Nine-year-old Anna Walsh entered her classroom, slapped a 3-inch thick Braille book on her desk, and announced, “I finished `Ramona’s World’!”
Her classmates were unimpressed.
Unfazed, Anna continued. “My grandma didn’t even know I was still awake.” Slowly the din of Braille machines and talking electronics grew quiet. Anna fingered her talking watch. “I was up until 10:42 p.m.!” she concluded triumphantly.
The class cheered.
Anna, born blind, is one of eight south suburban children who attend classes in a resource room for the visually impaired in a Crestwood elementary school. Such children are benefiting from new technology, teaching methods and laws that have revolutionized the way visually impaired children are taught.
Thirty years ago, public school students who were blind were sent to state residential schools or bused to resource rooms — like the one Anna attends at Nathan Hale Elementary School — throughout their entire education.
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed in 1975, created an option for blind or visually impaired children: enrolling in their neighborhood schools.
The law guarantees children with disabilities a free public education in the least restrictive environment appropriate for each child. Amendments made to the law in 1997 state that students who are blind or visually impaired should receive as much of their education as possible in a general education classroom following the regular curriculum.
Like Anna, Sandra Murillo started primary school attending a resource room for students with visual impairments. As she progressed, she was slowly phased into classes with her sighted peers. Now the 16-year-old honor student attends Thornwood High School in South Holland, where she finds her locker each day and negotiates the cafeteria line — tray in one hand, white cane in the other.
Low numbers
Murillo — like many others — is the only blind student in her school. Illinois had 2,264 children enrolled in 2003-04 who met the legal definition of blindness, not including students attending private schools or those with multiple disabilities, said Barbara Perkis, director of the Illinois Instructional Materials Center for students with visual disabilities, in Chicago. Another 600 to 800 qualify as visually impaired, she said.
There were 3,909 deaf children, 28,363 children with mental retardation, and 139,582 children with learning disabilities enrolled in Illinois public schools in 2002-03, the latest school year for which figures are available, said Beth Hanselman, division supervisor for special education services for the Illinois State Board of Education.
Fewer than 33 universities in the country offer programs to train instructors who work with the visually impaired, said Mary Ann Siller, director of the American Foundation for the Blind’s National Education Program, in Dallas. “There’s a significant shortage of qualified teachers,” she said. “The country currently needs at least an additional 5,000 teachers of students with visual impairments.”
Those who work with the visually impaired include orientation and mobility instructors, who teach techniques for safe, independent travel, often using a white cane; and teachers who instruct students in Braille, keep them abreast of assistive technology, and provide materials to use in regular classrooms, such as Braille worksheets.
Northern Illinois University in DeKalb has a visual disabilities program that helps keep most of northern Illinois free from teacher shortages.
“There are vacancies now and then,” said Jodi Sticken, orientation and mobility director at NIU. “But I would be very surprised to find out there are any visually impaired kids in northern Illinois who aren’t getting vision services.”
School districts in some Illinois cities, such as Chicago and Evanston, hire their own special education staff. Others form special education cooperatives with neighboring districts. Anna Walsh’s home school district — Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144 in Markham — and Sandra Murillo’s district — Thornton Township High Schools District 205 in South Holland — are among 17 districts that contract with Exceptional Children Have Opportunities.
Teachers travel
The cooperative, known as ECHO,employs a team of vision specialists who travel among schools. ECHO staffs the resource room that Anna attends.
Chicago Public Schools has 10 resource rooms exclusively for the visually impaired. That number will decline to seven in the 2004-05 school year as more such children attend neighborhood schools, said Kathy Kinsey, vision coordinator for Chicago Public Schools.
“I think it’s good for kids to be included — it’s wonderful to have the kids in neighborhood schools,” Kinsey said.
Still, Kinsey said she can’t imagine a time when resource programs are eliminated altogether.
Other school districts and cooperatives see it differently. The resource room for the North Suburban Special Education District, for example, serves children with all sorts of disabilities rather than just those who are blind.
Seven-year-old Alan Brint, blind from birth, spent his kindergarten year being bused from his Highland Park home to the district’s resource room in Red Oak School, also in Highland Park. This year, however, the 1st grader walks to his neighborhood school with his brother Zacko, 10, a 4th grader.
“For Alan to be in that resource room with all these kids who need other help — he never really fit into that,” said Alan’s mother, Betsy Brint.
Alan has a one-on-one aide at Indian Trails School in Highland Park and receives additional help from an itinerant Braille teacher, an orientation and mobility instructor and other specialists. Although Alan’s mother is pleased with his education, she regrets that her son has so few opportunities to learn special skills alongside other children who are blind.
“I would never take him out of his home school,” she said. “But I’d love to give him the opportunity to have some learning in that other environment as well.”
The 1997 reauthorization of the federal disabilities education act requires that no matter where they go to school, all students who receive specialized instructional services because of a visual impairment must be taught Braille.
The House and Senate have passed versions of bills reauthorizing the law, but no talks have been scheduled on a final version of the bill. The Senate version, approved in mid-May, contains language that strengthens the wording requiring types of instruction for the blind and visually impaired, Sticken said.
The Illinois Instructional Materials Center provides Braille textbooks to Illinois students with visual disabilities. It is funded by the State Board of Education and located at the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, 1850 W. Roosevelt Rd. It also provides Braillers, which are similar to upright typewriters and have six buttons the size of half dollars where the keyboard would be.
In addition, the center provides assistive technology and other special materials free to Illinois schools and agencies that educate the blind or visually impaired.
Just as computers and other technology have affected learning for sighted students, personal digital assistants, word processing and the Internet have changed the ways blind students do schoolwork.
Heavy machines less common
Years ago high school students who used Braille might have gone to class hoisting 16-pound Braille machines under their arms. Today the Braille notetakers students slip into their backpacks are smaller and lighter than laptop computers. Words are typed in Braille by manipulating the machine’s six keys, and the work is checked either by listening to a speech synthesizer or by feeling a display that shows each line in Braille.
Students can emboss a Braille copy onto paper, print a copy in ink for the teacher, listen to electronic text downloaded from the Internet, cyber-chat with friends and do research on the Web.
“Braille notetakers have opened a new world for some of our students,” said Mario Cortesi, a citywide itinerant special education teacher and assistive technology specialist for Chicago Public Schools. “But notetakers are complicated to learn. They’re not for everyone. They require some sophistication in their use, and some decent cognitive ability. Usually it’s the upper-grade or high school students who get them.”
Murillo is one of those students. The technology practically eliminates barriers to her classes that rely on essays or stories, such as English or social studies.
In geometry, however, learning can be far more complicated. Using raised-line drawings to read graphics, push pins and rubber bands to form angles, and special paper and pens to create diagrams, Murillo has a 96 percent average in geometry so far.
“My textbook is 63 volumes,” she said, opening one page of her Braille math book to demonstrate how big the raised-line drawings can be.
Beth Finke lost her sight at age 26. A Chicago resident, she is a writer and public speaker on topics that include the Americans with Disabilities Act, training with guide dogs and other issues concerning the blind.
