Observing Eddie

On November 20th, 2013 at 12:30 in the afternoon, I visited the Lakeview School in Edison, New Jersey. The school provides everyday education for over 180 children with disabilities, ages 3 to 21 years from twelve New Jersey counties, as they told me when I walked in. The classroom is rather large with a table in the middle and other tables and storage containers against the wall for optimum space to create the least restrictive environment for the students. Additionally, when walking in, the only knowledge I had about the child was that it was Deafblind.

The it turned out to be a fourteen year old boy named Eddie, and he has one teacher with two aides in the classroom, one of which is reserved for him, Danielle. Eddie was sitting in an activity chair with his legs crossed like a pretzel and he is wearing a blue shirt and trousers and black converse shoes. Eddie keeps a gavel on a string, and the green rubber gavel has circular bumps on it and squeaks. In class we discussed focusing on a student’s abilities, so I asked Danielle about Eddie’s, while she was filling out some paperwork and Eddie was chewing his squeak toy. Rather than answering my question, Danielle replied that Eddie has CHARGE syndrome, which stands for Coloboma, Heart defects, Atresia choanae, Retardation of growth and/or development, Genital defects, Ear anomalies and/or deafness. Eddie’s right eye is better and he can see from his peripherals and directly below, but in comparison to his classmates, his sight is rather good; he uses eye gazing often. Black, yellow and red are most recognizable to Eddie when it comes to tangible objects, as well as his communication cards. Eddie’s parents and sister are very involved in including Eddie in “normal” activit...

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... very much. At the end of the day, Eddie was again given photos with words to then paste into a packet highlighting his happiness on a scale for what they had done for the day. During cleanup and pack up, Eddie was rather violent towards himself, but he never hurts anyone else, which is good. Finally Eddie was pushed out in his chair to his bus and that was the end.

Overall, the experience was very educational, but also disappointing. In my opinion, the Lakeview School is not providing appropriate instruction to Eddie and the curriculum can and should be adapted more towards his needs. I was rather appalled by the activities and lessons taught executed on the 20th of November, especially when Eddie seems to have so much potential. In the future, I plan to do more research on children with CHARGE syndrome, and gain further experience with Deafblind children.