Field Classes in Residential Adjustment to Blindness Training Programs

By Justin M. Salisbury, MA, NOMC, NCRTB, NCUEB

Justin M. Salisbury is an Orientation and Mobility Therapist for the State of Hawai‘i, Department of Human Services, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Services for the Blind Branch (Ho`opono), Adjustment Section, located in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Abstract

Residential adjustment to blindness training programs operate on a schedule similar to a standard full-time work schedule. Occasionally, students and staff break from the routine schedule to venture out into the community for field classes, which contribute to the adjustment to blindness training process in many ways. There is a widespread idea that learning comes only from labor rather than from leisure, but Structured Discovery training centers have found ways to incorporate experiential learning into field classes. Informal structure enables more personally relevant learning. Students can build their skills and reconnect with old pastimes while strengthening their sense of normality and connection with society. Field classes push students out of their comfort zones and require them to be flexible as they problem-solve. More advanced students have opportunities to take on leadership roles and role model for newer students. Students and the public alike gain knowledge and resources from their encounters.

Keywords

Blindness, training, orientation and mobility, rehabilitation teaching, field trip

Introduction

In residential adjustment to blindness training programs, students come to class every day like a normal work schedule (Altman, 2012; Omvig, 2002). Most days follow a routine schedule, allowing students to get into a rhythm of attending one class after another. Occasionally, however, students and staff will break from the routine schedule to venture out into the community for an extended period of training activities. Generically, these activities may be called field classes. If a training center is to use a different name to describe these activities, it is important that the name remain one that implies a sense of educational gain so that all parties involved take them seriously as opportunities for learning and growth. They are not simply recreation and leisure programs. Field classes exceed the demands of ordinary classes and may call upon skills developed in any combination of classes. Since the learning and growth in training are holistic, it is not necessary or even practical to reduce the benefit to an individual student into line items or a rigid checklist, but the key is the overall sense of empowerment. There are many components of field classes, many of which are outlined herein to promote a proper understanding of the benefits they can provide and how to design and execute them most effectively. It may be impossible to dissect field classes in an exhaustive way, but this article can offer an introduction to some core components.

Background

Vocational rehabilitation agencies are constantly seeking ways to minimize their expenditures (Pierce, 2003; Shevlin, 1999). Frequently, financial gatekeepers in vocational rehabilitation agencies are not experts in the blindness field, and many of them are new to the concepts involved in adjustment to blindness training. Today, vocational rehabilitation has become focused on measurable skill gains in accordance with the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (Ige, Wilkins, Tsutsui, & Tasaka, 2016). If field class experiences are identified as purely recreational in nature, or leisure, they may be considered one of the lowest priorities in vocational rehabilitation services. If they are understood for their role as a valuable component of a system producing an emotional adjustment to blindness for consumers, leading to increased independence and improved employment outcomes, then they can be valued appropriately.

The National Blindness Professional Certification Board (2018) explains that adjustment to blindness training anchored in the Structured Discovery model emphasizes experiential learning through non-visual techniques, problem-solving strategies, and confidence-building experiences. Training typically lasts six to nine months because, even though skills and techniques can be learned quickly, the emotional adjustment to blindness, the glue of the entire process, requires this time to congeal (Salisbury, 2017). Structured Discovery employs much Socratic questioning and the role modeling of non-visual techniques, which allows instructors to correct misconceptions about blindness while demonstrating their utility (Altman, 2015). Structured Discovery training is constantly focused on instilling lessons about attitudes to build self-efficacy, self-esteem, and hope. Training must also address public misconceptions, the largest environmental barrier which blind people face. Combatting low expectations and misperceptions about blindness requires immersion in support networks, such as the National Federation of the Blind, individual self-advocacy, collective action, and creative problem-solving to enhance these mechanisms. Blind people in adjustment to blindness training must finally be given the opportunity to give back, to allow the world to benefit from the contributions which they have to offer, as part of their claim to first-class membership in society (Salisbury, 2018b). Practitioners operating under the Structured Discovery model undergo years of concerted training and honor a continuous commitment to self-examination and growth in all of these areas.

Mobily and Rudzinski (2017) identify a binary concept of work and leisure and discuss its consequences for labeling, stereotyping, and stigmatizing people with disabilities. Leisure has evolved as a stigmatized class of human activity, as if it exists as a mutually exclusive alternative to work. Because disability is often associated, correctly or incorrectly, with the inability to work, the leisure of people with disabilities has become stigmatized. The unsightly beggar caricature attached the acts of loitering and loafing to people with disabilities (Mobily & Rudzinski, 2017; Schweik, 2009). Able-bodied citizens benefit from stigma management strategies. Children, those currently employed, and retired people can justify and legitimize their leisure with seriousness, employment, or both. The unemployed majority of people with disabilities are not afforded these justifications. Leisure often excludes people with disabilities because of their inability to function without alternative techniques. As a manifestation of equal rights, inclusive leisure confronts stigma and can help change the general perception of leisure. It dissolves the demarcation between able-bodied and disabled, replacing it with diversity and appreciation of differences. Inclusive leisure also challenges the validity of the binary concept of work versus leisure. Earnestness, a career-like calling, and utility, which are characteristics apparent in work, enable serious leisure as a vehicle to transition from simple inclusion to the widespread recognition of the value of leisure.

Molinsky and Hahn (2016) discuss the benefits of short-term business travel. Traveling anywhere provides an opportunity to step out of one's comfort zone, and stretching one's comfort zone on short-term business travel can boost one's confidence. People are often able to maximize their creativity and cognitive flexibility when spending time in a different setting. Encountering new things in a different setting, even as simple as a different traffic pattern, can expand a person's mind and open him or her up to new possibilities. When people are forced to solve problems in new settings with new demands, they are forced to experiment and innovate. Traveling can lead people to discover new innovations and new ways of operating, which they can bring back to their normal business environment. Many of these ideas apply to field classes in a decent residential adjustment to blindness training program. Enhanced creativity and cognitive flexibility help a student learn and grow on the path to empowerment. Since students in adjustment to blindness training must learn so much about problem-solving (Hill, 1997; Maurer, 2011; Maurer, Bell, Woods, & Allen, 2006; Mettler, 1995/2008; Mino, 2011; Morais et. al, 1997), short-term travel can be quite helpful.

Stone and Petrick (2013) composed a literature review on the educational benefits of travel experiences. Some literature indicates that travel is inherently educational because learning from and interpreting experiences broadens the mind (Casella, 1997; LaTorre, 2011; Steves, 2009). Shoemaker (1994) found that learning new things and personal enrichment were motivators and desired benefits of travel. Werry (2008) documented a widespread perception that learning inherently came from labor rather than leisure. Ideally, field classes in residential adjustment to blindness programs at Structured Discovery training centers involve both hard work and leisure. Mitchell (1998) discusses learning as a lifelong process which is often informal. Adjustment to blindness training should cover a range of areas of real life to help students understand emotionally that they can still participate fully in all areas of real life. While this includes vocational applications, a person with feelings of control and choice in life in general will be more empowered and more successful in his or her chosen career.

The principles of experiential learning and transformative learning can connect travel and education, as demonstrated by Stone and Petrick (2013). To explain how travel is a learning process, it is valuable to consider the experiential learning model. Knowledge and skills that a person learns in one situation can help them to understand and react to subsequent experiences (Dewey, 1938). Experiential learning is meaningful discovery, which occurs when learners discover knowledge on their own through perceptual experiences and insight, usually as a result of personal experience (Boydell, 1976). Kolb (1984) provided a model of experiential learning, combining experience, perception, cognition, and behavior to create learning; a core component of this model is reflection. Travel and discovery experience creates a context in which the traveler can reflect upon the experience, thereby creating learning (Mouton 2002). All requirements for experiential learning can occur through travel (Stone & Petrick, 2013). Novelli and Burns (2010) found that both visitor and hosts benefited from experiential learning in a study of tourism students visiting the Gambia. Weeden, Woolley, and Lester (2011) found that a cruise field trip produced experiential learning benefits for hospitality and tourism students, including understanding cruise ship operations through observation, insight, and reflection. Directors of residential adjustment to blindness training programs can incorporate these principles of experiential learning through travel as they plan and execute field classes.

In a literature review on field trips in education, Behrendt and Franklin (2014) found that students who directly participate during a field trip experience develop a more positive attitude about the content of the trip, which can even have career choice implications. This paper also examines literature about experiential learning activities and field trips, and the roles of classroom teachers before, during, and after field trips. A field trip can also be called an instructional trip, school excursion, or school journey. Krepel and DuVall (1981) define field trips as a school or class trip with an educational intent, in which students interact with the setting, displays, and exhibits to gain an experiential connection to the ideas, concepts, and subject matter. Tali and Morag (2009) defined field trips as student experiences outside of the classroom at interactive locations designed for educational purposes. Michie (1998) explains that field trips tend to carry some or all of the following five purposes: providing firsthand experience, stimulating interest and motivation in a subject, adding relevance to learning and interrelationships, strengthening observation and perception skills, and promoting personal/social development. Ideally, each student has an organic experience and draws personally relevant meaning from the experience. As students assimilate and accommodate new understanding and cognition, they come to realize how previous course content is relevant (Lei, 2010). This reinforcement is equally as beneficial in adjustment to blindness training. Field trips are experiential, authentic social events which engender a new way of knowing an object, concept, or operation (Scarce, 1997). Quality experiences develop students' interest, which leads to deeper learning (Bell, Lewenstein, & Shouse, 2009). An example occurred during a recent field class of a Structured Discovery program, where students and staff visited an 800-year-old fully operational sustainable aquaculture site. At the end of the field class, the facilitator offered that students and staff were welcome to take as many coconuts as they pleased. These coconuts had been trimmed from their trees but were still in the husks. The most effective way to determine if a coconut is still good while still in the husk is to shake it and listen for coconut water inside. This is not a visual technique, and the visual alternative to this technique is much less efficient. Such an experience can help reinforce a student’s emotional belief in nonvisual techniques. Students in adjustment to blindness training must be in a rhythm of learning, which will help them learn new things both during and after training as they enter or re-enter the job market, find new employment, and engage meaningfully in their new place of employment.

Informal Structure

Formal field trips involve planned, well-orchestrated experiences where students follow a documented format and a choreographed agenda (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). Government agencies, museums, and businesses are examples of venues which tend to offer formal experiential learning activities and programs, usually supplying staff to facilitate. Because of the formal structure, little opportunity exists for students to have an individualized experience because of the minimization of opportunities for student interaction and personal connection to the experience (Rennie, 2007). Formal field trips offer less reward for less work with greater control, which may appeal to instructors but have less impact on student growth and learning.

Informal field trips involve less structure and offer students somewhat more control and choice regarding their activities or environment (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). In an informal education setting, students are able to showcase their own knowledge and understanding (Rennie, 2007). Informal learning environments allow students to feel more at ease (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). Individualized focus, non-competitive and unassessed activities, voluntary and unforced interaction, and encouragement of social interaction create an intrinsically motivated student (Rennie, 2007). This encourages students to think about their connection to the local and national communities (Krepel & DuVall, 1981), and feeling connected to society is an important part of the adjustment to blindness (Omvig, 2002).

There are many ways that a Structured Discovery training center can provide that informal structure. A training center can go on a field class to the mall and have many different choices of businesses to visit and places to eat. If a training center goes out to eat somewhere, the group can choose a restaurant that has many options, perhaps new and unfamiliar foods. Sometimes, parts of the student body and staff may deviate from a plan with meal selection, where part of the group may choose a hamburger restaurant instead of a sushi bar. This gives students the feeling of power to make their own choices, a freedom which blind people must develop (Jernigan, 1993). If students visit a corn maze or, in Hawaii, a pineapple maze, they have the chance to travel through it in different directions and choose their own paths. They need not all follow one student. If they do, however, it can be meaningful to take turns being the leader so that each student can experience the process of making a decision to lead a group. One Structured Discovery training center takes an overnight trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans (Laughrey, 1994). The center breaks out into smaller groups of staff and students, about a half dozen total in each group, to explore different parts of the French Quarter or, for example, for students within a group to fan out to browse different parts of the French Market once the group decides to stop inside it. Not all parts of the field class must have an informal structure, but at least some parts of it should.

Skill Development

Students can come to develop new skills when challenged by new environments. Tasks outside the scope of daily life at a training center, such as bowling or navigating a corn or pineapple maze, are likely to require different applications of alternative techniques from what are practiced during that normal daily routine. These activities may also demonstrate to students the transferability of skills to help them come to understand, both intellectually and emotionally, that their existing skills are transferrable to a variety of different settings. For example, when students go on a hike in an off-road environment, they will still employ cane travel skills and techniques which they developed in the built environment at the training center. They will still arc their canes to cover their bodies and still react when their canes find new obstacles. They will be able to problem-solve for these new settings without having an instructor break down every little detail as if it were the first time using their canes. They will not need to be taught how to use a cane all over again. This is because the skills and techniques which they have been learning in training are transferrable to this new environment, a message which the students must discuss in the debriefing process.

Students can also have experiences where a task during a field class helps them to better understand how to use a certain alternative technique during their normal classes at the training center and, more importantly, during their normal activities in life. For example, one technique for aligning oneself to face the pins on the end of a lane at a bowling alley is by listening to the sounds of pins on a neighboring lane, which is somewhat similar to the process of listening to traffic sounds when aligning to make a standard street crossing following parallel traffic. A person can listen for the sounds of crashing pins on a lane next to his or hers, and then extrapolate the triangular distance and direction to get an idea of where his or her target pins are. The student need not use the terms ‘extrapolating triangular distance’ in order to exercise the concept but can come to understand the concept better because of a field class experience. Additionally, this situation can offer a difference with street crossing alignment in that the gutters of the lane will dependably define the edges of the path on which the ball must travel; whereas, ideally, a curb cut is not used for alignment. A cane travel instructor and student can discuss this difference to help the student understand why not to use the direction of a ramp or curb cut to align for a street crossing. Of course, the curb cut or ramp has the potential to aim a traveler in multiple different directions. Such an experience enables frank discussions about the standardization of bowling lane structure versus the variability in crosswalk design.

Stepping Out of Comfort Zones

At least some of the field classes should push students out of their comfort zones. This is an important part of training in general, but a daily routine allows students to develop some sense of a comfort zone with training itself. Field classes provide an extra opportunity to push students to do new and different activities outside their comfort zone, such as parasailing, rock climbing, or zip-lining. Aubrey and MacLeod (1994) found these types of activities to be helpful in a job readiness program. The willingness to approach new situations and activities outside one’s comfort zone is generally an element of job readiness. Luckner (1989) found that outdoor adventure programs helped to internalize locus of control for people with disabilities and recommended them for vocational rehabilitation programs. Hart and Silka (1994) found that activities which push people outside their comfort zones can help build self-efficacy. When field classes help students to build their self-efficacy, it becomes easier for them to step out of their comfort zones again afterward.

One Structured Discovery program makes an annual trip, lasting one five-day week, to a camp run by a YMCA in a rural part of its county (DVR Ho`opono Services for the Blind Branch, 2017; Tsai, 2004). This camp generally involves a high-ropes course, a hike, beach travel, and other activities aimed at building confidence and getting people out of their comfort zones. The camp is not exclusively set up for blind people, but the camp staff have become somewhat familiar with the training center because of the annual trip. Since every student comes to training with his or her own set of experiences, areas of expertise, and areas of discomfort, any of the activities could stretch students out of their comfort zones. While one student could be most out of his or her comfort zone on the high ropes course, for another, it could be beach travel or maybe the process of temporarily sharing a cabin with a new group of people. At this camp, groups of students and staff also take turns at mealtime to run kitchen patrol duty, where groups of about three, blended staff and students, distribute and sequester dishes and food items, as well as lead the group in cleaning the area afterward. This activity can stretch some others out of their comfort zones. Since staff participate in these activities, too, it is noteworthy that students and staff stretch themselves together, which brings the benefit of shared experience (Hill, 1997) and benefits both students and staff individually. By sharing these experiences, the staff are role modeling for the students by demonstrating that they are not asking the students to undertake challenges that they are not willing to undertake themselves.

Flexibility and Problem-Solving

With classes outside the normal routine, there is always potential for improvisation and problem-solving in order to respond to surprises along the way. Students and staff may need to adapt and improvise to overcome a momentary hurdle (Mino, 2011). A blind person must have strong problem-solving skills in order to be an independent traveler (Mettler, 1995/2008; Perla & O'Donnell, 2004). For example, transportation systems do not always run on schedule (Marinov, Şahin, Ricci, & Vasic-Franklin, 2013). Not if, but when buses do not run on schedule, training centers may need to change their transportation plans in order to be somewhere by a certain time or to change what happens at a certain destination because of different time constraints. This situation creates an opportunity for the students to problem-solve by designing alternative travel arrangements, which may involve using existing knowledge of bus schedules or calling the bus company. Problem-solving approaches may vary. Blind travelers must be ready to work with the environment presented, such as poorly-maintained sidewalks, irresponsible drivers, or noisy construction environments (Mino, 2011). Real-world situations with real-world challenges are a vital component of Structured Discovery Cane Travel (Altman & Cutter, 2004; Mino, 2011). Flexibility is an important job readiness skill (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006; National Research Council, 2012), and field classes always provide the potential need for flexibility. Thus, field classes provide a context for students to encounter organic problems and learn how to problem-solve effectively and flexibly in non-routine environments.

Student Self-Concept of Normality

Often, when someone becomes blind, before he or she receives adjustment to blindness training, he or she discontinues engaging in many of the mainstream activities of daily life (Bhagotra, Sharma, & Raina, 2008; Carroll, 1961). Simple recreational activities, such as attending sporting events, watching movies at a cinema, or touring historical landmarks are often identified to be off-limits or to have lost value for a blind person. Students in training must come to realize that these experiences still hold value and that blind people do belong in these spaces. A training center is supposed to be located in a busy urban area, making it easier for students to truly embrace being a part of society (Omvig, 2002).

Allowing Students to Reunite with Traditions and Pastimes

People tend to have hobbies or pastimes which they enjoy. When a person goes blind, it is common to give up those pastimes, or at least many of them (Carroll, 1961; Tigges, 2004). Field classes can provide an opportunity for students to participate in those pastimes again. This can help a blind person regain a full sense of self because a person’s ability to engage in his or her favorite pastimes is an important part of his or her identity (Robison et. al, 2009). Field classes can afford students the opportunity to engage in certain traditions, such as holiday shopping, which also help a person to feel whole and complete. One Structured Discovery training center makes an annual holiday shopping trip to a large outdoor shopping mall in early December. Students are welcome to shop for friends and family outside the training center, or to buy items for themselves, but they also must buy a gift as a secret Santa for a classmate, whose name they selected in Braille from a random drawing. Students are able to employ many different alternative techniques in the process of shopping and navigating the busy and crowded shopping mall, but they also come to feel in their hearts that such holiday traditions are not off-limits to them as blind people. Another Structured Discovery program takes a trip in early December to cut down Christmas trees: one for the front lobby, one for the dining room, and one for the activity center at the student apartment complex. Certainly students learn or practice techniques for accomplishing certain tasks, but they learn to participate actively in holiday traditions. Traditions help a person feel connected to and familiar with the world.

Leadership Opportunities for Students

Field classes can be used as opportunities to allow students to take leadership. Instructors can put students in charge of leading the group for certain parts of the field class or even the entire field class. At one comprehensive training center, each student must select, plan, organize, and lead a group social outing (Kozlowski, 2013). Otherwise, the leadership opportunities can be more evenly distributed. An instructor can appoint one student to research the bus route itinerary that the group will follow. Another student might be asked to go check the number of the bus that pulled up to a bus stop or station. Another student might be asked to go inside a building and verify the address at a given location. If students are operating in a group independent of any staff, students can make decisions among themselves to take leadership within the group. There are many tasks which an individual might perform while traveling, but, when traveling in groups, sufficiently advanced students can have opportunities to take leadership and give back with their skills, an important part of the adjustment process (Omvig, 2002, 2009; Salisbury, 2017).

Since staff at a residential adjustment to blindness training center have the opportunity to work with students on a daily basis, they get to know the students well enough to judge their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Using their best judgment, staff can choose students to lead certain parts of a field class or even the whole field class. Staff should set some parameters based on the goals of the field class and can offer more structure if they deem it appropriate. Field classes are valuable opportunities to encourage students to prove to themselves what they are capable of doing. Staff may choose student leadership opportunities that are easy for a given student or more challenging, based on the specific goals that the staff have for the student as a part of his or her emotional adjustment process. There also exists a balancing act between focusing on the benefits to one particular student versus the larger training center group. Staff are constantly serving as mentors throughout the entire adjustment to blindness process, and these leadership opportunities are no exception. Staff can be assigned formally to mentor or advise a student in a more complex leadership assignment or can simply fill the needs as they arise in informal ways. The role of the staff mentor or advisor is not to make the leadership role easy but to guide students in the process just as they would with other instructional activities not directly involving leadership. As students progress through the adjustment to blindness process, they eventually become the mentors themselves (Salisbury, 2017) and give back (Omvig, 2009). Being able to work as part of a team or serve on either side of a leadership or mentoring relationship are beneficial in job readiness.

Public Education

When members of the general public notice that blind people are out in the community doing normal things, they come to learn that blind people are normal. Since training center programs are likely to have their field classes in areas nearby the training center, at least near enough that the trip can be made in one day, it is the local community around the training center which is most directly impacted by the public education. This, in turn, raises community expectations of blind people and thus helps them to be able to reinforce the emotional adjustment that students must make in training. When students realize that their community believes in them, it can help them come to believe in themselves. If a community around a training center comes to adopt a more positive philosophy about blindness and understanding of blindness, then the scope of the attitude factory described by Omvig (2002) becomes broader. If students are able to experience a community culture treating blind people as first-class citizens, this experience will support their emotional understanding that they are first-class citizens. Since students eventually graduate and become members of the community outside the training center, they are able to create a legacy through their work to educate the public, something which they can continue doing through their involvement in the National Federation of the Blind (Jernigan, 1997). Not surprisingly, Bell and Mino (2015) found that blind people who were members of the National Federation of the Blind had a higher employment rate and higher average income than blind people who were not affiliated with a national consumer organization of the blind or were members of the American Council of the Blind. This public education is associated with a positive private benefit to the individual, as well as a positive externality on other blind people.

One critical part of the movement toward full equality for the blind is that the blind must be able to give back to society rather than simply take from it (Omvig, 2009). Members of the general public, which includes blind people, as well, must have the opportunity to witness blind people giving back. Students at a Structured Discovery training center in Hawai‘i make an annual trip to an 800-year-old fishpond, which is an indigenous method of aquaculture (Costa-Pierce, 1987). The fishpond is an important part of Hawaiian culture and tradition (Kikuchi, 1976), and the students and staff at the training center routinely do a service project to contribute to the stewardship of the fishpond. Since mangroves are an invasive species in the fishponds (Allen, 1998; Chimner, Fry, Kaneshiro, & Cormier, 2006; Krauss & Allen, 2003), students and staff worked to clear away mangroves and debark the mangrove wood, which is ideal for building the wooden gates which regulate the openings of the fishpond. By participating in such service projects, students and staff at training centers can demonstrate to their communities, including themselves, that blind people are positive contributors in the community (Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b; Smith, 2012). This positive understanding of blindness and positive attitude toward blind people pays dividends afterward when blind people embark on vocational or social ventures in the community.

Giving Students Resources

Sometimes, field classes at an orientation center can involve visiting or exploring a resource related to the blindness field. Perhaps a training center would take part in an anniversary celebration at the state library for the blind or attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new adaptive technology business building. Perhaps a transition-age youth program at a training center would visit a university campus and possibly even stop by the office in charge of facilitating academic accommodations for students with disabilities. Sometimes, students need to encounter these resources, and there is no guarantee that they will encounter them outside the program in the time frame they need it. Sometimes, students do not understand the value of a resource like the library for the blind, but, if they visit the facility as part of the adjustment to blindness program, they come to realize the value that it can bring into their training and their lives after training.

In other instances, a training center may embark on a field class with no obvious connection to blindness. This also has value, and it creates another resource for blind students. Since one major objective is to help students to blend into sighted society (Omvig, 2002, 2009), it is important that blind students create a repository of interesting experiences which can enable them to participate meaningfully in their interactions with sighted people. If all a person can talk about is blindness, it is difficult for most people to relate to that person. Taking students on field classes to water parks, plantation tours, rock climbing ranches, white water rafting tours, Mardi Gras, and parasailing trips, just to name a few examples, can help them build that repository of interesting experiences to help them build social and professional connections.

Reflection

At Structured Discovery training centers, it is normal for staff and students to collectively debrief following a field class just as it is standard for an instructor and student to individually debrief at the end of an individual cane travel lesson. Like field trips in school, field classes require organization, planning, and reflection in order to truly maximize the student learning experience (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). Sometimes, a debrief occurs immediately upon the group’s return to a training center; other times, the debrief occurs on the next class day. When students have more time to reflect upon a field class experience personally, it may enable them to have more substantive commentary during the group debrief. When students debrief immediately after returning from a field class, they may have clearer memories of the field class and be more able to contribute effectively. An instructor’s role in the reflection process steers the type of lasting impact that the field class will have on students (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). The Association for Experiential Education (AEE) (2017) defined experiential learning as a methodology in which educators direct students to a specific experience and subsequently guide the students through reflection to "increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities." In addition to group reflection, these field classes also provide a context for students to reflect privately, as well, which creates more individualized learning.

Implications for Practitioners and Families

Field classes contribute to the adjustment to blindness training process in many ways. There is a widespread belief that learning comes only from labor rather than from leisure, but work and learning can be fun. Structured Discovery training centers have found ways to incorporate field classes as one of the many contexts for experiential learning in their residential programs. When field classes have a less formal structure, this enables students to have a more personally relevant learning experience, where they can explore and investigate in the ways they desire. This follows in line with how the broader vocational rehabilitation process is individualized and centered around each consumer’s individual career goal. Different environments with different demands help students to build their skills and learn more about their applications in the world outside the daily bubble of the training center. Field classes can help students to reconnect with old pastimes while strengthening their sense of normality and connection with society. Field classes push students out of their comfort zones and require them to be flexible as they problem-solve. Since the entire training center experiences the field class together, more advanced students have opportunities to be leaders and role models for newer students. Students gain knowledge and resources from these experiences, both in the form of content knowledge and by building their repository of interesting life experiences to help them build social and professional relationships. Practitioners delivering residential adjustment to blindness training programs should strive to incorporate these components into field classes. Practitioners advising consumers on service planning and the selection of residential adjustment to blindness training programs should look for field classes and their applications of these components. Consumers and their families should seek services which incorporate occasional field classes with these components.

Implications for Future Research

Future research could investigate and discuss the dimensions of formal activities held at training centers, such as Thanksgiving meals and Halloween parties, which also break away from the normal class routine. Additionally, an investigation and discussion of informal activities, such as student-led cookouts at the residential locations, both planned and spontaneous, could explore how these types of activities help students in the adjustment to blindness. It appears that the hang time between the field class and the debrief can have consequences, positive and negative, for the debrief and the learning created by it, but future research could take a deeper dive into those consequences. Future research may further investigate the benefits of field classes involving challenge recreation activities, such as rock climbing or whitewater rafting. Furthermore, overnight field class experiences may invoke different types of learning opportunities from single-day experiences, which should also be investigated. Further research could explain how exactly field classes should be selected by program leadership and which priorities must be considered. More explanation of how field class experiences can facilitate teambuilding and overcoming unexpected challenges during field classes. Some students can be reluctant with training activities, which also applies to field classes, and instructors must develop strategies for encouraging these reluctant students to participate; further research can document some of these strategies.

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