Future Reflections

Special Issue: Low Vision and

Blindness 2005
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Twelve Tips for Classroom Teachers

by Barbara Cheadle
The following tips are based upon my experiences as the parent of a son with partial
sight and are a revision and expansion of an earlier article I wrote for Future
Reflections entitled A Partially Sighted Child in the Classroom: Tips for
Teachers.
Let me begin with some background about my son. Chaz is totally blind in one eye
(glaucoma) and has nystagmus, a cataract, and strabismus in his other eye. His visual
acuity during his toddler and early school years was about 20/70, but that shifted to
20/200 (legal blindness) by the time he graduated from high school. He attended a
Montessori preschool and a regular public school from kindergarten through high
school.
It was never necessary for him to have an instructional assistant, or aide, in the class.
He had an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and the services of an itinerant
teacher of the blind (TVB), who provided direct instruction to him as needed and
consultation to his classroom teachers and others as needed. He used regular print
primarily in the class, but was also taught Braille and keyboarding by his TVB.
(Getting Braille instruction for a partially sighted child at that time was unusual and
would never have happened without the help of the National Federation of the Blind.
But thats another story. Today, the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that all visually impaired children be
provided instruction in Braille unless an evaluation indicates it is not necessary now
or for future literacy needs.)
Before he finished high school, my son was independent in making decisions about
what alternative techniques to use and discussed or negotiated these individually with
his teachers as needed. He went on to graduate from college with a major in Ancient

Studies and currently works as an educator and sailor for the Living Classrooms
Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland.
Thats the background. Now, here are the tips:
1. Before you do anything else, read the childs IEP then ask the TVB and/or the
parents to clarify anything you dont understand about it. If the student does not
have an IEP, he or she should have a Section 504 plan. If the student has neither, this
is a serious oversight and I urge you to call it to the attention of the proper authority in
your school system. In the meantime, with or without an IEP or Section 504 plan, you
can still proceed with the strategies below:
2. Verbalize everything. All of your students will benefit if you read everything as
you, or others, write it on the whiteboard or review it from a PowerPoint presentation
or overhead projector. Even when you call on students for answers, dont just point-say the names aloud. You can even occasionally rattle off several names, Oh, I see
that Kevin, Tyesha, Rachel, and Ryan have their hands up. Ryan, what is the
answer?
When doing a demonstration, it might help to stand close to the low vision student and
to over-verbalize as you go. My heart still aches when I remember the time I observed
my son in a fourth grade class. The teacher was demonstrating how to peel the thin
membrane off an onion so the kids could put it under a slide to look at the cells. My
son was totally lost and confused. If she had been more explicit in her language and
had stood next to him (or him to her) and casually dipped her hand down for him to
get a visual close up of what she had done, he could have proceeded with the other
kids.
Kids with partial sight can see some things and not others, and sometimes what they
can see will vary from day to day or hour to hour depending upon the lighting
conditions, eye fatigue, etc. My own son loses a lot of vision in glare or overly bright
light; he always does better in low light. However, some kids cant see well in dim
light. Observe your student and try to determine what works best for him or her. If
you learn to verbalize everything as you go, you dont have to worry about whether
your student is having a good day or a bad day with his or her vision.
3. Please dont ask your student What do you see? or Can you see...?
Instead, observe the child, ask for his or her feedback about your verbalizations, and
ask her how he or she prefers to manage certain tasks. A partially sighted child at this
age very often cannot tell you what he or she can or cannot see. Remember that he or
she has no idea what perfect vision is like. There is much in the visual world that

the student is missing, and doesnt even know he or she is missing. It takes time and
training for kids with low vision to understand their vision, and more time to learn
how to describe it to those with good vision. My son, for example, didnt realize
until middle school that other kids could look out the car window and see their friends
waving at them from the sidewalk. He was upset because other kids thought he was
being stuck up and ignoring them when they waved to him; he didnt know they
expected him to be able to see them. After all, he recognized his friends visually in the
hallways. It was hard for everyone--including himself--to understand the quirks of his
low vision.
4. Whiteboard work, PowerPoint presentations, overheads, demonstrations, movies,
and materials on bulletin boards in and around the room will need consideration.
Follow the IEP if it is clear and detailed. If not, work with the student, the TVB, and
the parents to determine what techniques will work best for him or her. Your verbal
descriptions and reading aloud of everything may be enough. On the other hand, he or
she may need to be allowed to go close to read the material and copy it down. Dont
always make him or her sit up front, however, if he or she doesnt want to. Let him
or her move about the room as needed to read things. This should be done quietly and
unobtrusively, and taken for granted as a matter of course. In other words: no big
announcements to the class. If other students ask about it answer them honestly but
briefly and move on to other topics.
5. Allow your student some flexibility to experiment so he or she can find out what
works best for him or her. My son found that if he sat or stood next to the overhead
projector, he could read the material on the projector slide without interfering with the
projection on the wall. He always sat next to a friend in the back of the room when a
video or movie was shown, and his friend quietly described any necessary action that
wasnt verbalized. He would stand close to the blackboard to read and copy down
assignments, then return to his seat. Sometimes he would ask a friend, who would
read it quietly to him. (It was best if he copied it himself since he could not always
read others handwriting.) Although we didnt call it this, he was doing what blind
people call using readers--that is, live people who read materials to you under
your direction and instruction. Its no big deal, and often at this stage only takes a
few moments and is especially easy to do when students are working in groups or
pairs.
6. Touch is important. Your students education will be much enhanced if you
actively encourage tactile exploration. Tactile clues help the student verify what he or
she may see only imperfectly or perhaps not at all. Even older students, especially in
the sciences, should continue to use their tactile sense for learning. When our son was
twelve, we discovered that he thought that the large ears on goats--the kind that stick

straight out from the head and are horizontal to the ground--were horns. We were at a
petting zoo and he asked us why some of the goats had four horns and some had horns
but no ears. Although our son could see, he did not have enough knowledge
about the world around him to accurately assess the information his limited vision
provided to him. A lot of the time he was guessing.
Many tactile techniques are also safer--especially those used for cutting and
measuring. This is most important in classes such as home arts (cooking and sewing),
industrial arts, chemistry class, and biology lab (dissections). When cutting (or
dissecting), for example, use the curled knuckles of the opposite hand against the flat
of the blade as a guide. You cant cut a finger this way because the finger is never
exposed.
One caution: some children may be embarrassed to touch if they are the center of
attention and other students are not touching. See tip number eight (below) and also
consider how you might make activities more tactile for all your students.
7. Large-print and/or magnifiers might help, but are not always the answer. Usually
regular print, as long as it is crisp, sharp, and with good contrast and no glare, is best.
In fact, the worst thing you can do is give a low vision kid fuzzy, smeared, blurred, or
faint copy--no matter how big it has been enlarged. My son used a combination of
regular print and large print. In his IEP he was always given permission to take a good
master copy of something to the copy machine in the office and to make an enlarged
copy of it as needed. Of course, this didnt help if he had a bad master copy, or if he
had a substitute teacher who didnt have good instructions (or didnt follow them).
That was one of his biggest complaints: a substitute who would give him a worksheet,
or even a test, that had not been enlarged and when he told the substitute that he
needed to go to the office to enlarge it, the substitute would refuse and tell him to
Do the best that you can.
Hand-held magnifiers, a monocular, and/or a high-powered closed circuit television
(CCTV) system might also be used by the low vision student. (My son had a handheld magnifier but seldom used it.) Efficient use of these aids requires patience, skill,
persistence, and training. It is critical for teachers to understand that these aids do not
restore or correct vision to a low vision person in the same way that glasses or
contacts restore vision to most people with common eye problems. Magnifiers are
most effective when teachers, parents, and the student understand the limitations of
the devices and the student uses them in combination with other nonvisual techniques.
Some low vision kids struggle with print when they really need Braille. Its much
easier to learn Braille as a child than an adult, and children can learn both. Your

observations and recommendations do count. If your student is having difficulties

with print, or if you can anticipate that he or she will have trouble when the print gets
smaller and the reading demands increase, then please call this to the attention of the
TVB, the parents, and the IEP team. You might want to remind the team about the
IDEA Braille provision that requires Braille instruction for blind and visually
impaired children.
8. Dont make a big deal about the student or the techniques used. Do be up front
about it; just take the attitude that Of course we do it this way because this is how
its done in classes with blind or partially sighted students in them. Dont
tolerate teasing or harassing of the student, but do so in the context that no one is
allowed to tease or harass others for any reason.
9. Expect your student to take notes independently. One unfortunate trend in
education is to provide a scribe, that is a live person, such as other classmates, to
take notes for a visually impaired student. On some occasions this may be acceptable
(taking a pop-quiz for example), but it is not necessary nor desirable for this to be the
primary note-taking method for the average blind or partially sighted student. There
are better, more independent, note-taking methods for both Braille-reading and printreading low vision children to use.
My son learned to write Braille primarily as an alternative when he could not read his
own handwriting. He had touch-typing instruction in third grade and began to use a
computer to write his essays in fifth grade (and should have done it sooner). Before
then he wrote as little as possible because it was hard for him to read his own
handwriting, to check his spelling and grammar, and to make corrections. He did his
math work and the true/false and fill-in-the-blank test items in handwriting, but used a
computer at school and at home to do all other writing assignments.
Keyboarding instruction and access to a computer with accessible features for the
blind is essential to all visually impaired students from the earliest grades on. If this
instruction or equipment is not in your students IEP, it should be. He or she needs a
fast way to independently prepare print materials for classroom teachers. Some
schools provide laptop computers with synthesized speech and/or screen enlargers to
blind and low vision students. Portable electronic notetakers for the blind are another
common option.
10. Expect your student to do the work. Please dont excuse him or her from
assignments; think about the purpose of the assignment and adapt as necessary, but
dont exclude. For example, the student needs to learn how to use the dictionary,
even if he or she cant read the small print. He or she can learn, for example, to

direct someone to read it to him or her. But to do that, he or she needs to know what
information is included in a dictionary and how it is organized.
If the student isnt getting the work done but he or she has the cognitive ability to do
so, and you have eliminated other possible causes, then the problem is not the low
vision; its lack of proper materials, adapted technology, techniques, and/or
compensatory skills. Again, you can call this problem to the attention of the IEP team
or to your supervisor.
11. Expectations matter. Although students who are blind or have low vision may do
things differently, they are as capable of doing academic work as their peers. If we
expect them to perform and provide them with the tools they need, they will do their
work with speed and competency equal to any other child.
12. Attitude counts. My husband and I adopted the philosophy of the National
Federation of the Blind (NFB) in raising our son: It is respectable to be blind. We
decided that since his vision loss required extensive educational services (and would
prevent him from ever driving a car), then he was, indeed, blind--not just low vision.
That attitude made a world of difference in our acceptance of nonvisual techniques
and in our sons confidence and self-esteem. If his vision wasnt sufficient for a
task it was no big deal; there were perfectly good blindness techniques that he could
use to get the job done. As he grew up, these nonvisual strategies became a part of his
personality. For him, touching and listening is as natural and as automatic as looking.
Recently, my son and I were working together in the kitchen. My vision is not as good
as it used to be and as I took my glasses off and put my nose down to look at my
work, my son laughed and admonished me, Use your hands, Mom, use your
hands! I had forgotten how much we had used that phrase when he was growing up!
We were always encouraging him to trust all of his senses and not to rely only on his
limited vision.
Chaz currently works in a high-glare environment (the worst possible condition for his
vision): on the sea every day in bright sunlight teaching kids about ecology, sea life,
and sailing on a 19th century Skipjack. Hes good at it and he loves it. I dont think
he would be doing this job today if he had spent his childhood trying to use his limited
vision for all tasks and avoiding or trying to modify all high-glare situations. Today,
hes an adult with confidence, skills, and a job--and it all started with an attitude.
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