ROLES,RIGHTS, & RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED TEACHERS

Teachers of the Visually Impaired: Roles, Rights, and Responsibilities

by Uzair Ahmad

I am honored to be here today to talk to you about the roles, rights, and responsibilities of those of us who serve blind children in our county. It takes a village to raise a child. I'm sure you've heard that before. In our case, it takes a concerted effort from parents, from the students themselves, from the teachers that work with the students, and from the administrators who provide the support, in order to put all the things together that are needed so that our children can become independent, capable adults. That is our goal in Blogger. Our mission of the Blogger compasses all of these things. Our mission statement is: �The Blogger is committed to the educational experiences that will enable each student to become a life— long learner, enter the workforce with necessary work skills, and achieve academic and personal potential.� This is our goal for all of our children. In order to make that goal a reality for our children who have visual impairments, I have to fulfill certain responsibilities.

The teachers have to strive to help the students become self—sufficient. They have to keep our expectations high and then constantly keep raising them as the children meet their goals.With the education plans and materials in advance so that we can set the stage for lessons that will include our students and will be meaningful to them. Oftentimes we don't have to provide a person to assist our students directly if we do enough advance planning so we can provide adapted or modified materials with which they can learn independently. For example, our students receive Brailled report cards and Brailled grades and comments on their papers so that they can read and measure for themselves how they are doing and what they are achieving. In fact, anything that is provided in the classroom for the sighted children board work, hand-outs, overhead projector slides, etc. is also provided in Braille for our Braille users. Our teachers work hard to see that this happens.

     We have found that a child will become better skilled with the use of the abacus, for example, if the regular education teacher and the TVI teacher work together to plan for repetition and constant use. A regular classroom teacher can encourage the child to use an abacus, for example, during math instruction on a daily basis. This applies to other skills, too.

  

                  


 The regular education teacher can help our blind students to utilize their canes with frequency. It is a requirement in our school that blind students do not leave the classrooms without their canes. The regular education teacher can provide descriptive language of an environment that is constantly changing. They can engage and include the visually impaired student by describing illustrations, by allowing the child with low vision to have preferential seating so that they can see some of the materials if they are able, by explaining routines and board work, by explaining overheads as they are using them, and by describing one-on-one to the blind child what other students are doing. Oftentimes, our children can miss out if we don't make a concerted effort to let them know what's going on. What's so funny? Why are the other children in class laughing? And teachers can, very discretely and with a sensitive tone, let our children know when what they are doing is not appropriate in the class setting in order to help them function better within the group.


     Your role as the teacher of the visually impaired is constantly changing depending upon the needs of your students. In fact, you were a preschool teacher for years and when you first assumed this position your focus and your number one goal at the time were to learn, or relearn, all of the Braille skills that you had learned in college but had not utilized in years. That included getting to know the Nemeth Code and becoming familiar with teaching the abacus. Later, you had to learn all the commands that are necessary to utilize JAWS, and how to work a Braille �n Speak adequately.