[Reader-list] Tips for Classroom Teachers With a Visually Impaired Student

[Chandni Parekh]

http://psychologynews.posterous.com/tips-for-classroom-teachers-with-a-visually-i

Excerpts:

Your visually impaired child will not see the way you see, but let me assure
you that he or she will see. You will be amazed at the way this child views
the world.  You will learn to slip things into his hands so that he might
“see” the rock or the coin or even the caterpillar with his fingers. Those
will be hands you’ll never forget, hands that reach out to know life as the
sighted world says it is. Hands that appreciate soft and smooth, rough and
prickly as only the blind can. Hands that one day shyly sneak to touch the
bracelet on your arm or the plastic clip in your hair. Hands that will
produce, in time, a magical language all their own. A language of raised
dots which will open doors for this child. Doors like reading and writing,
and perhaps college or even graduate school one day. Braille will become a
regular part of your classroom. Embrace it. All of your students will enjoy
learning a little bit about it. Teach them to value learning differences
rather than fear them. Treat the braille writer and the other VI equipment
with no more special attention than you treat pencils or computers. They are
tools.

This child who will enter your room with a cane, and whose eyes may not look
just like your eyes, and whose materials will have to be different, needs
you. She does not need you to baby her, or to do everything for her. She
especially does not need you to point out her differences to the class on a
regular basis by offering her a special invitation to do things or an extra
chance before you sign her behavior sheet...because she’s blind. She does
need you to train your class to be helpers  when she asks for help, or  when
help is appropriate. She needs you to model for her peers the ways in which
she should be treated. She needs it to be O. K. to be blind in a classroom
full of sighted students, because this child will live in a world full of
sighted people for a lifetime... and that lifetime cannot wait to start
until after she leaves your class.

You will probably feel stressed at times. That is a great sign! That means
that you are an effective teacher who cares about children, who seeks to be
the best teacher you can be, and who truly desires that this special needs
student be successful in your regular ed classroom.