[nabs-l] A Typical Day at an Nfb training center

[Benjamin Vercellone]

Thank you Tamika.
But please write about anything you think is important. I know I wrote a lot, but I'm sure you still have much you could say as each student of a center has a different experience. Maybe something was of greater importance to you or maybe your center experience motivated you in a different direction. Anyway, the training center experience is so rich that I'm sure you still could write something if you desired

Ben

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

On Jul 24, 2013, at 9:19 PM, Tamika Williams <twilliams.jaguars at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well said Ben, you didn't miss a beat. Everything I was thinking to
> reply with you said it and explained it well.
> 
> I second this description,
> Tamika Williams
> 
> On 7/24/13, Benjamin Vercellone <benvercellone at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello roanna.
>>    This is Ben Vercellone. I received your email to NABS, and thought I would
>> respond. I have written a lot, especially for an email. For example, I wrote
>> more about my personal center experience than simply a short summary of any
>> day. I'm just warning the reader! I am definitely passionate about blind
>> people's independence, and this passion has contributed to my writing. I
>> wrote more concerning your first question than the second, but I tried to
>> answer both. I hope you gain something from my response. I'm sure that many
>> people from NABS have attended NFB training centers and could also provide
>> much valuable information.
>>    I attended the Louisiana Center for the Blind from late November of 2007 to
>> early August of 2008. I desired to attend this training center because I
>> felt that many of my skills were lacking, and because I heard very positive
>> testimonies from a couple graduates of LCB. Working with the New Jersey
>> commission for the Blind to receive help with funding took several months. I
>> think it took about six months of work with the Commission before I was able
>> to leave for LCB. As for my family's attitude, expectations, conduct, etc.,
>> they were very optimistic and supportive. I understand that this is my own
>> personal experience, and that many blind people's families may have contrary
>> feelings such as great nervousness, pessimism, and whatever else. Neither my
>> parents nor I knew what to expect, and we definitely had some degree of
>> nervousness. But the attitude was generally positive.
>>    Probably like many people reading this, I received some degree of training
>> throughout my childhood including in O&M, home management skills, and,
>> fortunately for me, even Braille. But to be honest, I felt that much of this
>> training was quite limited. Perhaps the best example of this concerned
>> orientation and mobility. I received some valuable training to be sure, but
>> it was not on a day to day basis. As I went on to middle school and high
>> school, the frequency of my training with cane travel decreased greatly . I
>> was only getting two cane travel lessons per month on a good month, and it
>> was only for forty-five minutes each time. How much can a student expect to
>> improve with their skills in Orientation and Mobility, among other blindness
>> skills, with such limitations? My Braille training, on the other hand, was
>> fairly good, and any complaining I do regarding my personal Braille story
>> should really be about my lack of interest in it as a younger person. I
>> can't complain much about the Braille training I received, especially when
>> compared to the 90 percent of blind people who received no training. I am
>> much more enthusiastic about Braille now, and I enjoy practicing a lot
>> nowadays. I am extremely thankful to know Braille.
>>    When I went to the Louisiana Center for the Blind, it was definitely like
>> jumping into the deep end of the pool right away! My first few weeks and
>> months were the hardest part for me emotionally, but this can probably be
>> expected for most students. It is a necessary stage in independence
>> training. I was somewhat home sick, and it took me some time to feel at home
>> in Louisiana. Though it never felt as much like home to me as New Jersey, I
>> definitely did change after a few months, and began to feel really
>> comfortable at LCB. I guess they always say, "there's no place like home."
>> But the people in the area generally seemed supportive, and especially the
>> people at the Center.
>>    Though my challenges just described seemed to decrease, the every-day
>> challenges of LCB training only increased over time. This was definitely a
>> good thing.
>>    Every day, students including myself attended five classes, if you want to
>> call them classes. The order of the classes for me was:
>>    Orientation and Mobility from just after the 8:00 AM announcements to 10:00
>> AM, Industrial Arts from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, Braille from 1:00 PM to 2:00
>> PM, Computer Skills from 2:00 PM to about 3:00 PM, and Home Ec from 3:00 PM
>> to 5:00 PM. Students had different personal schedules
>>    Lunch was obviously from noon to 1:00 PM.
>>    I have absolutely no vision, so this next part isn't exactly relevant to
>> me. But everyone with any degree of vision at this training center, and at
>> any NFB training center, has to wear sleep shades so that they will be
>> forced to learn non-visual techniques. Students at LCB are required to wear
>> them from 8:00 AM to noon and from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. They are free to take
>> them off for lunch if they desire, and are free to live without wearing them
>> while at the LCB apartments. However, anyone who keeps the sleep shades on
>> for more time is likely to experience increased improvement with their
>> independence skills.
>>    Our apartments were about eight blocks from the Center, if I remember
>> correctly. That's more or less the number anyway. It was about six tenths of
>> a mile I think. Anyone at LCB without mobility impairments is  required to
>> walk both to the Center in the morning and back to the apartments after the
>> day at the center. On rare occasions, like maybe after a big LCB
>> accomplishment or when physically exhausted or weak for some reason, a ride
>> is given to a student who normally does not need one. I think we received
>> these rides sometimes when we needed to quickly go back to the apartments to
>> prepare for inspections. Yes, we had to keep our places clean, a really
>> important skill. This discipline definitely helped me afterword when I
>> attended college.
>>    Twice a week at the center we had seminar, where we carried out discussions
>> on blindness. It lasted almost two hours each time. We discussed the NFB
>> philosophy of blindness at length. We often listened to media in seminar,
>> like when we watched the movie At First Sight. This was helpful because it
>> raised discussion concerning the interaction of blind and sighted people and
>> especially concerning attitudes which many sighted people have toward
>> blindness. I think seminar was 10 to noon on Tuesday and 1 to 3 on Thursday
>> when I was there. Before seminar on Tuesday, each student met with his/her
>> counselor to discuss progress being made. A student's counselor was one of
>> the staff members, and I believe each staff member often had more than one
>> student assigned. Forgive me if counselor is not the correct noun. But you
>> get the picture.
>>    Now on to the actual classes. My first class was Orientation and Mobility
>> (O&M). When I first arrived at LCB, my O&M skills were not very good. I
>> especially had trouble with my orientation. I had trouble making mental maps
>> of some of the streets surrounding the center, and this lead to some
>> confusion on my part. Arlene Hill, my O&M instructor at LCB, showed me a
>> representation of some of the nearby streets using some pad on to which she
>> stuck plastic pieces. Most of the pieces were lines, and the connection
>> between them and the pad was a type of Velcro. Many people may be familiar
>> with this basic tool. The use of this tool for just a short time helped me
>> to overcome my initially poor sense of orientation.
>>    At first, I was told to walk pretty much to the southern end of the block
>> which the center was on, and then to the northern end. This was in order to
>> make sure I was using my cane properly. There may have been other basic
>> reasons too. After this, I began crossing streets. The number of streets I
>> was told to cross increased week after week. I do not remember the exact
>> sequence of the concepts I was taught. But one important concept which I was
>> taught concerned finding addresses.
>>    I learned the basic methodology behind many cities concerning their layout
>> and the assignment of addresses. With this conceptual knowledge, it became
>> much easier to travel to the assigned addresses. I could at least usually
>> find the block that each assigned address was on without much difficulty.
>> Finding the exact address was sometimes a trial and error experience. One
>> thing we had to become comfortable with was interacting with sighted people.
>> We were not to ask them to guide us or do anything of that nature, and we
>> had to become more and more independent as our training progressed. But we
>> could definitely ask questions concerning the present location for much of
>> our training. For example, I could go into a building and ask a person at
>> the counter what location this was. I could find out the name of the
>> business and the address by asking very simple questions.
>>    I was a bit timid when I first went to the Center, as I imagine some other
>> students were and are. So asking questions definitely helped. My assignments
>> helped me to improve my mental mapping and route planning abilities, all
>> without the use of GPS. I use GPS frequently now as a graduate of LCB, but I
>> learned that the most important skills cannot be achieved via technology.
>> Technology is definitely helpful, but there are many instances of people who
>> perform poorly when they try to use technology such as GPS without having
>> good O&M skills. This is definitely a concern at LCB. What's more, the
>> batteries on my skills do not die! Sometimes I was assigned to find an
>> address, and then bring back a business card from that location, thus
>> proving my success. I had many tasks involving addresses.
>>    As my time at LCB increased and neared its end, I had to complete some
>> graduation requirements for every class. For O&M, there were several
>> important requirements. One involved coming up with a route to perform with
>> public transportation. I needed to learn how to independently travel on a
>> bus. Another assignment involved walking according to a Brailled list of
>> directions. The distance of this assignment was 5.6 miles! People could
>> complete it in more than one day if they had to. Perhaps the most
>> significant graduation requirement for O&M was what they called the drop
>> routs. The student would be driven by a sighted staff member to an unknown
>> location, and then dropped off there. The staff member would take many
>> turns, and as far as I know, pretty much no one could track the movement
>> well enough to know where he or she was dropped. I certainly could not.
>>    This assignment required us to use knowledge which we had gained throughout
>> our training, in order to find our way back to the center. Success came most
>> easily when students could combine multiple concepts. For example, I knew
>> that if the sun was on my right, I was pretty much facing north, since my
>> O&M class was in the morning. One time I was dropped somewhere, and I heard
>> busy traffic near by. I don't remember all the details, but when I travelled
>> toward the busy traffic, I heard a sound that the tires of the cars made as
>> they passed over the street. I remembered that this sound was special to
>> Alabama Street. I remembered that Alabama Street went east and west. I
>> remembered that it was a two way street, and sure enough, I heard traffic
>> going both ways. I don't remember all the details of this drop route, but
>> let's just say I tried walking east on Alabama Street. I would have done
>> this by making sure the sun was at my face. If I wanted to go on the south
>> side of Alabama if I wasn't already, I might have travelled east to the next
>> intersection, and crossed to the south side. I imagine I probably desired
>> the south side of this street, as it would have been closer to the center.
>>    It would have been totally possible for me to have been dropped off near
>> Alabama Street somewhere east of Trenton Street, the north/south street
>> where LCB is located. But let's just say I tried going east first, examining
>> the possibility that I had been dropped off somewhere in the western
>> direction. I think that is what actually happened. I would have searched for
>> north/south streets with familiar characteristics. If I was traveling in the
>> right direction in this example, I would have eventually come to an
>> intersection, where the perpendicular traffic in front of me would only be
>> heading from my left to my right. I would know, based on my knowledge of
>> ruston, that this was Trenton Street, where the traffic only travels south.
>> In this case, if I remember correctly, I would be on the south-west corner
>> of this intersection. I'm guessing I crossed to the east side of Trenton,
>> and then turned right to travel south a couple blocks to the Center at 101
>> South Trenton Street.
>>    Sorry if my description was very long. But I feel that my experience at LCB
>> regarding O&M lead to a huge boost in my overall confidence. I desire to
>> teach other blind students the skills of O&M, and will be attending
>> Louisiana Tech University this fall to pursue a Master's degree with the
>> concentration in Orientation and Mobility.
>>    Next, in Industrial Arts, or as I think we called it Shop or Wood shop,
>> students increased in their confidence by learning how to operate power
>> tools and follow detailed instructions to complete various tasks. If they
>> could finish work related to 2 stages of construction, students would go on
>> to build a final project which involved a great deal of planning and work.
>> For me, this was a cedar chest. The first two assignments may have been
>> called the grid block and the Braille block if I remember correctly. I'm
>> much more confident in my memory of the second one's name. For the first
>> assignment, we had to cut a piece of wood into a rectangle with exact
>> dimensions. This involved the use of a power saw known as a radial arm saw.
>> Then, we had to learn to scrape precise lines into the wood using an awl,
>> and the lines had to be a fixed distance apart. I think the distance was
>> three fourths of and inch. There would be parallel lines going in both
>> directions, with four long ones and six short ones I think. We had to Use a
>> tool to make sure our lines were all straight, and to insure that all the
>> intersections would be 90 degree ones. I enjoyed this a lot, but believe me
>> when I say it took some practice. Then we had to use the drill press to
>> drill holes into the wood precisely in the intersections of the lines. I
>> forgot the diameter of the holes, but it was something like three eighths of
>> an inch.
>>    I also forgot to say that all of the tools we used in Shop except for one
>> had one thing in common. They were not at all specially adapted for the
>> blind. The only tool which was specially designed was the measuring device
>> which was called the Click rule. With it, we could easily measure to the
>> sixteenth of an inch. As J.D. taught me, I could use it to measure down to
>> the thirty-second of an inch too. This was more than enough accuracy. The
>> goal was not to discourage us from using any other kinds of adaptive shop
>> equipment, but to encourage us to realize our full potential. A great deal
>> of tools, including power tools, are accessible out of the box.
>>    In any case, now that the holes were in the grid block, I could go on to
>> the next step, assuming I didn't drill through the bottom of the piece of
>> wood, in which case I'd have to start all over again. The next step was to
>> cut a dowel which had the same diameter as that of the holes just drilled.
>> The student had to cut the dowel using another power saw called the band
>> saw. After cutting the dowel to get the correct number of short cylinders,
>> each with the correct length, the cylinders were placed into the holes in
>> the grid block.
>>    This whole exercise became much easier with time, but the next one, the
>> Braille block, was harder. It was called the Braille Bloc because it would
>> have 6 of the cylinders in it rather than the higher number that were in the
>> grid block. The Braille Block was thicker than the grid block, but was
>> shorter and narrower. In addition to all of the steps described for the