[nobe-l] Connie's New Eyes, blind teachers then and now

[Judy Jones]

Hi, Kayla,

I started teaching back in 1976.  I am blind and taught in a rural public
school, grades 5 - 12.  The town had a population of 300, and there had
never been a blind person in their town before, let alone a blind teacher.
I had my interview shortly before graduating from the University Of Northern
Colorado in the spring of 1975, and was offered the job on the spot.

The subjects I taught were Spanish and German, and I used to speak both
fluently.  In one of my first classes the first day, I invited the kids to
ask any questions regarding blindness, in order to break the ice.  The first
question asked was, "When are we going to learn Spanish?"  After that, I
figured kids would ask questions as they came up.

I had pre-ordered my braille texts, the ones I had used in student teaching
and liked, and the school board ordered the print copies.  In my training, I
had quite extensive training with AV equipment, and used lots of
audio/visuals.  In those days, we were talking about the film strip
projector, opaque projector, transparency overhead projector, and, of
course, the movie projector.  The high school kids were actually the ones
who showed me how to use those the first time out, and were great at telling
me if something was in focus or not.

Other visual aids.  I tried to use as much of the foreign language as
possible, so I had lots of pictures I held up that I either had purchased
through the school, brought from college student teaching, or had been cut
out for me from magazines.  I would mat them, and braille on the back what
they were and enough descriptives to be able to have conversations with the
classes.

I taught seven classes per day, and had one study hall, as did everyone
else,  and traveled between the elementary building and the high school.  I
filled paperwork according to the class, having the mega-huge plastic paper
clipswith a braille 1 on one clip for the first period, 2 for the second
period, and so on.  At the end of the teaching day, I would load up my
backback with my clipped papers and any other materials I would need to work
on that night, whip out the telescopic cane, and head out the door.

I had to really think about this to remember how I did it, but I used the
slate and stylus in a spiral notebook for lesson plans.  As I can write with
a slate as fast as one would handwrite, that worked fine.  I used my perkins
brailler at home, because the slate was more portable and convenient.

I'm a firm believer in lesson plans, and that has carried over into anything
I present or any workshops I plan.  I'd rather over-plan than under-plan.
Especially with kids, one has to keep a classroom moving.  I was never at my
desk during a class, unless I had a smaller discussion group or smaller
class, in which case I usually perched on the corner of my desk.  However,
when teaching, I always moved around, either back and forth in front of the
class, or partway down the aisles.

I started off with a seating chart, until I got to know the kids' voices.

I rarely had discipline problems, and the two I can recall were not serious
in today's standards, and had nothing to do with my blindness.

The one thing about teachers is that they always take their work home with
them, or at least, it was true in my case.  I always had papers to grade,
and lessons to prepare.

I hired someone to come to my house 2 to 3 times a week to grade papers.  I
would tell the reader how to mark the papers, and what to look for.  I gave
daily quizzes and light homework.  After all, I did not want to clog myself
with work any more than the kids wanted tons of homework.  The object was
for them to learn and for me to reinforce it.

Once a semester we had to turn in class averages on grades and records.
During this time, my parents got me the new Speech Plus calculator.  (How
many on this list remember those)?  This new piece of technology was a
godsend when working on the grades and records averages!

Blind people of my generation knew how to use the typewriter, and I used
mine endlessly to creat quizzes and extra paperwork for the classroom.  In
the mornings before class, I would go to the teachers' lounge and use the
copy machine or the ditto machine to make copies.  To this day, I braille at
the bottom of all printed paperwork with date of receipt and what it is,
just as I then brailled on my originals.

In my desk I kept a pad of absentee slips.  My mom made me a plastic
template to fit over the page, just like a signature guide, and I could fill
in what I needed to and turn in these daily to the front office.  Same thing
with tardy slips.  Hall passes looked exactly the same as the pad of tardy
slips, so I put staples in the back cover of the tardy slips.

I had all kinds of decorative posters, and Argus is still my favorite
company!  Again, braille captions would be on the back of these posters, and
I loved decorating my classroom in various ways.  At holiday times, the kids
helped, too.  I'm not artistic by nature,but we all had fun.

The "foreign language department" was responsible for taking their turn in
running concessions for the sports events.  I learned how to run the various
machines at a serious concessions stand, again, from the high school
students who had already done it.  That is where I learned how to make
really good chili!

I had been in gymnastics in middle and high school and part of college, so
the gym instructor asked if I would help spot girls on the team when they
had gymnastics practice after school.  I loved it.

I tought at that school for several years before moving to get married, but
loved it.

Several years later, one of our daughters got on the computer, looked up
that high school, and found one of the teachers I taught with, and they had
a great conversation.

Anyway, that is how we did it without computers, OCR technology, printers,
or note-takers.

Judy






-----Original Message-----
From: NOBE-L [mailto:nobe-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Kayla James via
NOBE-L
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2017 2:57 AM
To: nobe-l at nfbnet.org
Cc: Kayla James
Subject: [nobe-l] Connie's New Eyes, blind teachers then and now



Has anyone read the book Connie's New Eyes?
It is about a blind teacher named Connie David. It was published in the
70's.
I want to know what teaching was like then compared to now for blind people.
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