American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Convention 2020 NOPBC BOARD MEETING
by Graciela L. Olivo
2020 Distinguished Educator of Blind Students
Introduction by Carlton Anne Cook Walker: Each year the National Federation of the Blind and the NOPBC honor a distinguished teacher of blind children with a very special award. Our 2020 Distinguished Educator is Graciela L. Olivo of Texas. Her story speaks to the experience of not necessarily knowing that we can do a thing, but making it work anyway. Welcome, Graciela!
Good afternoon, NFB members and parents of blind children. First of all I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the following persons for choosing me as this year's Distinguished Educator of Blind Students. My thanks go out to Mark Riccobono, Carla McQuillan, Carlton Anne Cook Walker, Kimberly Banks, Norma Crosby, Liz Wisecarver, Daniel Martinez (my former student, who initiated my nomination), and to our local NFB chapter in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Thanks to all of you for thinking so highly of me. I'm humbled and honored to be part of the NFB. I'm grateful for this prestigious award, as well as for the opportunity to serve others through the National Federation of the Blind. I only ask that I be permitted to continue working with the blind and visually impaired for many years to come.
My philosophy for working with blind and visually impaired students centers on education. The education that I give my students allows them to compete alongside their sighted peers and to be able to leave a legacy to others who follow in their footsteps. I've seen my students forge ahead and make use of their knowledge and opportunities. This has been done through the active participation of the students themselves and of their parents and family members, leading them to become a community of participants. They participate through role playing, discussions, reading aloud to others, making use of experiences in Braille skills and low-vision techniques, and participating in organizations such as clubs, civic groups, and other endeavors, including the National Federation of the Blind.
What I have taught my students has been magnified a million times over for students and adults outside of this country. For me those students have been in Mexico. I assumed that blind people in Mexico knew basic Braille, technology, and orientation and mobility, but that's not always true. You start from the beginning. Assume nothing. That's reality.
When Carlton Anne Cook Walker asked me for the title of my speech, I said, "Virtual Reality Versus Reality." How's this? you say. I never thought of teaching blind students. I was teaching home economics, food service skills, to middle-school students when I was approached about a blind student requesting to be in my class. What??? No way!!! I don't want to work with blind kids! I'm not trained to work with them!
This blind student's TVI told me that he had every right to be in my class and that I had the responsibility, as a vocational teacher, to teach him just as I was teaching all the other students in the class. By the time our conversation was over, we were both a mess. She walked out of my classroom crying, and I went over to the principal's office crying my eyes out. I told him there was no way this was ever going to happen and that I would rather quit than do this.
The principal calmed me down and said we could talk tomorrow. When I came into school the next day, right before me as I signed in was a poster that read, "University of Texas teachers of the blind will be coming down to the Number One Service Center and will be offering classes for educators to become certified teachers of the blind and visually impaired."
This notice really made me angry! I hadn't seen it before. I approached the principal saying, "You did this on purpose!" He told me he hadn't seen the notice, but that maybe it was a sign from a higher power. He asked me if I believed in God and said that He has plans for us that sometimes we don't pay attention to. He told me that maybe we could see what the plan was for me. We could work it out together if I was willing to do so.
That afternoon the principal got me the information I needed. That was my entry into the world of blindness.
The information stated that I would need to go to Edinburgh, which is a city about forty-five miles away, to take classes every other weekend. Classes would start on Fridays and end on Sunday afternoons. This meant I would have to leave my classes early on Fridays and get a substitute. It was all too much for me to handle, but my principal made the arrangements for me to be out and told me not to stress too much. It all meant traveling back and forth, which meant gas money. Times were hard, and money was tight in my family. My travel and staying at a hotel were later paid by the university. Eventually the university provided my books and registration at no cost. Things started falling into place. I really couldn't believe it!
After all my coursework was done, I got a call from the special ed department of my school district saying they were in need of my services. Reluctantly I left home economics, but I've never looked back. This was definitely my calling. You do what the Lord has planned for you, not what you want! This is reality.
I've learned that visual impairments come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. My oldest student was a ninety-five-year-old woman. Her son called me because he had heard that I might be able to help. He didn't know how to handle certain problems that his parents were experiencing. He invited me to visit their home and see if I could come up with ideas.
One problem was that his parents had an upstairs bedroom. When his father would go downstairs, he'd turn off the light. The stairwell was painted dark brown, and since it was an old home, there were no handrails for his mother to use. When his mother wanted to go downstairs, she had trouble seeing the steps. The light switch was downstairs, and her husband was extremely hard of hearing. He couldn't hear her calling him to turn on the light for her.
We added lighting to the staircase, moving furniture around so his mom could make use of the sunlight. We ordered some magnification devices, as she still liked to read her own mail. They were easy things to take care of.
BELL Academy® is an ongoing summer activity that allows me to put into practice my skills in several academic areas. It lets me work with parents as well as the children. It's been great working with NFB teachers, exchanging ideas, and working with the students from our surrounding areas. For many of them this was the first time they had participated in such a program. Sometimes parents need ideas about nonvisual ways to present a skill such as tying shoes. Sometimes they need help dealing with their guilty feelings about not allowing their child to be more independent.
Our local NFB chapter has initiated a program called Cambiando Vidas, which means Changing Lives. We've gotten the chance to go to Mexico and work with blind adults there. The program is a means of presenting skills and experiences that many of these adults have not had previously, doing it all in Spanish. This experience has exposed me to a different way of teaching. Since these are adults who have many skills and needs not related to their blindness, it makes it even tougher.
In the United States it's easy to fall back on equipment that we take for granted, such as the Perkins Brailler. Braillers are extremely hard to come by in Mexico. Learning to read and write Braille, grilling a tortilla with cheese, cutting up fruit for a fruit salad, orientation and mobility skills—much of this was just not happening! There is still the widespread mentality of "poor little blind man or woman." And of course we have to deal with the macho syndrome: "I'm a man, and a man doesn't help out in any way. That's why my mother, my wife, and my sister are there. They can do this for me." Mind you, this has been by far the hardest area of teaching that I've had to deal with, trying to break those barriers. But that's reality.
Working in Mexico with blind or visually impaired persons is not the only bridge I've had to cross in my teaching career. My husband is on the Good Neighbors Settlement House board, where we both help out as volunteers. Good Neighbors is a nonprofit organization that provides the homeless of Brownsville, Texas, with food and essential items. It also has helped asylum seekers coming in from other countries, such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Cuba.
At one point my husband called me to come speak to the parent of a young blind child. The family was there at Good Neighbors, waiting for a family member in Dallas to send them a bus ticket. I spoke to the mother and found out that she had left El Salvador to try to find a better life for this one child. She had left her three other children with their dad back in El Salvador, maybe never to see them again. I asked her what she thought she would be doing for this child. She started to cry, and she told me she had no idea. Now she was far away from home, and with a scared child.
I talked to her about getting hold of a school district once she got to Dallas. I told her to let them know that her child is blind and would need help right away. She was so grateful! She said she felt a great weight removed from her shoulders. She knew that her child would benefit from being brought to the United States, even if she only stayed for a little while. Now, that's reality!
Education of blind children can happen in any way and anywhere. That's exactly what happened this year with the COVID-19 situation. Students went from face-to-face classrooms to virtual online classes. This was a first for me and for my students. The most interesting part was teaching a virtual online class with a student located in Mexico. She had wanted to be with her mother who had been deported a couple of months before. Teaching a Nemeth tutorial class online to a totally blind student is hard enough, but doing it virtually, going back and forth about where her dots were located in her Nemeth Code problems was a real eye opener! There were times we had to cancel class because there was no WiFi—you can't count on it in Mexico. Sometimes we couldn't meet because her family was dealing with problems with the cartel. I'm thankful that we were able to finish up the year and finish the Nemeth tutorials. I found that we were able to confront obstacles and face problems head-on, here or anywhere, using any platform. That's reality!
My reality in my career of almost forty years as a TVI has been one of adapting to new challenges. I've gone from adapting to being a home economics teacher to adapting to being a teacher of the blind and visually impaired. I've had to adapt to teaching adults in a second language, using technology and other resources that are completely foreign to them. Most recently I have adapted to virtual learning in an era of global pandemic.
Mostly I've learned to adapt to one undeniable fact. It's not about doing what I want, it's about being where I'm needed in God's plan.
I'd like to finish by reading a quote from Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus from the American Association of Retired Persons. "The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live." Thank you again to everyone I mentioned at the beginning and to everyone here who took the time to listen to my journey. I can't thank you enough for the recognition! I look forward to continuing my journey in helping the blind and visually impaired. Good afternoon.