Blind children, if given a chance, can play and learn right alongside their sighted peers. An open mind, a positive attitude, and a little creativity are usually all it takes to integrate blind students into regular preschool programs. The blind child can learn the same concepts that are taught the other children. The only difference is the method of learning. The blind child must make more use of the other senses. They also need parents and teachers who will allow lots of hands-on experiences. Blind children can learn the same concepts as other children. They may just need to learn it in a different method such as hands-on. Concepts such as big and little, same and different, prepositions (over, under, in, out, behind), shapes, number concepts, and others are easily taught with concrete objects as an alternative to pictures on paper.
Parents of blind children are used to helping their children get accustomed to new places and will guide you in doing so. Usually, one or two visits to the classroom when the other children are not present will be enough to orient the child. Children will use many things to find their way around. The sound of the wall clock or heater may be a way for them to locate themselves. They quickly learn that the story time area is carpeted and that the dress-up area is next to the windows where they can feel the sun or hear the rain.
Blindness does not mean that the child is totally without usable vision. Most of blind children have varying amounts of vision, which can be quite helpful. “Legal blindness” is a term you may hear. It means that a child has 10% or less of normal vision. Teachers need to know that many factors affect what, and how much, a child may see at any particular time. Type of eye condition, fatigue, lighting, excitement, etc. all affect a partially sighted child’s vision.
There is little need to worry about the comfort the blind child will have with its peers in the classroom.
In the following chapters, there is an extensive amount of knowledge to learn about how Deaf culture is involved in our modern world. The pages assigned give us an outlook of how Deaf people are treated in our daily life, and how we should learn from it. Its gives a clear line between what are myths and what are facts, to those who are curious about the Deaf community or have specific questions. This book has definitely taught me new things that I could put to good use in the near future. In specific chapters, my mind really opened up to new ideas and made me think hard about questions, like “why don’t some Deaf people trust hearing people,” or “do we need another ‘Deaf president now’ revolution?” I realized many new things in the course of reading this book, and have recommended this to my family.
During the 1920's, separate schools were established for the blind, deaf, and more severely retarded (Reddy, p5). However, students that were considered mildly disabled were educated in regular schools, just thought to be 'slow learners'. Soon educators started to develop separate classes for disabled students. The reasoning for taking them out of the normal classroom (exclusion) has not changed in the last eighty years. People today, who are still in favor of exclusion, have the same justification for their belief. It was thought that students...
English is an interesting language. English is comprised of many different words from different languages all mashed up and mixed together. English is a very hard language to learn, especially if you can’t hear it. How easy would it be to confuse a “B” with a “P”, they sound similar and when trying to lip read how can you tell the difference? I feel that young Deaf /hard of hearing students being taught by a Deaf teacher or a child of a Deaf adult (C.O.D.A) teacher is very important because ASL is the first step to learning English and becoming bilingual. According to the article Why Schools for Deaf Children Should Hire Deaf Teachers: A Preschool Issue By Courtney Shantie and Robert Hoffmeister, the authors state “This paper will focus on
On the other hand, James Joyce, in his story Araby, expresses the idea of blindness in a different way. Instead, he uses light and dark to pinpoint shadows, gloomy lives and naive thoughts. The implications of blindness can be different and numerous. It moves from the literal meaning to the metaphorical one, as we can notice clearly in Carver's the Cathedral. Robert's blindness is notably interchangeable bewteen what robert is expected to be as blind and what the narrator really
E. H. L. Leung and M. Hollins, Understanding Blindness: An Integrative Approach, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989.
Blindness is defined as the lack of visual perception. Blindness can also be defined as not being able to see things for what they really are. One may be able to see but may not be able to see the true meaning of something. Black communities often refuse to see the way that white people treat them. In Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man many events contribute to the overall theme of sight vs. blindness.
Vision is imperative to the well being of any animal. It may be for maintaining position at the top of the food chain, acquiring alpha male/female status or just living life to full potential, proper vision is necessary. Blindness/poor vision affects animals as much as it affects humans, since this condition is common to both humans and animals, we are better placed to understand and relate to their problems. Visually impaired pets are handicapped and require proper care and attention. Being sensitive toward blind or partially blind pets will help us deal with their problems more efficiently.
On the surface, blindness gets treated just like any other major disability in our culture. However, the absence of the common ability to see can be exceptionally polarizing for both the blind and the sighted person involved. Eyesight is an exceedingly fundamental and uniting gift that has drastically shaped the way humans perceive the world and continually shape their every thought. Regrettably, this can sometimes characterize blind people as being somewhat alien to some people. They lack one of the most basic forms of common ground on which to relate. For some people, this can be an uncomfortable barrier, while others will immediately accept and cherish their company without a second thought. These are precisely the two contrasted reactions depicted in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”.
Teachers are often looked at, by their students, as a second mom or a second dad. Our job as teachers is going to be, not only to teach students academics, but to care for them and make sure they are well rounded. Teachers have to ready students for the future so that they are able to live independent lives as adults. Deaf students tend to struggle with living adult lives more so than their hearing counterparts. As Deaf Education teachers, our duty should be to promote functional living, social-interaction, and self-advocacy skills for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. It is especially important for Deaf Education teachers to promote this because the amount of support a deaf child receives at home may be minimal. In a classroom, there may be a student who has deaf parents to guide him/her through life. On the other side of the spectrum, there may be a deaf child of hearing parents whom show no interest in interacting with their deaf child. Those who have deaf parents are more likely to develop a strong sense of independence because they have their parents as role models. Unfortunately, those with hearing parents may not have much of a support system. There are many cases where hearing parents don’t learn their own child’s language and don’t care to communicate with them. These children may have a low self-esteem and no high hopes for their future. This is why, as teachers, we must show that we care by sharing our knowledge and promoting these skills, so that these students know what the future has to offer.
I have attended a local deaf church for a deaf event. The church that I attended was named Orange County First Assembly. It's located in Santa Ana and the date I went was November 26. It was the same week of thanksgiving so, I was invited by a friend of mine. Throughout this event I made a few observations that I notice and I was really intrigued by some that I’ve seen. So, I’ll explain some of my observations that I encountered.
The picture is describing sensory inaccessibility because there is no braille sign to indicate the classroom number. There are many classrooms for different classes, so classroom numbers are assigned for students and professor to know what classroom they are supposed to be in. Braille is used for people with low vision or is blind to distinguish what is written. So, without a braille sign to indicate what classroom number it is, students and professors with vision disabilities will not know the right classroom they are supposed to be in to teach or to learn; they may even end up in the wrong classroom as a result. Therefore, the absences of braille signs cause sensory inaccessibility, which is necessary for people with vision disabilities to
It has been observed by the researcher that in public settings often the reaction to a visually impaired person is quite different then to that of a sighted person. Society seems to have a predisposed perception of the communication abilities of visually impaired people. This study hopes to establish a correlation between the perception that visually impaired people are also speech impaired when they are in a setting where they are accompanied by another person.
The students with disabilities can even do projects with project based learning. While researching I came across a girl that would not talk in class. When her teacher partnered her up with other students, she became very talkative. She would not communicate with other students and refused to work in groups. She would always choose to work alone. With PBL she learned to work with other people and she opened up and communicated with other students. With PBL all students can participate. Students will be much more comfortable because they are not getting taught by teachers and they get to answer questions from their everyday life. The students get to be creative and outgoing with their projects. Projects students create can be anything and everything. They can create a community garden, a habitat for animals, and they can plan a dinner for classmates or their teachers. “PBL is not just a way of learning; it 's a way of working together. If students learn to take responsibility for their own learning, they will form the basis for the way they will work with others in their adult lives” (Why is project based learning important?, 2007). Students are not learning they are preparing for the world around them. They are learning to consider more than just themselves in school. They are thinking about how to make their world
In fact, the student could be very bright in the other subjects that they do not struggle with, it all depends on the student. While I feel that there are many things that I can do to work well with these students, such as breaking projects into smaller tasks, presenting what I want the student to do in multiple ways, and teaching the student how to be more organized and efficient, there are also many challenges that I could have with these students. Children with this disability tend to stand too close to people while in conversation and also has struggles with misunderstanding jokes, puns, sarcasm, etc. While the misunderstandings and jokes are a bit more easily solved, personal space can be an issue with me at times. However, in my experience, this is only with adults or people my age, so the children being a bit too close should not be as much of a
In the text book, Exceptional Lives – Special Education in Today’s Schools, Chapter 15 focuses entirely on students with visual impairments. It gives the definition of visual impairment as an impairment that affects the student’s education and abilities to learn even if it is partially correctable (paraphrased). The book also mentions how some people, while they may not be completely blind, may have tunnel vision – where their vision is limited to a small tunnel like section directly in front of them – or simply reduced vision that can be adjusted with glasses. All of those would still qualify as being visually impaired. While the book mentions most of the same materials that the web site mentions; like defining low vision, functionally blind, totally blind, congenital blindness, and adventitious blindness; it does not (that I found) the statistics of how many