Educational Issues for Blind Students

1
Educational Issues for Blind Students

• Created by Matt Maurer, Ph.D.
• Butler University

2
How are Blind Children Educated?

• Three main ways
• State residential school
• Regular school with an itinerant teacher
• Regular school with a resident specialist

3
How Might You Encounter a Blind Student?

• As the regular teacher with support of an
  itinerant
• In a building with a resource room for blind
  students
• The childs past
• Home issues
• Past school issues
• Residential
• Other district

4
Blindness Language

• What we call the Blind
• Visually impaired
• Visually challenged
• AKA Low vision
• Blind is a PC term
• Things we fear saying
• Look and see words
• Vision as in insight
• Blind as in unaware

5
Organizing Concepts for Teaching a Blind Student

• The deficit model is strong here
• The disability is not tragic for most blind
  people, it is their normal
• Blindness has real limitations, AND they are
  minimal (think difficulty, not impossibility)

• Limitations

6
Blind Orienting Ideas

• The blind comprise organizational joiners and
  non-joiners
• The organized blind see themselves as an
  oppressed minority
• Braille is often their print medium
• The blind tend to be technology early adopters

7
The Most Important Thing I Have Learned Working
with Blind Children

• Blind children do not want to be pitied
• Blind children want to be like sighted peers
• It is both easy and common to enable dependent
  behavior
• Many developmentally delayed children are
  mislabeled MMH
• Many blind children are very reflective
• Kids are kids (talents are lurking there, and we
  must find them)

8
The Early Development of Blind Children

• Denial and Isolation
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

• The process for a parent of a blind child is
  often much like death
• Blind children are often asked to sit and wait
• Now, dont touch, can further disable

9
Literacy Issues for Blind Children

• Braille is critical
• Large print is over-used
• Technology will replace Braille when we abandon
  reading altogether
• Grade I and II Braille
• Talking books (Daisy standard)

10
Organizations Serving the Needs of Blind Children

• The National Federation of the Blind (NFB),
  parents divisions, and state affiliates
• American Council of the Blind (ACB) and state
  affiliates
• The American Printing House for the Blind (APH)
• The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

AFB
11
So What Should a Teacher Do?

• Keep the mind and body active
• Remember they see with their hands (keep those
  hands looking)
• Continue to challenge our tendency to enable
  dependence
• Maintain appropriately high expectations

12
What Do Really Great Teachers Do?

• Highly relational
• Know individual kids (talents, background,
  individual preference)
• Subject matter experts and zealots
• Tough
• Generous with time
• Good explainers
• Know blindness techniques

13
A Final Reminder

• The more they are different, the more kids are
  just kids.

Treat them like kids, not like disabled kids!!