The Gift of the Continuum of Services Part III: Knowledge and Skills

Like many students with visual impairments, I too, struggled in the subjects of math and science because of the highly visual instructional methods. Since I was the only student with a visual impairment in my school at any given time, I did not know that these were common struggles. Instead, I erroneously attributed it to my own ineptitude, which nearly prevented me from pursuing my doctorate because I was terrified of the statistics requirements. Never ever in my wildest imagination would I have dreamed of graduating with a doctoral minor in applied statistics and research methods.

Throughout the majority of my academic career, I have been an “A” student. While people often marvel at my intelligence, academics does not come easy to me, and my success is positively correlated to my effort. I first learned this valuable lesson from my third-grade teacher who refused to let me use blindness as an excuse for laziness. Fortunately, she was one of a small handful of teachers throughout my entire academic career who saw my potential and helped me believe in myself.

In order to be successful in the inclusive setting, I spent countless hours, including many sleepless nights, doing homework. Undoubtedly, this instilled in me a strong work ethic. However, it left little time for extra-curricular activities and outside-of-school socialization. While my younger brother and sister were outside playing, I was inside with my nose stuck in a book. While my friends were hanging out at the mall, I was inside with my nose stuck in a book. While my roommates were working part-time jobs, you guessed it, I was in my dorm room with my nose stuck in a book.

Because my mother expected me to perform on par with my non-disabled classmates, my achievements were genuine accomplishments, not tokens of sympathy. For better or for worse, I was expected to complete the same work in the same amount of time as my sighted peers, and I was graded on the same scale, which meant that I occasionally got non-passing grades. Undoubtedly, this caused a significant amount of personal distress as I am a perfectionist, but it also motivated me to try harder. As a result, not only did I learn the essential academic knowledge and skills, but more importantly, I ultimately realized that I was just as capable as even the smartest of my sighted classmates.

Being educated in a system where an estimated 75-90% of learning is visual, I mastered through trial and error how to self-advocate and to problem-solve. Growing up as the first student with a visual impairment my teachers and classmates had ever encountered, I felt like the proverbial square-peg being forced to fit in the round hole. While this undoubtedly took its emotional toll, it also made me quite adaptable. Because I learned in a different way, I constantly had to experiment with different combinations of adaptations I needed in order to be successful in a variety of situations on a variety of different tasks, and consequently, I learned how to anticipate my specific needs and proactively self-advocate. In terms of adaptations, I became particularly adept at taking notes auditorily, finding the optimal seat in the house, being highly organized (including use of color-coding), spot-checking board notes with a monocular (i.e., hand-held telescope), using a variety of magnification devices, and soliciting visual information from others. Having wiggly, crossed eyes (due to nystagmus and strabismus), I was always having to explain my visual impairment. Over-time, I figured out how to describe my ocular diagnoses in meaningful ways as well as how to combat negative stereotypes in a non-threatening manner. By figuring out how to function in a visual world using the least restrictive adaptations, I ultimately became a more marketable prospective employee.

In order to thrive in the general education setting, it was paramount that I maximize my visual efficiency. In spite of having devoted teachers who spent an inordinate amount of time tracing over purple dittos with a black marker, enlarging worksheets on the photocopier, and procuring large-print textbooks, I quickly figured out that the only fool-proof way of having access to learning materials during the actual lesson was to use the same materials as my sighted peers. As the print became smaller and the books became heavier, my posture became poorer as I spent many hours hunched over regular-print schoolwork. As a consequence, I now have a sizable Dowager’s hump and chronic back pain as permanent mementos.

When the workload significantly increased during junior high, I expressed an interest in learning braille. However, this was deemed impractical because of the time it would take to learn the code and the understanding that I would not retain it if I did not use it regularly. Instead it was recommended that I use a black and white, closed-circuit television (CCTV) and books on tape. Unfortunately, I never developed the coordination to smoothly maneuver the CCTV’s moving table nor the ability to attend to audio books for any considerable length of time. Granted, I only received cursory instruction in the use of these tools, and I was embarrassed to use any specialized devices in front of my sighted classmates. As a result of such experiences, I relied extensively on my vision and never fully developed other sensory efficiency skills, which would now be beneficial to an extremely nearsighted middle-age woman struggling with advanced presbyopia (the ability to focus at near) who predominantly teaches online and therefore, spends the majority of her time sitting in front of a text-filled computer screen.

While it is easy to be an armchair quarterback and second-guess decisions regarding my designated literacy modalities and learning media, the braille decision was fraught with numerous confounding factors. First, I have always been a visual learner long before I was socialized into attitudes rooted in visual cultural imperialism—i.e., the notion that vision is best (Ferrell, 2005). For example, at the tender age of three months, I proved the doctors who insisted that I had no usable vision wrong by impatiently grabbing a spoon of baby food from my dawdling mother. I was also the kid, to my mother’s horror, who shattered a pyramid of holiday wine glasses in the grocery store by pulling one out of the display so I could hold it up to my eyes in order to see its pretty design. When it came to reading, I was enthralled with pictures, and in fact, I chose my early books based entirely on their colorful pictures. As a person with low vision, I was naturally attracted to the bright yellow books with the adorable monkey, Curious George^®. It was my addiction to the many mischievous adventures of Curious George^® that made me an avid reader. Moreover, as a very opinionated child, I know in my heart-of-hearts that I would not have been interested in braille only books, and therefore would have presumably been a struggling reader. (Remember that I learned to read before the wide-spread availability of print-braille books.) By the time I saw the utility of braille (middle school), I do not know how I could have possibly fit such intensive, specialized instruction into my already demanding schedule. Perhaps I could have begrudgingly given up my electives, but I also learned important things and made lasting friendships from these classes as well, particularly home economics. Before or after school was also not an option because I had to help my single, working mother by taking care of my siblings. For braille to have been an efficient modality, I would have needed intensive daily practice (not always feasible in an understaffed itinerant system) and full immersion in braille (not usually feasible to use grade-level, common core materials during the initial phases of braille instruction). Thus, I would have needed to attend the state school for the blind during the entirety of middle school in order to have had a fair shot at becoming a proficient braille reader. In all likelihood, regardless of placement, I would have regressed academically (hopefully only temporarily) in pursuit of this endeavor at this late juncture in my life.