[nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

[Jorge Paez]

Sophie:
Although I agree with you as far as TVIs,
are aids really needed?
Is it helpful sometimes, maybe, but what if we started learning how to navigate on our own from about Elementary school?
Wouldn't that be more helpful?



On May 9, 2012, at 3:55 PM, Sophie Trist wrote:

> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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%4
> 0earthlink.net
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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/sweetpeareade
> r%40gmail.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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/jorge.paez1994%40gmail.com