed that the children's responses to failure depended on
> their beliefs about their abilities. Kids who thought that their
> abilities were fixed or that they could never improve tended to give
> up after failures because they concluded they were just not very good
> at the task. But kids who believed that they could build up their
> abilities through practice were motivated to try harder after failures
> because they viewed them as learning opportunities.
> As blind students we are often told that our abilities are fixed by
> our blindness and that there are certain things we just can't do as
> well as the sighted. We are often subjected to evaluations from
> professionals that put labels on us telling us what we are or are not
> good at. I think this kind of environment can push us in the direction
> of seeing temporary setbacks, like getting lost, as indicators that we
> are not good travelers. Yet we also have the option to view ourselves
> as capable of improving through effort and practice. The NFB training
> centers exemplify this philosophy by requiring students to undertake
> challenges where they are likely to mess up-i.e. address searches-and
> to practice skills like Braille over and over again. The instructors
> at our training centers understand how much we can learn and grow from
> temporary "mistakes". After all, the very purpose of training is to
> improve our skills and to be better at something than we were before.
> While getting lost is definitely frustrating, the next time it
> happens, try to think of it as a chance to learn something new-and to
> become a better traveler in the end.
> Best,
> Arielle
>
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