Blindness And Teaching In The Elementary School

Blindness And Teaching In The Elementary School

Future Reflections Jan/ Feb/March 1985, Vol. 4 No. 1
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BLINDNESS AND TEACHING IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
by Adelmo Vigil
Reprinted from the NFB Spring/Summer, 1984 Issue of The Blind Educator. Original Title,
"Teaching in The Elementary School."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Through the help of the NFB
National Association of Blind Educators, Gwynne
will be student teaching this fall, and plans to
pursue certification as a teacher.
(Note: The following address was delivered on
Thursday, April 12,1984, at the Western Regional
Conference of the National Association of Blind
Educators in Sacramento, California.)
It is a pleasure to be here this morning and be able
to relate some of my experiences teaching in a
public school classroom. I want to start off by
telling you about my teacher training experience
at Western New Mexico University in Silver City.
The first question everybody asked me was
whether I was planning to do my student teaching
assignment at the school for the blind. When I
said no, they asked how would I be able to teach
in a regular classroom. I told them to let me get
through school first and I would figure out ways
of getting the job done.
I met a third grade teacher who believed in my
ability to teach. I was able to work out my student
teaching placement with him. I completed my
student teaching in the spring of 1977 and decided
to continue living in the Silver City area. I applied
for a teaching position with the local district, but
received no response. I contacted the personnel
director who agreed to interview me but never got
back to me to set up an interview. Finally, I went
and saw the superintendent who told me that
hiring decisions were made individually by each
school principal. I began interviewing and
learned that none of the principals in the district
had ever been told of my application by the
personnel department. At that time, I did not
know of the existance of the National Federation
of the Blind and so I went to a private attorney for
help. He suggested that I take my case before the
State Human Rights Commission. When the
Human Rights Commission found that district
had discriminated against me, the district decided
to offer me a teaching position.
By that time the matter was settled, I had already
accepted a position teaching Title I math in
Shiprock, New Mexico. I stayed in this position
for three years, but always wished I could get into
teaching in a regular class. When I asked my
principal about a change in assignment he asked
me if I would be interested in teaching in an open
space setting where four classes totaling 120
students were combined. I told him that I thought
I might have trouble teaching in the open space,
but still wanted very much to teach regular third
grade. What do you suppose he did? The next
year, my principal moved all third grade classes
to the open space. Nevertheless, when an opening
came up for a third grade teacher, I asked for a
transfer even though it meant teaching in the
open space.
It was hard in a way because even though I could
control my kids, some of the other teachers had
trouble controlling their kids which made it
difficult to hear over the noise of the other kids
and pencil sharpeners. I did not particularly
enjoy the situation, but I enjoyed teaching third
grade. I taught in the open space for a year and
the following year transferred to another school
where I have now been for the last three years
teaching third grade in a regular setting. I have
been teaching a total of seven years now and it
has not always been easy, but I believe it is up to
us to take on a job and pull our own load. We can
not expect others to do our work for us, we have
got to do it for ourselves.
Now let me relate to you a situation in which I
have recently been involved concerning Gwynne
Widhalm, a student at Peru State College in Peru,
Nebraska. Gwynne's university supervisor, Dr.
Divney, would not let her student teach and sent
her a letter outlining the numerous reasons why.
As I read Dr. Divney's letter, I began to get mad
because it was clear that Dr. Divney feels that a
blind person is incapable of teaching. When
discussing the possibility of assigning Gwynne
to a second grade class, Dr. Divney stated, "Discipline
would become even more difficult. As
children become more adept at imitating voices,
at changing chairs and seats, as active games are
played on the playground, this monitoring and
discipline would be extremely difficult when you
depend on sound to identify a discipline problem
in the room. "Dr. Divney's words show a complete
lack of understanding about the nature of discipline.
Discipline is not maintained by sight, but
by the relationship a teacher has with his or her
students. At the beginning of the year I will say to
the kids, "In my classroom we go by my rules. If
other teachers run their classes differently that is
up to them." I ask the kids, "Do you want to be the
best class in this school and if so are you willing
to work at it?" As time goes on they begin
believing in themselves and believing that they
are the best class in the school. It does not matter
whether anyone else believes they are the best
class, they believe it and learn to work together
and treat each other and me with respect. Learning
to respect one another and work together is
very important and is something too often overlooked
by other teachers.
In her letter, Dr. Divney also stated, "Children
love to test the teacher. It would be very easy for a
child to cause a disturbance that was completely
noiseless. Gwynne would not hear the discipline
difficulty that was arising." What Dr. Divney is
forgetting is that the blind teacher is in a room
full of children who can and do report to the
teacher if another student has matches and is
planning to burn down the school. This type of
relationship with your students is equally important
for sighted teachers and blind teachers,
since the sighted teacher cannot possibly be
watching all children at all times. A teacher
working with a reading group in the back of the
room cannot be watching everything that is
going on in the rest of the class. In my class, I assign students to serve as class leaders. Each
week we change leaders. During an activity, if a
student is talking the leader will write the
student's name on the board and later I will
discuss with the student why he or she was
talking. My principal liked the way the leader
system was working in my classroom and decided
to expand the program schoolwide. Since third
grade is the highest grade at my school, during
recess the leader from each of the third grade
classes assists the teacher on duty with monitoring
the playground. The leaders also assist in the
cafeteria which all the teachers find to be a great
help. The system is good for the children. It
makes them feel responsible and important.
Another area which Dr. Divney identified as
being impossible for Gwynne to manage was the
use of the blackboard. Dr. Divney stated, "Much
of the time in the meeting was used in a discussion
of the importance of blackboard work in the third
grade. Many of the lessons, opening exercises, the
mathematics, as well as handwriting is presented
on the blackboard for children in the third grade.
They work at the blackboard. It would be difficult
for Gwynne to present material to the children
using the medium of blackboard . . . It was
mentioned in the course of the conversation that
one third of the children learn visually . . . and
one third of the children learn kinesthetically. If
all lessons were presented auditorily. . .it would
be to the advantage of one third of the children.
Two-thirds of the children would not be grasping
the material ..." Let us apply Dr. Divney's
thinking another way. If a blind teacher can only
teach through the auditory modality thereby
excluding two-thirds of the class from learning,
then is the sighted teacher only capable of teaching
through the visual modality thereby also
excluding two-thirds of the students from the
learning process? If a teacher writes an assignment
on the board is he or she not thereby
excluding those children who learn by the auditory
and kinesthetic modalities? What about the
teacher who relies heavily on worksheets? A
teacher at my school told me that she goes
through 150-175 worksheets daily which figures
out to seven or eight worksheets for each child
each day. This is in addition to the students'
workbooks. So what happens to the child who
learns by hearing? What happens to the child
who learns by doing?
In my classroom the emphasis is on the children
learning to take responsibility for themselves.
Children will live up to your expectations of them.
I tell my children if they have a question they can
come up and ask me, but they better not expect me
to read the directions to them. I expect them to
read the directions for themselves, not because I
am blind, but because it is important for them to
take that responsibility for themselves. Then if
they need help understanding the directions, I
will explain the directions to them.
Grading papers is another problem that Dr.
Divney brought up. She said, "Grading papers
would be a task that would need to be taken home
and done by someone else at night. This means
that when Gwynne brought the papers back to the schoolroom the next day, it would be very
difficult for her to answer the questions the
children would raise about the marks on their
papers because someone else had marked the
papers. Someone else had scored and graded
them. So that Gwynne would have great difficulty
answering the questions of the children and
showing them what would be the correct procedure
to follow on their written work, paper
work, seat work." Again, Dr. Divney's comments
only reflect her deep-seated negative attitudes
toward blindness. Before I hand back a student's
paper, I go through it to see where the student is
having problems. For example, in math, I note whether the student is having trouble remembering
to carry or remembering to add in the number
carried. When I hand back papers, I will let a
student know that he or she is having trouble so
that I can get with the student later and work
with him or her on solving the problem. I have
been using this system successfully for seven
years. I do not know why Dr. Divney thinks a
blind teacher would not be able to explain a
problem to a student for the material that the
blind teacher has taught. In fact, it is even better
if the child is able to go through and analyze his
or her own mistakes rather than always having
the teacher explain the problem to the child.
Then Dr. Divney brought up the issue of record
keeping. She said, "To keep a teacher's grade
book requires marking in very small squares. It
would be extremely difficult for Gwynne to keep
the type of grade and attendance book that is
routinely asked of teachers to keep." Dr. Divney's
use of the word routinely lends insight into her
attitudes toward teaching. To Dr. Divney there is
no room for different styles among teachers, there
is only one way to carry out each duty. If my
district were to require me to maintain a regular
grade book then I would find a way to get that
done. The way I get the job done is nobody's
concern by my own. As long as I can fulfill the
requirements of my district then that is all that is
important.
Supervision of my children out of the classroom is
not a problem. Dr. Divney expressed concern
about Gwynne supervising children on the playground.
As I said earlier, this is another situation
where I use the class leaders to help with the
monitoring. Sometimes when my kids finish their
work I will take them outside to play ball. I am not
afraid that they will hurt themselves and besides
if a student does get hurt, a sighted teacher might
see the accident happen, but that does not mean
the teacher would be able to prevent the accident.
I feel that the only way to improve the situation of
negative attitudes toward blind teachers such as
those of Dr. Divney is for more blind people to
enter the teaching profession. Through the National
Federation of the Blind and its division of
the National Association of Blind Educators we
can work together to eliminate discrimination
toward blind teachers.
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