Personal and Home Management Classes in Residential Adjustment-to-Blindness Training Programs
By Justin M. H. Salisbury, MA, NOMC, NCRTB, NCUEB, and Kyle S. Laconsay
Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury is coordinator of educational programs at Associated Services for the Blind, Incorporated, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Kyle Sabrina Laconsay is a rehabilitation teacher for the blind 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, where she teaches personal and home management. She formerly worked as a pastry chef at Alan Wong’s Restaurant in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
Abstract
Residential adjustment-to-blindness training programs frequently include classes in personal and home management. These can be offered as one combined class or separated into two classes. Either way, there is substantial room for exchange and overlap. Personal and home management classes work in synergy with the residential apartment experience. Major themes in personal and home management classes are introduced, and there remains much room for future literature in this subject area of adjustment-to-blindness training. Like any other subject area, the student’s overall adjustment to blindness is the primary focus, not just the learning of a particular skill.
Keywords
Adjustment, blindness, training, home management, home economics, personal management, Structured Discovery
Background on Adjustment-to-Blindness Training
Identity Development
Adjustment-to-blindness training programs at residential training centers aim to help consumers achieve an emotional adjustment to blindness, which is the keystone of the blindness rehabilitation process (Salisbury, 2017). A major part of this adjustment is coming to identify oneself as a blind person who is a part of the blind community and understanding that this minority-group membership is respectable. These training centers ideally have apartments or some living facilities off site, where the students live around each other in a supportive family environment (Omvig, 2002). This arrangement, coupled with exposure to blind consumer organizations, gradually helps the students to develop a sense of identity with the blind community (Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b; Wilson, 1992). Crudden and McBroom (1999) found that mentoring and networking opportunities through consumer organizations of the blind helped consumers overcome barriers to employment, even though these opportunities were generally discouraged by rehabilitation practitioners. Bell and Mino (2013) found that blind people who were members of the National Federation of the Blind were employed at a higher rate with higher average earnings than blind people who were involved in no consumer organization, a group which was still employed at a higher rate with higher average earnings than blind people who were members of the American Council of the Blind. Bell and Silverman (2018) found that blind people who were members of the National Federation of the Blind, received comprehensive adjustment-to-blindness training at a Structured Discovery training center, had a higher level of education, traveled using a white cane, and reported reading braille frequently, were most likely to be working in a traditional full-time job or self-employment. Employment outcomes have repeatedly been found to have positive correlations with braille literacy and usage (Ryles, 1996; Schroeder, 1989, 1996). Schroeder (1996) found that braille itself facilitates confidence development and group identification with the blind community. Thus, one of the major benefits of the emphasis on braille in Structured Discovery programs is the benefit for identity development with the blind community, which supports its continued emphasis.
How Students Build Self-Efficacy
Using sleepshades for all formal training activities, students learn alternative techniques, which enable them to function competently in the world on par with their sighted counterparts (Jernigan, 1993; Mettler, 1997; Olson, 1982). As a student practices certain routine alternative techniques to the point of automaticity, their attention becomes available to focus on other cognitive tasks, such as problem-solving processes (Maurer et al., 2006; Mettler, 1995/2008). In addition to isolated techniques becoming automatic, certain problem-solving algorithms employing multiple techniques can become automated by blind people with more advanced training (Maurer, 2011). As the mastery and automatizing of various alternative techniques show substantial progress, the student is enabled to focus more on the emotional adjustment to blindness (Salisbury, 2017).
Dealing with Attitudes and Expectations
Students in training have the opportunity to wrangle with the vast misperceptions and low expectations that society inculcates into all of its members. In addition to slaying these emotional dragons during training, students need to learn how to confront these messages on their own after training (Tigges, 2004). It also helps to build relationships within the organized blind movement, where blind people can keep each other strong after training. Students must develop a sense of confidence and self-efficacy, as well as an instinctual understanding of their first-class status in society, where blindness does not prevent them from blending in (Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b). Students need sufficient time to learn how to deal with social discrimination and accessibility barriers (Silverman, 2015). In addition to understanding how to deal with these barriers theoretically, students must develop the emotional understanding that they have a right to live in the world as much as anybody else (tenBroek, 1966), so that they will feel deserving of equal opportunities. Frank discussions about blindness, societal attitudes, and low expectations help students to be able to deal with them effectively, and this requires practice over the six to nine months that students attend training (Omvig, 2002; Salisbury, 2017).
Personal and Home Management Classes
There are multiple different classes that typically fall in a quality residential adjustment-to-blindness training program, including cane travel, braille, adaptive technology, a philosophy class, personal and home management, and industrial arts. This class content can be divided in many different ways. It is not necessary to break up the curriculum in exactly this same way, but to begin the discussion, some organizational framework needs to be used. Personal and home management classes work well in conjunction with the residential apartment experience, meeting students where they are with a progressive curriculum that prioritizes alternative techniques ahead of adaptive equipment. These classes hone students’ abilities to manage time and money, be organized, and maximize the benefit derived from scarce resources. Students learn how to use their consumer power while shopping for the items they need to live and to complete class projects. The ability to do laundry, groom oneself, and dress for success are also focal points as the students prepare for employment. All of the training classes work together with a synergistic effect to help students reach greater empowerment, autonomy, emotional adjustment, and employability. The core focus of every class in adjustment-to-blindness training is not about reaching subject-specific performance milestones; instead, it is about the overall adjustment to blindness. The sections below will begin to discuss some major areas of personal and home management classes.
Relationship to Living at the Apartments
Some training centers allow students whose permanent residence is sufficiently close to the training center to live at home and commute to the center every day instead of living in the apartments. These students sometimes run the risk of being taken care of by well-intended friends and family members when they should be embracing the homemaking activities as opportunities for learning and growth (Omvig, 2002). Also, if a student lives at home while attending their adjustment-to-blindness program, they may be in a habitual mode of interdependence with other members of the household, which can limit their development in the areas that are dedicated responsibilities of another household member. For example, if a blind woman lives at home with her husband, and he typically considers it his duty to take out the trash, his continuation of that chore robs her of the opportunity to learn and practice nonvisual techniques for taking out the trash herself. As another example, if a blind man in training lives at home, and his wife does his laundry and helps him pick out clothing for each day, he misses out on the opportunity to practice these skills for doing his own laundry, organizing his clothing, and matching outfits independently.
Ideally, students are living in the residential facilities provided by the training center (Altman, 2012; Wilson, 1992). This allows them to live around classmates in a supportive family environment (Omvig, 2002) and have a residential counselor on hand to help with any problem-solving that may arise. Students ideally have apartments with roommates so that they learn how to share space as a blind person and do not get into a habit of living in isolation from society. This group living arrangement also saves some money for the training center versus giving the students solo apartments congregated in one area. Often, a residential counselor will assist with instruction at the apartments, such as teaching students how to use the washers and dryers, how to vacuum their carpets, or how to mop their floors. If the apartments have facilities for outdoor grilling, that can also make it possible for students to practice using the grill individually and to gather for cookouts. These activities build confidence and community, both of which are a part of the adjustment-to-blindness process (Omvig, 2002; Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b; Tigges, 2004). To supplement the apartment experience, the personal and home management instructor can try to get the students to start by making foods that they enjoy eating, thus they would be more motivated to make them at home. This will reinforce the class activities after hours. Cooking at home helps them use money wisely and encourages responsible management of scarce resources. These skills will help them to be successful in life, including, but not limited to, the workplace.
Meeting Students Where They Are
Instruction starts with what skills students have already, which varies greatly from student to student. Structured Discovery may be noted for the flashy kitchen performances with making complex foods from scratch, but this does not inherently mean that they do not use things like box mixes in order to learn basic cooking techniques. Some students with limited life experience need to do this to get that conceptual understanding. Other students with more cooking experience may not benefit much from those and even feel a bit belittled; at a minimum, they would not fall in their optimal band of stimulation. Instructors start as simply as the students need them to start. It may be as simple as making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches just to get by at home. It may involve making a box of macaroni and cheese to learn about boiling water on the stove, gathering information to determine if the pasta is cooked, and stirring the ingredients together. For someone who has been cooking for decades, this activity might be counterproductive because it could give the impression that the training center staff do not recognize and appreciate their existing life experience. With someone who has no cooking experience, though, this activity would involve a lot of learning. Sometimes students with very little experience may need an instructor or more advanced student to show them a physical technique, such as how to move a fork or whisk when whisking eggs, using the hand-over-hand as described by Salisbury (2020). This involves physically taking the student’s hand and making it move exactly the way it needs to move in order to perform the technique. Such an instructional technique is invasive, requiring great trust, and it is important for instructors to be able to recognize when a student with more life experience does not need it. The students need to quickly be able to feed themselves with a variety of food groups that will give them the energy and frame of mind to be productive during the training day. As time goes on, their cooking opportunity set will expand, and they may also take advantages of opportunities to go out to eat, since those experiences add to the adjustment process, too.
Sometimes, it is possible to give students with limited life experience the opportunity to light a fire for projects that they can achieve when they become more advanced. One student, who was a good braille reader but had extremely limited experience in the kitchen, was looking through braille recipe books, and she found the recipe for baklava. She loved baklava, so she got very excited. She never thought that a blind person could make baklava. She asked her instructor, “Can I make baklava?” Her instructor said, “Sure! You can make whatever you want!” She then went on to read all the skills required, and it sounded very complicated; she was becoming intimidated. Her instructor told her that they could go out to the store, get premade dough, and make baklava with this shortcut first. The American cooking environment has changed so much in the past three decades (McCabe & de Waal Malefyt, 2015). Today, so many people just go out and buy prepared dough so that all they have to do is roll it out, place it on a pan, and bake it. Americans don't cook quite the same way as they used to, and blind Americans don't have to cook everything from scratch to be able to manage a home. With that said, it is important to go through the full range of cooking processes in training so that students can prove to themselves that this level of cooking is not off-limits. The instructor told the student that once she became more advanced she could make the full baklava recipe from scratch later in training. This gave her a goal to look forward to but also an opportunity to engage in some of the more basic skills to produce one of her favorite treats. This way, the student’s growth and adjustment was encouraged, and the dreams of making it from scratch could carry her forward in training.
Progressive Curriculum
In the beginning, students are learning how to use basic tools and techniques. They become more complicated as time progresses, and skills can compound upon one another. Simpler tasks are replaced by harder ones, and simpler foods are overshadowed by more complicated ones. In adjustment-to-blindness training, the curriculum in all classes builds upon itself. Mettler (1995/2008) explains that cane travel is a perceptually oriented skill set with certain automated processes. Home management involves the same thing. When a student is first learning to wash dishes, it requires concentration. It often cannot be included in multitasking because it consumes too many cognitive resources. Once a student becomes more adept at washing dishes, that student may be able to clean as they cook or multitask it with other things. This mirrors the concept described by Maurer (2011), where highly skilled cane travel instructors were automating certain travel process algorithms, thus freeing up their cognitive resources for other tasks. Students may eventually cook a meal for forty people, but they have to build up the skills along the way. When students reach those major milestones in training, it means that they have invested much time and hard work prior to those accomplishments. Hard work pays off, and students reinforce a good work ethic, as well as patience.
Mainstream Versus Adaptive Equipment
Teaching personal and home management to the blind does not require much adaptive equipment. Much of what blind people use to take care of themselves and their homes are everyday items that are also used by the sighted. This is helpful because it allows blind people to shop at the local neighborhood stores and also helps them to integrate into settings arranged by sighted people. For example, if a blind person were used to cooking ground beef for tacos in some blind-specific device, it would be more difficult for a blind person to participate in a spontaneous taco-making activity at a friend’s house. Blind people can benefit from using some adaptive equipment, such as a talking timer, a talking thermometer, or braille markings on microwaves and stoves or containers of ingredients. These things can be set up in the home by the blind person as desired and can be practiced in the cooking classes, as well. The talking timer has become less frequently used in recent years because smartphones have this function, but there is value to maintaining the use of a dedicated talking timer. For one, it protects the smartphone from inadvertent damage that could be sustained during kitchen use, in addition to saving the battery life. Students can learn how to identify ingredients in the absence of braille labels or if they cannot read braille, but this should not be interpreted to mean that braille is a second-tier priority. In summary, the primary means of adapting kitchen equipment is to convert printed information into nonvisual information, likely through braille or speech.
Sometimes, blind people may use ordinary, simple tools in ways that make a process more efficient for a blind person. For example, a blind person might fry a large amount of potatoes in a deeper saucepan instead of a low-walled skillet so that the stirring and flipping processes do not as easily lead to inadvertent spilling of the potatoes onto the stovetop. This is still an ordinary product that will be available in ordinary American home kitchens, but it can be used in a different way to help make a blind person more efficient. Additionally, a blind person might choose to roll out some pizza dough on a large cookie sheet instead of on the countertop. This contains the mess, which is useful for a sighted person, but it may also help a blind person to match up the sizing of the dough to the size of the cookie sheet. These types of techniques are common-sense and creative solutions to help a person be more efficient.
Orientation to the Kitchen
One of the early tasks of a new student is learning the layout of the kitchen at the training center. There will inherently be a certain place where everything goes, and students need to learn where that is and how that works. There should be some logic to where everything is stored, and students can learn about mental mapping through the process of remembering where everything is. For example, if spatulas are expected to be used while cooking on the stove top, it might be logical for the spatulas to be located in the drawer just below the countertop near the stove. Some things, like large stock pots, need to be stored where they can fit. Overall, every kitchen has a system, and the student will need to gain practice walking into a new system and learning it. This is a job-readiness skill in itself. It may not be necessary for a student to memorize where every little thing is in the kitchen, but having a general understanding at the beginning is helpful. The instructor can invite the student to explore what is in the cabinets and articulate what it is that they have found. Once students have found the major items in the kitchen, the instructor can ask them to go find specific items. For example, the instructor can ask the student to go find the meat tenderizer, requiring the student to remember where that item or type of item is stored and then go to it. This knowledge of the kitchen will support the student in the process of performing class assignments thereafter.
Measuring
Students need to learn how to measure ingredients consistently and exactly. This skill area is primarily technical and often consumes little time in the overall scheme of the class. As blind people, students must learn to verify that a measuring instrument is full. For example, when filling a measuring cup with flour, it is helpful to touch the flour in the cup to verify that it is full. It may also help to slide one’s finger across the top of the cup to be sure that it is not overfilled by cleaving off the excess. Something like water from a kitchen sink is not so precious that a separate process must be used. For something more scarce, it may be helpful to measure it over a container so that it can be funneled back into the original bottle if necessary. When it comes to measuring liquids that are only used in smaller volumes, such as vanilla extract, it may be useful to scoop the liquid instead of pouring it. Every bit of vanilla extract impacts flavor substantially, and it is expensive enough that spilling it is costly. One technique for handling vanilla extract is to transfer it into a small container with a wide enough mouth that it can be scooped out with a measuring spoon, such as a glass baby food jar. Also, the measuring spoon, if its material allows it, could be bent so that its shape comes to resemble a ladle in order to make it easier to reach into the jar without spilling the liquid. Many of these techniques for measuring come from common sense and creativity; they do not require scientific or medical knowledge. The bottom line is that blind people need to be comfortable and confident performing measurements.
Students also need to be able to understand proportions. Students need to understand how much food constitutes a meal for one person, two people, or an entire family, which also varies based on individual dietary needs. They need to have a general idea of sizing and spatial relations. For example, one student wanted to cook a small box of macaroni, and she initially wanted to use a large stock pot that could hold multiple gallons of water. She knew that the box called for six cups of water, but she did not understand what that meant in a physical form. She knew that there were sixteen cups in one gallon, but she was unable to understand the big picture. Her instructor had her retrieve a gallon of milk from the refrigerator, then place that gallon jug into the pot. This allowed her to realize that this pot was far larger than necessary. She then considered a few other pots, comparing them to the gallon jug, and chose a more appropriate pot. If a student cannot distinguish between a small pot that they might use to heat up a bowl of canned soup and a large pot that they might use to cook chili for forty people, that student needs to gain experience choosing pots for different projects and comparing them to other volume measurements.
Learning Different Categories of Cooking
Students in adjustment-to-blindness training should receive instruction in a variety of categories of cooking. This will give them a well-rounded skill set in the kitchen. While every cook has favorite dishes to bring to a potluck and favorite foods to make in certain situations, it is important for students to develop a diverse repertoire of cooking skills so that they can feel ready to cook for any kind of situation. This feeling of readiness supports the emotional adjustment and the overall confidence to go forth in the world without hesitation. Some categories of cooking include air-frying, baking, boiling, blanching, braising, deep-frying, grilling, pressure-cooking, sautéing, searing, slow-cooking, steaming, and stir-frying. Certainly, that is not an exhaustive list, but the important point is that students gain exposure and confidence with a variety of methods of cooking.
For one detailed example, baking is a category of cooking that students can begin early on in the training process. Some baking projects, like making a batch of chocolate chip cookies, are a good fit for relatively new students. They require students to effectively practice important fundamental skills, like measuring. This can be ideal for a student who is learning about measuring because the results show dramatically whether the measurements were done correctly. This creates an opportunity for the student to self-monitor. The instructor can ask the student questions about the finished product to lead the student to explore and investigate it. For example, consider a student who made a batch of cookies. The instructor could ask if the cookies are more chewy or crunchy and then ask the student if this meets their personal preferences. If the student wanted them more crunchy, the instructor can ask what the student might have done to make them more crunchy. If the student does not immediately suggest cooking them longer, the instructor can ask other questions to help the student make sense of this process. It also allows the student to have something to share with others around the training center. This gives the others around the center an opportunity to compliment the student on his or her good work, which helps provide the social persuasion to support the growth in self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977, 1997; Mettler, 1995/2008, 1997; Tigges, 2004). Being able to give back and contribute to others is part of the adjustment to blindness and the pursuit of first-class status (Omvig, 2009; Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b).
Different categories of cooking will expose students to different appliances. To return to the baking example, baking is a great opportunity to introduce students to different appliances. As the students are learning about the different tools in the kitchen and where they belong, projects that involve using these different appliances compel the students to move around the kitchen and use them. If they are new to how the appliances work, it creates an opportunity to learn how to use them. For example, students may learn about how to use a stand mixer in the process of preparing dough for bread or a batch of cookies. They will practice using the oven and its controls. They will practice the nonvisual techniques involved in retrieving hot items from a hot oven and gain practice with the concept of alerting others in the kitchen to the fact that the oven is open. This is commonly done by saying, loudly and confidently, “oven open.” This practice helps a student take ownership of what he or she is doing and gives a burst of feelings of control as they go to reach into the hot oven. No matter what appliances a given baking project requires, it creates opportunities for exposure and growth.
Another concept in the different categories of cooking is the type of cuisine. It is important for training centers to expose students to many different types of cuisine and make sure that they have encountered some of every major type of cooking that occurs in the dominant culture of the area of the training center. For example, if the training center is in a community where making fried rice is common, it is important for the students to learn how to do that as a matter of being able to blend in, even if it is not something they intend to do personally. Part of training is helping blind people to be able to relate to the sighted people around them (Omvig, 2002; Salisbury, 2018a, 2018b). Blind people need to know how to contribute to cooking projects and conversations about cooking, as well as make meal selections at restaurants when out with groups. If blind people have limited exposure, these things are made much more difficult. Understanding the common culture and experiences of the community are essential.
Implicit Lessons
Some lessons are directly and explicitly taught. Other implicit lessons come up as a matter of course while teaching or learning the explicit lessons. The implicit lessons, for the sake of this article, may be thought of as lessons that can seem quite abstract in pure form, but the skills are developed while working on other, more concrete skill areas.
Time Management
Learning time-management skills is an important part of adjustment-to-blindness training, and personal and home management classes create many learning opportunities for it. In addition to being a useful life skill, Bembenutty (2009) found that self-efficacy was directly associated with time management. Developing time management strategies has been considered an intervention to increase self-efficacy (Hofer et al., 1998; Kim et al., 2011; Terry & Doolittle, 2008; Zimmerman et al., 1996). Time management gives students the ability to set goals, meet goals, and assess their own progress on those goals, which improves their self-efficacy. When students have a cooking project, they have to make sure that they can start and finish during the allotted class period. They may need to break the project into multiple days. They also may have to learn how to adapt to obstacles that come up. If a student loses the opportunity to use one part of a recipe, they may need to improvise. For a specific example, if a student is making a chicken and rice casserole, and the chicken is taking too long to thaw and cook, the student may choose to improvise by changing it to a tuna casserole and substituting a few cans of tuna, which are ready to go on a whim. It may not be the intended final product, but it helps the student to get something done. This kind of improvisation happens from time to time in life after training, so students need to know how to improvise and meet deadlines. Additionally, students need to plan ahead how they will end soon enough to be able to clean their workspace and head out to their next class. This is also a common theme in industrial arts. Time management is something that students must learn from experience. It often takes a long time for it to become intuitive to students, and the instructor has to be ready for students to make mistakes with it. Over time, students will learn to get better at planning out what happens when they are working on projects in personal and home management. Personal and home management classes require students to budget their time, a broader skill that will help them in employment and in life, including its impact on self-efficacy.
Organization
Students have to be organized in order to succeed in personal and home management classes. Cooking projects require a student to keep track of where all of the ingredients and kitchen tools are located. When students are done using these items, they have to be able to put them away. There is a type of short-term organization, such as where students put things that they are using for a project during that time period that they are doing the project. There is also a type of long-term organization, such as the default places that things belong in the kitchen. While a sighted person can simply glance over a workspace and see where everything is, a blind person generally must feel the things that are there to know where everything is located. In order to reduce the amount of exploring that needs to be done, a student in adjustment-to-blindness training can come up with organization systems that are both efficient and personally relevant. Some students may alphabetize items. Others may lay things out based on size, shape, or function. Students can develop strategies that work for them personally. Additionally, for more permanent kinds of organization, students may label things in braille or come up with other ways to know where things are and what they are. They may put ribbons or rubber bands on a certain product, or they may keep something inside an extra container, for example. Just as it would be for a sighted cook, products that are not used very often are likely to be stored in locations that are more out of the way. Items used all the time are likely to be more readily available. For those more permanent forms of organization, the organization system is likely to be chosen by the instructor because it is a shared instructional space that the instructor has to use with all students. Students can, however, develop their own system for use in their own residences. Much of this training is just common sense, with one person teaching another, just as Hill (1997a, 1997b) wrote about teaching cane travel. Ultimately, it should be as efficient as possible to access the items, which includes knowing what is what.
Resource and Inventory Management
Money Management
One of the first lessons that a personal and home management instructor may do with a student involves handling and organizing cash. While some blind people may feel as if they cannot handle cash and resort to only using electronic means of payment, it is possible for blind people to manage cash. Students need to be comfortable with that. Coins can be sorted nonvisually just by feel. The dimes and quarters have ridges, and the nickel is larger and thicker than the penny. When it comes to dollar bills, there are multiple ways of gathering the information about which denominations each bill represents, and then there are folding techniques to keep them organized. Whatever system for folding bills the students use, they need to be consistent within themselves. If student A uses a different system than student B, those are their personal choices. If student A folds a 10-dollar bill a certain way once, it is vital that the same folding pattern be used for all 10-dollar bills. The same is true for every other denomination. Students can gain some experience with budgeting in personal and home management class. Sometimes, this is also done in partnership with braille or adaptive technology classes because those means of information access can be used to record the budget. It helps students to go through the different parts of their daily, weekly, and monthly spending to be sure that they are spending wisely and also making conscious decisions about sticking to the budget.
Shopping
Riccobono (2011, 2014a, 2014b) discussed the importance of being a driver in his own life rather than a passenger. Understanding one’s role as the driver of one’s own life is an important part of the emotional adjustment to blindness. When students go shopping, it is a natural opportunity for students to learn how to play this role. Students will need to obtain information nonvisually about which products are where and how those products meet their needs. The student, as the customer of whichever retail establishment, needs to be the driver in that interaction. Instead of printing out a shopping list and handing it to a store employee, it is important for the student to maintain control of the shopping list. Bringing it in braille or on a personal electronic device, such as a braille notetaker or a smartphone, can allow students to maintain that control, as well. When students go shopping they need to advocate for themselves, which may include the process of soliciting help. This can be done by asking shoppers nearby to give directions or act as a momentary reader. It can also involve approaching store staff and asking for one of their employees to accompany the student through the store (Bickford, 1993). Additionally, students should learn how to pull the cart rather than simply following behind the cart as the shopping assistant pulls it. This also helps the student maintain more control.
Cleaning
Students need to be able to clean, just like everybody else. Personal and home management should involve all of the customary types of cleaning that a member of that society is expected to perform. Students need to be prepared for cleaning their own living and workspace in the future. Instructors can have students do some work on cleaning early in training and gradually integrate more types of cleaning as they become relevant to the present happenings in the kitchen.
The training center has to make an important decision about how the instructional space is cleaned. Some training centers hire a custodian to come through the kitchen to clean the floors and perhaps countertops every day. Other training centers leave this responsibility on the personal and home management instructor, and possibly all instructors, to be finally responsible for the cleanliness of their instructional space. In those training centers that hire a custodian, instructors often ensure that a more surface level of cleaning is still accomplished by the students based on each project. The instructor would thus check behind the students for the mess that was created by their task for that day. With a high-traffic kitchen like the one at a training center, it is important that someone comes by to do a deep clean periodically, which catches whatever is missed by the previous project-oriented cleaning jobs. If the instructor is responsible for this cleaning, it may make him or her more hesitant to take on more challenging or potentially messy cooking projects because he or she will not want to do the deep clean for that project after being tired from working on it. Students and instructors need to learn how to take risks and push the envelope with their work, and it can hinder them from doing so if they are worried about the final clean-up job at the end. If a custodian is hired to come through with a mop and sponge to restore the floors and counters to their original condition at the end of a training day, this frees up the instructor and student to focus on other things. Certainly, there should be a focus on learning how to clean, but the instructor has to strike a balance between spending all of one’s energy on the deep clean afterward versus spending all of one’s energy on the teaching process.
Instructor Monitoring of Students
Part of teaching is monitoring the work of students and giving feedback. Two major areas of monitoring students in personal and home management classes are (1) monitoring the performance of tasks during the completion of projects, and (2) monitoring the work of the student to clean up the workspace after the direct project work has ended for the day. It can be quite frustrating when a student or instructor reaches into a cabinet to grab a pot or other cooking tool only to find it dirty. Then, it becomes necessary to spend time cleaning that item just to get back to the starting point of beginning to use it. It is the responsibility of everyone in the kitchen to do their part and to not put away dirty items. Students in training must take ownership of their own training but also practice good stewardship of the training center and equipment (Salisbury, 2018a). This is a good work habit in life, not just in the kitchen. This type of behavior needs to be set straight with anyone entering the job market, blind or sighted. An employee who pretends that mistakes, defects, and unfinished work are nonexistent problems are not helping their employers. Altman and Cutter (2004) explained that Structured Discovery practitioners do not regard themselves simply as trainers of a particular list of skills but rather as a part of a broader social justice movement working toward the empowerment of blind people. Since the blind are a visibly identifiable minority (Jernigan, 1997), blind people often bear the burden of representing blind people simply because they are the link between an uncommon characteristic and uncommon outcome. If they are blind, and if they put away dirty mixing bowls, some people who become aware of it will cognitively associate blindness with putting away dirty mixing bowls and thus create a biased expectation that blind people will be more likely to put away dirty mixing bowls, even if the behavior has nothing to do with blindness. This can be true for observers who are blind, a part of the minority group, or sighted, a part of the majority group. Thus, these kinds of habits are especially important to set straight during training if the student does not already have this kind of self-discipline. Additionally, it could just be a matter of not knowing how to check for cleanliness. For students to be able to ensure that they are cleaning properly, they have to know how to assess their own cleaning jobs and the dirtiness of spaces and objects that need cleaning. The instructor will have to assess whether the issue comes from the student not understanding the cleaning or checking processes versus trying to avoid going through the proper motions.
Visual Versus Nonvisual Monitoring
The instructor can use a variety of techniques to monitor how students are cleaning or otherwise working in the kitchen. Morais, et al. (1997) described many of the techniques used by blind cane travel instructors, which have similar origins to those used by blind personal and home management instructors. For the cleaning discussion, differences between visual and nonvisual monitoring techniques have varying benefits. A sighted instructor can simply sit back and watch all of the students in the kitchen to know what they are doing. This technique can be convenient and more easily allow an instructor to notice if someone is putting away a tool or a pot in the wrong place. It does not always catch everything about the cleaning process, such as that information that is gathered through touch. If a surface is sticky or oily, that cannot always be perceived visually. If a sighted instructor is sitting back and monitoring visually, it also does not provide the blind students with role modelling for a technique that will work for them. An instructor who monitors nonvisually is demonstrating for the students how they could competently serve in the same role one day (Dodds, 1984, 1985; Salisbury, 2020), which helps them to feel like more tasks, social roles, and career opportunities are possible for them. This helps blind students to prepare for opportunities, such as to volunteer in the kitchen at a community meal fundraiser, serve food at church, monitor his or her children in the kitchen at home, or be gainfully employed in a job involving a kitchen environment. There is value to an integrated environment where blind people operate around sighted people who use their vision because sighted people normally do use their vision for many tasks. If a blind person is uncomfortable with sighted people using their vision, it creates a barrier to integrating naturally.
A blind instructor with some residual vision should be extremely careful about using that vision in the classroom. While it is true that a well-adjusted blind person with some residual vision develops a thorough understanding of when it is more efficient to use visual techniques versus nonvisual ones (Altman, 2012), students are constantly paying attention to what their instructors do during training and using them as role models. Students may develop the feeling that visual techniques are superior if they notice blind instructors using their residual vision. Sometimes it may be advantageous for a blind instructor to forego the temptation to use residual vision just to seize the opportunity to role model nonvisual techniques. If a blind instructor makes a mistake while using residual vision, it may be valuable to talk with the student about it, which makes the instructor somewhat vulnerable and human. This can give the student an opportunity to digest the idea that using a sense that is not dependable can lead to mistakes, though life experience is likely to organically produce these opportunities for students with residual vision.
Teaching Students to Self-Monitor
The process of teaching students to self-monitor is a major theme of adjustment-to-blindness training, which is applicable in every class. One major way that instructors can teach students to self-monitor is by role modeling nonvisual monitoring techniques to monitor the student (Morais et. al, 1997). When the instructor nonvisually monitors the student’s work, this gives the student techniques for self-monitoring (Salisbury, 2020). Society sometimes instills in blind people a feeling that they should not take risks and venture into new situations without the omniscient supervision of a qualified blindness professional to monitor their safety and choreograph their movements (Dodds, 1984). Instructors must encourage students to experiment, all the while gathering information about what is happening through nonvisual sensory input, problem-solving skills, creativity, and common sense (Mino, 2011). Students monitor themselves outside of class hours (Altman, 2012), and it should also happen during class so that students develop the ability.
Instructors often give students feedback, but it is important to not allow students to outsource the decision and assessment of their results to their instructor. Sometimes students can get into a rhythm of feeling like they are unqualified or unable to effectively judge their own results, so instructors may sometimes withhold that feedback in order to force the student to rely on their own judgment. For example, one student was cooking a sweet potato and was unsure if she had cooked it thoroughly enough. The instructor advised her to stick a fork into it to see if it was soft enough that she would want to eat it. The student had told the instructor earlier that she was familiar with cooked sweet potatoes from having eaten them multiple times, so it was not a foreign food to her. She told her instructor that she wasn’t sure and asked the instructor to check the sweet potato. The instructor calmly told her that he would not be checking the sweet potato, and he told her that he was willing to eat half of the sweet potato that she had prepared because he trusted her judgment. A sweet potato is a low-risk food, and it had been boiling for a seemingly adequate amount of time. Without the instructor checking the sweet potato, the student removed it from the pot and sliced it in half. Each of them ate half of the sweet potato, and nobody was harmed. While they were eating, he asked her to tell him if the sweet potato was done. At this point, she knew the answer, and she realized that she had depended on her own judgment.
Another student was unsure of her ability to judge the amount of seasonings to put into a slow-cooker dish full of chicken, potatoes, carrots, and peppers. She needed to use water and seasonings to make a broth. The instructor advised her to use one cube of bouillon plus whatever seasonings she desired, and he left her to decide on her own. She decided to add a second cube of bouillon, plus a hefty amount of salt and other salt-based seasonings. When the dish was done cooking, it was time for her to try her own dish. From the smell, she was concerned that it was saltier than she had wanted. Her instructor advised her to try it to find out, and he agreed that he would too. There was nothing to fear in trying this food that she had created. She sheepishly ladled some of the mixture into two bowls, and they tried it. She decided that it was too salty. Her instructor told her she could repeat the project, and, to help her understand a baseline of what one cube of bouillon would do in a slow-cooker dish of that size, he restricted her to using exactly one cube of bouillon. When that dish was complete, she thought it was under seasoned. She was then able to season her food in her bowl before eating it. Now, she understood the two extremes, so she could plan her own dishes from there. Better yet, she was learning to trust her own judgment of her own work.
Yet another student was learning to make bacon in a skillet on the stovetop. The bacon had been frozen, so, under his instructor’s guidance, he defrosted it, pulled apart the pieces, and placed it into the skillet, and turned on the skillet. His instructor promptly headed toward the door and called over his shoulder “don’t let that bacon get too hot.” To this, the student replied, “how will I know if it gets too hot?” The instructor, now outside the room and heading down the hallway, returned to the doorway, said, “You’ll know,” and walked away again. As the bacon continued to cook, the sizzling became more intense, and the grease began to spit out of the skillet. The student concluded that this was the sign of the bacon getting too hot. Thus, he reduced the heat and finished cooking the bacon. When the instructor returned to the classroom, the student was able to explain to the instructor exactly how he knew that the bacon was getting too hot. Because the student learned to monitor himself and his work in the kitchen, he was then willing to experiment with other new foods without clear instructions. The instructor showed the student that he trusted the student’s common sense and ability to problem-solve, and the student was forced to self-monitor because he was the only person present while the bacon was cooking. When students learn that they can self-monitor, they realize that they have greater control and freedom in their lives, and they move forward in their emotional adjustment to blindness.
Implications for Practitioners and Families
Practitioners and families should encourage blind consumers to pursue adjustment-to-blindness training that includes training in personal and home management. Data show that adjustment-to-blindness training can be most effectively offered in a residential center operating in accordance with the Structured Discovery model. Personal and home management classes work hand-in-hand with the residential apartment experience, with mutual reinforcement; if students do not live in the living-learning community residence provided by the training center, the cycle of reinforcement is broken. Practitioners can do their best to fill in the gaps in this learning reinforcement experience by talking with students—and perhaps their families—about how to re-create as much of the living-learning community experience as possible. Personal and home management classes are good venues for students to hone their skills for time management, multitasking, organization, cleanliness, resourcefulness, industriousness, and being a fully contributing, first-class member of society.
Implications for Future Research
Future literature can cover the many phenomena associated with personal and home management classes in more detail. This article has only been an introduction to the class. Some major themes in personal and home management, including but not limited to nutrition, food safety, weekly meal planning, accommodating special dietary needs, and multitasking, need literature addressing them. Additionally, future literature can discuss personal and home management classes that are not a part of residential adjustment-to-blindness programs, as these à la carte classes may have different focuses or require different approaches. The different processes of teaching experienced chefs versus students who have never worked in a kitchen deserve further discussion. Mastery experiences and milestone activities, such as the small meals and large meals served at Structured Discovery centers, may deserve manuscripts of their own. Teaching students to self-monitor, across all areas in adjustment-to-blindness training, could also deserve a manuscript of its own. Different class activities may be introduced to teach a certain type of lesson. Certain activities may be approached in certain ways to reinforce a certain part of the emotional adjustment to blindness. It could be worthwhile to investigate whether the role of the consumer advocacy organization becomes more important in the development of identity with the blind community for those students who do not live in the residential facility provided by the training center. These ideas can and should be documented so that instructors worldwide can benefit from the knowledge of how students learn and adjust to blindness.
References
Altman, J. T. (2012). When the sleep-shades aren’t on. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 2(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/2F2-30
Altman, J., & Cutter, J. (2004). Structured discovery cane travel. In D. Dew & G. Alan (Eds.), Contemporary issues in orientation and mobility: 29th IRI 2004, Institute on Rehabilitation (pp. 65-92). George Washington University.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
Bell, E. C., & Mino, N. M. (2013). Blind and visually impaired adult rehabilitation and employment survey: Final results. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 3(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/2F1-35
Bell, E. C., & Silverman, A. M. (2018). Rehabilitation and employment outcomes for adults who are blind or visually impaired: An updated report. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 7(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/8-148
Bembenutty, H. (2009). Academic delay of gratification, self-efficacy, and time management among academically unprepared college students. Psychological Reports, 104(2), 613–623. https://doi.org/10.2466/PR0.104.2.613-623
Bickford, T. (1993). Care and feeding of the long white cane: Instructions in cane travel for blind people. National Federation of the Blind. https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/books/cfcane/canetc.htm
Crudden, A., & McBroom, L. (1999). Barriers to employment: A survey of employed persons who are visually impaired. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 93(6), 341-350. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X9909300602
Dodds, A. G. (1984). A report to RNIB on a visit to Nebraska Services for the Visually Impaired (Report No. 138). Blind mobility research unit, University of Nottingham.
Dodds, A. G. (1985). Mobility: Blind instructors? New Beacon, 69(817), 137-139.
Hill, A. (1997a). Teaching cane travel: A blind professional's perspective. American Rehabilitation, 23(3/4), 23-25.
Hill, A. (1997b, April). Teaching cane travel blind? Braille Monitor, 39(4). https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm97/bm970402.htm
Hofer, B. K., Yu, S. L., & Pintrich, P. R. (1998). Teaching college students to be self-regulated learners. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-regulated learning: From teaching to self-reflective practice (p. 57–85). Guilford Publications.
Jernigan, K. (1993, July 6). The nature of independence [An address delivered at the annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind, Dallas, Texas]. http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/convent/addres93.htm.
Jernigan, K. (1997, July 4). The day after civil rights [An address delivered at the annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind, New Orleans, Louisiana]. https://nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/convent/banque97.htm.
Kim, H. Y., Kim, S. Y., Seo, H. W., & So, E. H. (2011). Time management behavior and self-efficacy in nursing students. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration, 17(3), 293-300. https://doi.org/10.11111/jkana.2011.17.3.293
Maurer, M. M. (2011). Examining highly skilled cane travelers: A preliminary study. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 1(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/2F1-5
Maurer, M. M., Bell, E. C., Woods E., & Allen. R. (2006). Structured discovery in cane travel: Constructivism in action. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(4) 304-307. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170608800412
McCabe, M., & de Waal Malefyt, T. (2015). Creativity and cooking: Motherhood, agency and social change in everyday life. Journal of Consumer Culture, 15(1), 48-65.
Mettler, R. (1997). The cognitive paradigm for teaching cane travel. American Rehabilitation, 23(3), 18-23.
Mettler, R. (2008). Cognitive learning theory and cane travel instruction: A new paradigm (2nd ed.). Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. (Original work published 1995)
Mino, N. M. (2011). Problem solving in structured discovery cane travel. Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research, 1(3). Retrieved from https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/jbir/jbir11/jbir010302abs.html. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/2F1-21
Morais, M., Lorensen, P., Allen, R., Bell, E. C., Hill, A., & Woods, E. (1997). Techniques used by blind cane travel instructors, a practical approach: Learning, teaching, believing. National Federation of the Blind.
Olson, C. (1982). On the use of the blindfold. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 76(7), 281-285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X8207600707
Omvig, J. H. (2002). Freedom for the blind: The secret is empowerment. Region VI Rehabilitation Continuing Education Program, University of Arkansas.
Omvig, J. H. (2009, January). Why use the word “blind”? Braille Monitor, 52(1). https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0901/bm090107.htm
Riccobono, M. (2014a, May). Taking control and becoming a driver of my life. Braille Monitor, 57(5). https://archive.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm14/bm1405/bm140503.htm
Riccobono, M. (2014b). Taking the next step. Future Reflections, 33(4). https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/fr/fr33/4/fr330404.htm
Riccobono, M. A. (2011, August/September). The spirit of the journey: The blind driver challenge and the direction of our movement. Braille Monitor, 54(8). https://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm11/bm1108/bm110808.htm
Ryles, R. (1996). The impact of braille reading skills on employment, income, education, and reading habits. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 90(3), 219-226. http://mountbattenbrailler.com/Docs/papers/Ryles_study.pdf.
Salisbury, J. M. (2017). On the duration of sleepshade training in the adjustment to blindness. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 7(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/7-122
Salisbury, J. M. (2018a). Cultivating feelings of first-class status. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 8(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/8-142
Salisbury, J. M. (2018b). Field classes in residential adjustment to blindness training programs. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 8(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/8-146
Salisbury, J. M. H. (2020). Supporting the emotional adjustment to blindness from the beginning of cane travel instruction. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 10(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/10-161
Schroeder, F. (1989). Literacy: The key to opportunity. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 83(6), 290-293.
Schroeder, F. K. (1996). Perceptions of braille usage by legally blind adults. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 90(3), 210-218.
Silverman, A. M. (2015). The perils of playing blind: Problems with blindness simulation, and a better way to teach about blindness section. Journal of Blindness Innovation & Research, 5(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.5241/5-81
tenBroek, J. (1966). The right to live in the world: The disabled in the law of torts. California Law Review, 54(2), 841-919.
Terry, K. P., & Doolittle, P. E. (2008). Fostering self-efficacy through time management in an online learning environment. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 7(3), 195-207.
Tigges, S. (2004). Slaying dragons: Building self-confidence and raising expectations through orientation center training. American Rehabilitation, 28(1), 30-39.
Wilson, J. (1992). The freedom bell. In K. Jernigan (Ed.), The freedom bell. National Federation of the Blind.
Zimmerman, B. J., Bonner, S., & Kovach, R. (1996). Psychology in the classroom: A series on applied educational psychology. Developing self-regulated learners: Beyond achievement to self-efficacy. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10213-000
The Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research is copyright (c) 2020 to the National Federation of the Blind.