Welcome! This year, I'm supplementing my student specific information for teachers with some additional reading/videos/tools that will help you support our shared student. That should reduce all of the paperwork I give to you and allow me to give you quick access to related videos.
Blindness Etiquette I recommend watching this video of Jane Flower (from Guide Dogs for the Blind). She goes over basic blindness etiquette in a humurous way (and you get to see a cute dog).
Room Setup Guidance
Your student has an orientation and mobility instructor who will touch base with you in regard to your student's travel skills and what to do during drills and actual emergency situations. She will also show you how to safely give sighted guide to your student and will go over the emergency plan with you. Here's an instructional video about thesighted guide technique as well.
Additional storage will be required in the classroom. An extra drawer or half of a cabinet in the classroom is useful so that we can store the braille textbooks or other materials that may be needed for class (ex. adapted lab kit for science, tactile graphics kit).
If you rearrange the classroom, just make sure that you let the student know in advance so that he's not surprised.
Turning In Work Our secondary students can turn in assignments on a thumb drive, in paper form (for math, primarily), or by e-mail. We may also be experimenting with a shared OneDrive folder system.
Technology Used in Your Classroom (Or to Complete Assignments)
Your student will use a screen reader called JAWS to access a computer when completing word processing, spreadsheet, and internet assignments.
A braille note taker (Braille Note Touch) will be used to take notes, complete word processing tasks, or use the braille display to read text on the computer or iPad.
For drawing quick, tactile pictures (especially for math and science), the Draftsman is a great tool.
Things to Consider When Having Students Access Specific Websites and Apps
Unfortunately, computer programmers sometimes get sloppy when coding or do not design their programs with accessibility in mind. As a result, websites and apps are not always accessible to people who use screen readers. For instance, sometimes form fields are not labeled or what looks like a button visually is actually a link. You can find out more information about attempts to make web content accessible at the Web Accessibility Initiative.
For your own websites, please make sure that you don't have links labeled "here". When accessing a list of links on the webpage, you want to make sure that the name of the link is a good descriptor (I hope that I have modeled that well on this webpage).
Feel free to ask me to test a website for accessibility before having your students access it. If there are a few problems with it, I can also give the student some workaround solutions for accessing it. If the content is simply not accessible, then I can try to find an alternative website for the student to use.
General Tips These articles give some good general tips for teachers:
Braille I certainly don't expect you to learn braille (although some teachers find it really fun to learn the basics). Here is some basic information about braille:
How Braille Works (this article has some really interesting information but please note that the US transitioned from English Braille American Edition to Unified English Braille in January, 2016 and the article does not have updated information).
Supporting Social Skills Because so many things are done for students with visual impairments (and because so many people and things come to them without effort), there is an inherent risk that students with visual impairments will become egocentric, fail to understand the perspectives of others, and not get the chance to struggle and overcome mistakes. Sometimes we want to help so much that we forget that it there is a dignity in being allowed to fail and recover from mistakes. Here are some tips:
Keep the same expectations for her classroom behavior and performance that you would for any other student. It is best if reminders/consequences for poor choices in the classroom come from you rather than from the vision staff.
Name students when calling on them so that the student knows who is speaking. Encourage other students to say their name when they are greeting or talking to her (Hi Tammy. It’s Corey.)
There are things you do in the classroom that will visually cue the sighted students but may require some narration on your part in order for the student to feel included and know what is happening. For instance, you might say “I’m getting our next activity ready to hand out.” Using an auditory signal such as clapping (rather than a raised hand) to indicate that you want silence from the students, is helpful.
Provide verbal descriptions of things that are happening in other parts of the classroom so that he does not miss activities that are occurring at a distance.
Other students sometimes have the tendency to direct questions and statements to the vision staff or classroom teacher when the student is the best person to answer the question. Gently redirect the student to ask the student the question directly.
Just in Case You Have Time... You probably won't have time, but these are some good memoirs written by adults who have experienced vision loss at some point in their lives. As a teacher with typical sight, I find that it's helpful to listen to their voices and stories:
To give you information the student's visual impairment and its implications for the classroom.
To provide suggestions for adaptations/modifications within the classroom.
To modify and prepare materials (we will transcribe worksheets into braille or make an accessible electronic version). I will give you more specific information about how to give me work that needs to be adapted.
To work one on one with the student within the classroom as appropriate.
To maintain and provide assistance/training the student's assistive technology.
To work directly with the student on Braille (as it relates to reading and math), assistive technology, social skills, independent living skills and travel skills.