[nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

[Sophie Trist]

Arielle,

With all due respect, I disagree. I am totally blind and started 
my Braille instruction when I was three. I have a one-on-one 
aide. This person's job is to make sure I can navigate safely 
between classes and around the school. She also makes sure I have 
all the braille materials when and where I need them. I also 
believe that it is not ncessarily a question of money. It's a 
question of getting good TVI's. Those are pretty hard to find. To 
me, hope lies in us. Lots of college-age blind people are working 
to become TVI's and OandM teachers. If more blind people became 
TVI's, more blind children could get the services they needed.

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Wed, 9 May 2012 00:52:06 -0400
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

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

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