Division on Visual Impairments

DVI Quarterly Volume 58(4)

A quarterly newsletter from the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Visual Impairments containing practitioner tips for Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments, Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialists, and other professionals.

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Expectation and deafblind educational strategies The third thing I had was a belief in Dylan's competence and deafblind strategies to help him get it. Although Dylan may have been in this box, I believed in his capacity to learn and to come out. I liked the quote from Barbara McLetchie, "Deafblind children are not limited by what they learn, but by what we teach them." Things like wait time and partial participation gave him time to process the information and generate a response and helped show him how to do new things that he wasn't learning from vision. Signing hand under hand with his hand riding on mine to see helped him combine visual and tactual information and gain greater understanding. This touch also triggered his eyes to look at me. Of course he had his object and touch cues to anticipate what was going to happen next. At School-Home Dylan learns through routines and concrete learning experiences. We follow his interests and his pace and he is able to show us what he knows in new and exciting ways. Out of the structured routines his independence blossoms. Dylan's health is still compromised and pain and fatigue can cause him to close his lid, but at School-Home there is greater flexibility to adapt the schedule and activities based on his physical ability at any given moment in time increasing the time we have with engaged learning. With trusting relationships, a safe, predictable, and responsive environment and deafblind educational strategies Dylan is able to come out of his box and engage with the world. He is growing into the competent, self-determined young man I've always known he could be. 44

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