[Pibe-division] Help with materials

[Robert Pardue]

Unless these students are preparing to teach only uncontracted braille, I would not recommend the extra work. I would give the students access to the contraction lists that are applicable and let them see braille for what it truly should be. Learning solely from uncontracted braille will not prepare these future teachers for what is necessary in teaching true braille literacy. I applaud the intention, but this approach may have unintended consequences; for, as you said, braille instruction is new for these teacher candidates.

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R. Martin Pardue, M.A.T. NCLB
Teacher of Blind Students
OPSB Vision Services

"If I want to do it, nothing is difficult. If I don't want to do it, nothing is easy.''
Sifu Shi Yan Ming

________________________________________
From: PIBE-Division <pibe-division-bounces at nfbnet.org> on behalf of adrijana prokopenko via PIBE-Division <pibe-division at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 5:18 AM
To: Professionals in Blindness Education Division List; community-service; humanser; rehab
Cc: adrijana prokopenko
Subject: [Pibe-division] Help with materials

Maybe I should give the world a little lesson on special education
degree and how it works in Macedonia. This is a 4-year university
degree mainly consisting of general courses regarding disability and
if they decide to choose blindness as their specialty, they have more
of these courses in their final years of study. Most of these courses
are taught by Macedonian professors and are related to history,
psychology and education for the blind and some are full of research
and numbers regarding disability related figures  such as employment
rate and a lot of the time they focus on matters that are long dealt
with in most developed countries and that blind people faced 50 years
or more ago.  These books are not very encouraging and realistic to
describe some aspects of blindness to sighted students who are
studying to work with us and I am glad that these students have the
chance to visit our school a few times a year, do their observations
there and hold a few lessons themselves. Braille and cane mobility are
never taught to them at all and orientation and mobility doesn't even
exist as a choice of study, but I was informed that they are making
braille courses mendatory at the university now. As soon as I found
out about this, I knew that my next task was to somehow do something
to help them, so I started looking up for noncopyright materials to
braille for them and asking editors of magazines and articles to allow
me to braille their materials, hoping that this will help those
students learn and enjoy reading braille and learn lots more about
different aspects of blindness and what life is like for us. I am
brailling everything by hand with my Perkins brailler, because even if
I find magazines I can pass onto them, they are all in grade two, so I
am making everything in grade one for them. If anyone else would like
to help me do this, has their articles or knows of good articles and
people that would be willing to share theirs with those students or
could even provide me with special education course or other materials
in print, audio or electronic format that could help them in their
learning, feel free to email me at:
 adrijana.prokopenko at gmail.com
 so we can talk about it. We would all appreciate your help.

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