Durant Road Elementary Serves Visually Impaired Students
November 4, 2010 - Durant Road Elementary is one of several schools across Wake County specially equipped to serve visually impaired students. There is a team of specialists at the school who teach students skills that help them succeed in regular education classrooms.Principal Teresa Winstead says visually impaired services at Durant Road Elementary began shortly after the school opened in 1992.
“Our visually impaired program is one of the neatest things that we do here,” said Winstead. “And there is so much that goes into teaching a child how to read in Braille, how to write in Braille and how to use other methods of accessing information.”
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 Kindergartener Olivia learns to read braille text in the visually impaired classroom. |
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In the V-I Classroom
Jill McMillan is the school’s Teacher of the Visually Impaired . McMillan remembers growing up in Rochester, Michigan and watching Leader Dogs for the Blind being trained and the independence people received. Later, she taught in Raleigh at the Morehead School for the Blind. Now she leads a team at Durant Road Elementary. They fill a classroom with tools for Braille typists and the latest technology for training to read and write in Braille.
“I think Braille students really learn the shape of the letter just like sighted people learn the shape of the letter and how it looks visually,” said McMillan. “Blind students learn how it looks tactilely and each Braille letter has a different shape.”
McMillan uses a tool called a swing cell to help kindergartners learn Braille.
“A Braille cell has six dots,” said McMillan. “Each one of these pegs represents a dot that would be in the cell. And as the students are learning about the Braille cell and about each letter, they would be able to make the letter themselves. It’s amazing how many combinations you can make with those six dots that Louis Braille came up with.”
Olivia is an energetic kindergartner who is learning to read Braille. Her fingers track over the raised markings on a large sheet of white paper.
“Mom will,” reads Olivia. “No. That’s not will.”
“You are right,” says McMillan, as she slides her fingers across the page. “It starts with a W sound.”
“Want,” says Olivia.
“That’s right,” says McMillan. “Good girl.”
While the students are learning to read Braille, they are also learning to write it. Olivia feeds a sheet of paper into a Braille writer. She uses it to create the series of dots that spell out her name.
Then she types as McMillan calls out words.
“Braille is one of the critical things that they learn so that they can access in the classroom the same information that their classmates are getting,” said McMillan. “And that’s where the Braillists come in. They work with the classroom teachers to get the materials. If there are worksheets, any kind of materials that the students are going to have, the teachers give those to the Braillists and the Braillists make sure that it’s in a format that the students can access.
The V-I team
The team supporting students includes Braillist Carol Smith.
“We are in the classroom each day, mostly for math,” said Smith. “So we see them every day and we communicate about upcoming assignments. They are really good about getting tests to us ahead of time. We have their math workbooks that we work on, their reading workbooks. And we just try to stay ahead of the game by at least a week or so.”
Second graders like Danielle and Paige continue to work with teacher Jill McMillan.
McMillan gives a word problem to Danielle and Paige who use an abacus to calculate the answer. They slide beads on the apparatus, rechecking their work. They arrive at the same answer and when McMillan tells them it’s correct, they cheer.
The Second-Grade Classroom
From the visually impaired classroom, the second graders return to their classroom where teacher Megan Dustin has a math word problem for the class to tackle. One of the Braillists moves between Danielle and Paige as they work on the problem. Dustin calls on Danielle to come to the front of the class to share her answer. Students nod in agreement as Danielle explains how she found the answer.
“Every child has their own special needs so we need to make sure that we meet the needs of all children,” said Dustin. “And the visually impaired students are just other children in my classroom so I treat them like the other kids in the classroom. Of course, they come with different modifications, but I think all kids do.”
Dustin works closely with teacher Jill McMillan and the Braillists.
“Each student that I have that is a visually impaired student has their own Braillist,” said Dustin. “And I prepare my materials in as far in advance as I possibly can so that I can give them to the Braillists and they can make any modifications or Braille materials for the children so that they are ready and have the same materials that all the children do.”
Dustin says the students get the assistance they need to be successful in her classroom by spending part of their week in the visually impaired classroom, but most of their days are spent in her classroom.
“I think that it’s really important that they get those same opportunities that every other child gets,” said Dustin. “They have the same responsibilities in the classroom and the same expectations. So that I think that it’s really important for other people to see that they are not by themselves. They are in the classroom learning exactly the same way that the other children are.”
Keeping Parents Informed
Teachers and the visually impaired team work closely with parents. E-mail notes are sent to support beginning readers.
“I would try to send a weekly e-mail to a parent saying that these are the contractions that your children has learned this week so as you are reading together they should recognize these words,” said McMillan. “The Braillists help to get materials that will have those words in them to go home with the student so that they have access at home as well and the parents are provided the information they need.”
For Principal Teresa Winstead, it’s important that Durant Road Elementary serve all students.
“One of the things that I think is so exciting about having the V-I program here is that it has really helped not only provide great support for our V-I students, but also to help our other students understand that different children are dealing with different things,” said Winstead. “And our kids are very supportive of them, almost to a point sometimes where we have to have them not hover quiet so much because they always want to be very helpful, but one of our main goals with the students is to make sure they gain independence.”
As teacher Jill McMillan notes, it is their goal to give visually impaired students the tools they need for accessing an education along with their peers and help them become independent, productive adults.
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