[nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

[Ashley Bramlett]

Arielle,
All good points.  I went to a resourceful and rich county school system 
While IMO my O&M teachers did not have high expectations and encouraged 
overliance on vision and memorizing routes, my vision teachers or TVIS as 
they are now called, were demanding.  Some more than others.  My first one 
is actually nationally known and wrote books on teaching braille published 
by AFB.
She taught me print and realized its limitations such as fatigue and 
slowness. She then taught me braille. However since I learned it in second 
grade, I had to catch up with my peers and this took a few years.  I was 
expected to read during the summer. she sent braille material home and the 
print copy too so my parents could read with me.  I was drilled on the 
letters and later on what each letter represented as a word. I had spelling 
tests in braille. Also, a good thing they required me to do was this.  Some 
blind people struggle with spelling and literacy because of seeing only 
braille contractions. I was required to write the contraction if I knew it 
and spell the word out in all its letters, in other words grade 1 braille.
I did this for the class spelling tests, not the ones I had for learning 
braille.

This way I learned the spelling with my classmates, but also the  TVI saw 
what braille contractions I knew and remembered.
I took most exams in braille when my skills were ready for it, maybe in 
fourth or fifth grade. I had mostly multiple choice ones; so I just circled 
or wrote down my  answer. Same tests as everyone else at the same time; if I 
needed it, I had extra time for them.
In upper grades, some textbooks they gave me both formats, so I had a 
choice. I had the braille text and the text from rfb.  I often used a combo 
of the two. I might listen to the chapter on tape, but skim for the 
highlights in braille.
However, the caseload of my TVIs was big and yes they could not spend as 
much time as they wanted to.  However, they did encourage practice at home 
and in class.  So some of it was up to me. If I did not want to learn and 
practice, I would not have improved.  It shouldn't be up to a student to 
take that responsibility, but we do given the situation.  Those students who 
did not read regularly in braille did not become as proficient.
Sighted students have to do some on their own too, but the difference is 
that a blind student can often get by with audio and a sighted kid cannot.

For the braille crisis to stop, IMO we need a team approach; the TVI, parent 
and student have to be willing to make the commitment.

And, maybe not all kids need OT; that is why you have an individualized 
plan; I know I benefited from it and PT though. Instead of that, hmm, maybe 
a reading specialist. I suggest this because a reading specialist can help 
with learning deficits and weaknesses. My mom thought I had a learning 
disability and sometimes I think so too. For me my deficit was fluency. a 
reading specialist could help in this effort; help the child decode faster 
and therefore comprehend the words and with rapid decoding and comprehension 
comes fluency.  A reading specialist could also fill in the gaps IMO when 
the TVI isn't there.  This assumes the child needs help in reading though. 
But I suspect most blind kids do. Its my experience the regular ed classroom 
activities do not translate well to good emmergent braille literacy. If you 
all are not familiar  with education terms, some of this may not make sense; 
fluency is reading at a steady pace and decode means translating the letters 
to sounds in your head and forming words.

For instance, in first and second grade, we read as a class; the teacher 
pointed to words on the board or her book and everyone read together. 
Another activity is the teacher wrote on a board or transparency.  Now a 
days probably a smart board. Anyway, then she has the class edit it 
together.  Still another activity involves matching pictures to words so you 
learn what they mean.  My point is that these rely on seeing the teacher's 
cues or pictures or something.

A blind student needs equivalent activities to develop literacy skills. 
Maybe a reading specialist in collaboration with  a TVI could fill this 
need. Just a thought though which will likely not happen.


-----Original Message----- 
From: Arielle Silverman
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 12:09 AM
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

Hi all,
It is obvious to all of us that we need to take action to ensure that
the current and future generations of blind children will get the
Braille instruction they are entitled to and be held to the same
reading and writing standards as the sighted. However, I fear the
solution is much more complicated than just passing a national Braille
bill. While I am not terribly familiar with Braille legislation, I
have definitely seen cases where even in states with laws on their
books mandating Braille instruction, kids are falling through the
cracks and not getting it. I know Arizona has adopted a Braille bill
mandating that Braille is the "presumed reading medium" for all blind
children unless the entire IEP team (including the child's parents)
determines that the child can read and write optimally with print. But
even in Arizona and other states with similar laws, some kids are not
getting Braille. There are many ways teachers or school districts can
get around the legal mandates. For example they can simply delay
holding an IEP meeting for a child or delay giving tests to determine
whether or not the child is a functional print reader. They can agree
to provide Braille but then only give a child 30 minutes per week of
instruction because that's all the time the TVI has to work with each
student. I've even heard of one case where a TVI insisted a particular
child wasn't really legally blind even though this was clearly spelled
out by the child's eye specialists. Passing a national Braille bill is
an important step toward making change, but it won't be a viable
solution by itself unless everyone involved actually wants to obey the
laws rather than finding loopholes around them, and when schools have
the resources to provide the amount and quality of Braille instruction
they are required to provide.
There are several serious problems with the system for educating blind
children that need to be addressed in different ways. The educational
system has long been dominated by professionals who are trained to
view blindness as a deficit. Because of this overarching philosophy,
they are not naturally inclined to aim toward giving blind and sighted
students the same standard of education. I think there has always been
too much of a focus in the blindness field about what blind people
cannot do or what we do differently, rather than what we can do and
what we share in common with sighted students. There is a tendency to
be "reactive" and respond to deficits after they occur rather than
being "proactive" and preventing kids from getting behind in the first
place.
There are also lots of very negative attitudes about Braille floating
around in the minds of some blindness professionals. Braille is slow;
Braille is hard to learn; Braille sets a blind child apart from
others; Braille is only for totally blind people, who are maximally
handicapped by their condition; Braille is bulky and hard to produce;
Braille is expensive; Braille is antiquated and obsolete; etc. etc.
With these kinds of attitudes, teachers aren't motivated to teach
Braille, and are more inclined to delay or avoid teaching Braille
whenever possible.
I have wondered whether much of the negativity toward Braille comes
from sighted teachers' own difficulty in learning Braille themselves
during training. For a sighted adult learning Braille is indeed
difficult at first, and building fluency takes time and dedication.
Working from their own experiences, sighted teachers who struggled to
learn Braille may believe that Braille is equally grueling and
overwhelming for their young students--but of course, it's not because
learning to read at five is much different than learning to read at
twenty-five. Even if this error of judgment is only unconscious, it
can still affect their attitudes toward Braille and their motivation
to teach it. This issue might be worse when teachers only spend a few
months learning Braille and so they don't experience the successful
improvement that comes from using Braille for years.
So, I think that legislation is only part of the solution. We also
need to examine the psychology of the people involved in the system
and figure out how to get the key players more excited about Braille.
We want them to truly believe that blind children can achieve full
competitive literacy with Braille instead of forcing them to provide
literacy instruction that they don't really believe in. I think what
the NFB is doing with the TeachBlindStudents and Teacher of Tomorrow
programs is right on. We also just need to get more Braille teachers
into the field who have had good experiences with Braille themselves
and who truly believe in blind people. And, of course, the educational
system for blind kids is just not well-funded and there aren't enough
TVI's to go around. So even the good teachers are being spread thin
with huge caseloads and simply don't have the time to provide daily
instruction to every one of their students. We need to figure out how
to reorganize the system so that the teachers' time is spent as
efficiently as possible without skimping on important lessons. For
example, it seems like some of the special services given to blind
kids are not always necessary and not always as important as Braille.
I may be opening a whole other can of worms here, but it seems like
almost every blind student these days (at least in elementary school)
has a one-on-one aide who acts as the student's "eyes". Do all of us
really need that kind of help? Do all blind preschoolers need
occupational therapy, physical therapy etc.? what would happen if all
the money spent on the aides and therapists was instead spent to hire
more Braille teachers so that kindergartners received daily Braille
instruction? What would happen if children who were proficient in
Braille could read ahead in their books and then not be so dependent
on an aide to read the blackboard because they could follow along in
Braille? Wouldn't it make more sense to give a child intensive
one-on-one time with a TVI for a few years so they won't need very
much extra support in the future? I may be naive, but I would think
that would not only save the school districts some money in the end,
but also bring out a generation of blind students who are
self-sufficient and can become taxpaying adults much more easily.
These are just my thoughts and observations about how we can help make
change. I welcome any other thoughts or comments.
Best,
Arielle

_______________________________________________
nabs-l mailing list
nabs-l at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
nabs-l:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/bookwormahb%40earthlink.net