Blind Boone Youngster Blends Easily Into Public School System

Blind Boone Youngster Blends Easily Into Public School System

Future Reflections Fall 1987, Vol. 6 No. 3
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BLIND BOONE YOUNGSTER BLENDS EASILY
INTO PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
by Marilyn Vaughan
(Reprinted, with permission, from the Boone
News- Republican September 24th, 1986.)
Seven-year-old Chris Hinds is blind, but he
doesn't consider that a problem, nor does
anybody else he knows.
As the first blind child in the Boone school system,
it might be expected that Chris's handicap
would set him apart from the rest of the second
graders at Lowell Elementary School.
It just isn't so. Chris's mother Cindy, says he does
the same things all children do--rides a bicycle,
plays outside, and ties his shoes, "when he wants
to."
"Whatever he wants to do, he can try," she says,
adding that she hates to say that he can't do something.
From the day Chris was born, Hinds had
no doubts that her son would attend public
school, and she has the same expectations for his
sister, Regan, 4, who is also blind.
Both Ronald and Cindy Hinds's two children
were born with glaucoma, a hereditary condition
in which the drains that feed the cornea with fluid
from a gland in the eye were missing. Chris has
had about 11 operations to make artificial drains
in his eyes, but these have been difficult to keep
open and now with the scar tissue, the doctors
cannot construct more new drains, she explains.
Doris Willoughby, a certified teacher from
Heartland Education Agency who supervises
Chris' curriculum, echos Cindy Hinds.
He is blind and he fits in, she says. "Blind
children do fit in." Willoughby and a second
Heartland teacher work with 14 blind children
who attend public schools in 11 counties, excluding
Des Moines, which has its own Braille
teachers.
Willoughby's own background is impressive:
She has written several books on teaching the
blind, and though she is fully sighted, her husband,
Curtis, is a blind electrical engineer.
More than half of Iowa's blind children--and virtually
all of those who don't have other handicaps-attend
their local schools. Willoughby
says two events helped forward the placement of
blind children in the public school system.
One was the large number of retrolental
fibroplasia children who became blind when they
were given oxygen at birth, primarily in the 1940s
and 50s before doctors knew that administering
oxygen to infants damaged their eyes. Their
numbers put pressure on society to accommodate
the handicapped. The second was "part
of a larger trend to include disabled people as
part of regular life."
"Blindness is an easy disability to integrate. It
doesn't interfere with mental ability or communication,"
she says.
Their integration followed the passage in 1975 of
the education of the Handicapped Act, which requires
that disabled children be placed in the
least restrictive situation. Schools now have to
state their reason for why a handicapped child
cannot be educated in a regular classroom.
Before 1975, schools could be "very arbitrary"
about excluding disabled children, she says.
Ronald Greene, of Boone, president of the
Central Iowa chapter of the National Federation
of the Blind and secretary of the state chapter, attended
the Iowa Braille and Sightsaving School
in Vinton when he was young. He says it's much
better for blind children to remain at home and
be educated in their local schools where they can
have the affection of the natural parents. He
wishes that had been posible for him.
Lowell principal Les Mclntyre says Chris has not
created any difficulties for the school. "Really it's
been a challenge for Chris," Mclntyre says, explaining
that he has to do more work than the
average child as he is learning Braille, too.
Although Chris has limited vision--the legal
definition of being blind is anyone who has less
than 10 percent of normal sight--his teachers say
that the Braille is much faster for him in most
cases. Teacher's aide JoAnn Hanson, who sits
beside Chris in class while second- grade teacher
Jeff Gard gives the lessons, is there to assist him
on a daily basis with Braille, and not, she says, to
supply the answers.
During a typical math lesson, Gard writes the
equations on the board while Hanson supervises
Chris while he follows in Braille, keeping his
place with a hamburger-shaped magnet. He then
goes to the Braille writer--located on his desk-- and types out the answers.
Hanson, who translates the answers from Braille
to print for Gard, says it doesn't always take him
longer to complete the lessons than the other
children.
Again, Willoughby stresses what doesn't set him
apart. She says every child has weaknesses and
strengths, just like Chris. He has the same books
as the other children with one exception-- reading.
"Chris
is reading a different book because it
shows beginning Braille in the right order, it's not
an easier book."
In a year or so, she expects him to be in the same
reading curriculum as the rest of the class.
"In the future-probably third or fourth grade
Chris will learn to type on a regular typewriter.
Then he'll be able to turn in the work to the classroom
teacher directly in print. This is one of the
reasons why he'll need less individual attention
as time passes.
For now, Chris is mastering the skills that he will
need as an adult, including finding his way around
with a white cane, which Greene describes as "a
tool, not a toy." His mother says he's had a few
problems picking up the technique. "He liked to
use it as a stick at first."
Each blind person uses a different length of cane,
depending on their height. Chris has a straight
cane that rests alongside the entrance to the
classroom when he is not using it, while Greene
carries a folding one.
The white cane is one of the few outward signs of
his disability, but it doesn't single him out from
the rest of the crowd. He stands in school lunch
line chatting with the other children and tapping
his cane on the floor--like a kid swinging a
baseball bat.
Chris's mother describes her son as a "very social"
child who asks question after question, which
throws some people who first meet him. "They
don't expect him to be outgoing," she said. "He's
very outgoing.
"I've never seen a child that asks so many questions.
He loves people and likes to go places and
do things." Strangers don't realize that Chris and
his little sister are blind, and that suits her just
fine 'cause she wants others to get to know the
children first before forming any impressions.
Greene says Chris, who sat on the National
Federation of the Blind float during Boone's Pufferbilly
Days Parade, never stopped asking questions
about how the float was made and what
made it run.
But Cindy Hinds, whose descriptions of Chris
(his favorite subject is art, and he can't carry a
tune) destroy common sterotypes, doesn't think
that trait is connected with not being able to see,
since Regan has an altogether different personality.
And
Chris' limited vision doesn't influence what
his feelings about himself, or other children's acceptance
of him, as one of her anecdotes illustrates.
She says they read a question together
in a children's magazine that asked, "If you
wanted to change one thing about yourself, what
would that be?" His reply was that he wished his
legs could run a little faster.
If she could give one piece of advice to others
raising visually handicapped children, it would
be, "Don't panic. Treat them normally." For her,
motherhood has been a process of learning what
her children can do.
"He's opened my eyes more than anything. To a
whole new world, you might say."
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