American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Summer 2024 TEACHING AND LEARNING
How Non-Primary Languages Can Enhance Cane Travel Instruction
by Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury
From the Editor: Justin Salisbury is a graduate student and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin/Madison. He works to bring the knowledge of the National Federation of the Blind into research, policy, and university training spaces.
The prevailing or dominant culture teaches many Americans to fear or feel uncomfortable around languages other than English. Sometimes members of the dominant culture fear losing control when faced with communication that they cannot understand. In recent centuries, English has become the dominant or primary language of North America and the Hawaiian Islands. English is the primary language of instruction in most schools in the United States. In this article I will discuss how non-primary languages can be an asset in cane travel instruction and, more broadly, in adjustment-to-blindness training.
As a person of mixed race, I feel an inherent commitment to embrace languages and cultures beyond the primary or dominant ones in my teaching. We are not here to assimilate people by stripping them of their home cultures. We aim to facilitate an emotional adjustment to blindness, where students come to think of themselves as first-class citizens. We try to help them become more confident and shed any shame that they may feel about their blindness. The relationships between students and instructors are important parts of this process, so support for using a non-primary language for instruction can be helpful in the student's emotional adjustment. I cannot think of a time when suppressing a student's identity would be productive for their emotional adjustment.
In this article, I will discuss the use of what I am calling "non-primary languages of instruction." I could not find a technical term for this, so I am attempting to coin my own term to communicate what I want to convey. Even when I consulted with professors who specialize in multilingual education, I came up short on finding a term for this concept. Consider non-primary languages of instruction to mean "languages other than the primary language of instruction."
For my first full-time job after graduate school, I taught cane travel at a state-operated training center in Honolulu, Hawaií. Hawaií is a beautiful mixture of many Asian and Pacific Island cultures. This cultural blending has given rise to some really cool innovations, such as mixed martial arts. Honolulu has neighborhoods with varieties of primary languages, and in some neighborhoods speaking English is very uncommon. Honolulu helped me become more comfortable in places where I could not speak the primary language and appreciate the opportunities created by non-primary languages.
During cane travel lessons instructors commonly go out in the community and have interactions with bystanders. If a non-primary language is spoken by everyone, it may be useful to communicate a concept that is best expressed in that language. Of course, when only one person speaks the non-primary language, they cannot use it to communicate with anyone else.
Let us consider situations in which two of the three people involved (bystander, instructor, student) speak the non-primary language and the other person does not.
Consider a scenario where I am teaching a student who speaks Chuukese, a language from Micronesia. We are in a community where Chuukese is widely spoken. I, the instructor, don't speak a word of Chuukese. I can communicate with my student in English, and English is the primary language of instruction at our training center. The student wants to ask someone for directions, which is appropriate for the lesson. The student finds a bystander and gets their attention. From the person's accent in responding, the student quickly realizes that the bystander speaks Chuukese. The bystander seems to have a hard time giving directions in English, so the student switches to Chuukese to communicate. The student gets directions, and we move on with the lesson.
In that situation, the student must be able to take on a slightly bigger role than would be required if I, the instructor, spoke Chuukese, too. They must be able to use their discretion in knowing what to ask, how to ask it, and what kinds of answers will provide sufficient information. Depending on the student's level and what we want to accomplish that day, I may ask them to repeat the directions to me or recount the conversation they had with the bystander, translating it back into a language I speak. We may then discuss parts of the directions that seem to need greater clarity. This exercise can show me how the student thinks, and I also may just want to know where we are about to go. On the other hand, if I do not ask, I show the student that I trust their judgment. Even if I do not expect them to understand directions at this point in training, it may be valuable for me to allow them the possibility of making mistakes. Mistakes create learning opportunities as well. If I do not trust my student to be honest with me about what they discussed with the bystander, then we have bigger problems than needing directions! A trusting relationship between student and instructor is always important.
Consider a different scenario. An instructor and bystander speak the non-primary language, but the student does not. Sometimes it is helpful for the instructor to gather information about the environment without the student knowing what is going on. If I have an objective for the student for that day, and if I do not have complete information about the environment, I may want to ask someone about a nearby construction site or a place that might sell ice cream for a surprise treat. It also can be less distracting for the student if they don't understand what I'm saying, especially if it's not relevant to what the student is doing. If I want to duck out to grab a cup of coffee from a 7-Eleven, the student doesn't need to be bothered with me asking someone about directions to the store.
When bystanders jump in to offer unwanted help, I do not advocate for instructors to use non-primary languages to intervene. Regardless of the language, students need to learn how to decline unwanted help. On the other hand, we do not want to allow students to become so blizzarded with unwanted help that they lose track of the lesson and shut down. If I have to say something to the bystanders, I will debrief with the student about that when it's appropriate. We debrief at the end of every lesson, so that space is built into our structure.
I once had a student who could not manage to walk down a street without engaging in side conversations with other people. He had been a successful used-car salesman before going blind, and he loved meeting people and asking them to tell him what was around him. This is a good skill, but he needed to learn to walk on his own without talking to everyone. He only spoke English. To help him focus differently, one of my colleagues recommended that I plan many of his lessons in the Chinatown neighborhood of Honolulu, where it would be much harder for him to talk to other people. It was a brilliant idea, and it worked. He quickly focused on walking according to the directions I had given him, and he advanced as a traveler as a result.
Consider a scenario where the student and instructor speak the non-primary language, but the bystander does not. This situation allows the student and instructor to communicate without the bystander understanding and attempting to intervene in the conversation. Sometimes well-meaning bystanders will attempt to participate in the interactions between instructor and student, as if they know how the cane travel instructor is supposed to perform. To avoid this interference, the student and instructor may switch to their non-primary language.
In addition, the student and instructor can discuss interactions with bystanders without them understanding the conversation; therefore, the student is responsible for interacting with the bystander while the instructor is there only to coach the student. For example, suppose the student asks for directions from a bystander on the street and their instructor knows that the bystander is giving the student flawed information. The instructor can speak to the student in their shared non-primary language about the concerns with what the bystander is saying and guide the student in how to speak to the bystander in the primary language.
I hope that the main takeaway from these scenarios is a broader idea that asymmetry in languages can be an asset to instruction, not a deficit. If you treat it as a deficit, it will definitely become a deficit. If you treat it as an asset, it can become an asset. Blind students are constantly told that they have deficits, but non-primary languages offer a clear opportunity as assets. Let us find creative ways to embrace non-primary languages when they present themselves to us. It may take practice, and you may not get it right the first time. Everything in a student's experience is part of their training; when we open up our instruction, we open up the student's world.