Tony is my first visually-impaired student.
I remember seeing him a couple years ago waiting in the music building for his class to begin. I had very little contact with him then because he's not enrolled in my class. He's my student this quarter. Today's the second session, which met in the library. Tony was a little late; it probably took him some time to feel his way with the walking stick from the music building to the library. Someone had to help him to find our room. When he arrived, another student sitting by the entrance quietly and courteously moved away to give Tony the seat.
After class Tony came up to ask me about the assignment due next week. Because of my lack of experience with disabled students, I might be more nervous answering him than he was asking me. But after 5 minutes of chatting, I was completely disarmed; Tony's no different than other bright students.
He's funny too. He sort of needed help to exit the room and the library. I learned from TV program that it's best to let the visually-impaired person hold your arm, and Tony asked if it's OK to hold mine. I said yes but also admitted quite frankly of my cluelessness how to do a good job. On the way back to the music building, I asked him how he could manage his classes (and I had in mind how he could manage my research techniques class that requires a lot of reading). He told me that his computer reads to him, and he wittily joked, "Don't worry. You'll get your homework!"
9 comments:
Last year I had one hearing-impaired student and one mother with serious emotional problem (due to some childhood trauma and problematic marriage) in my class, yet thank God that they like my class and me as their teacher. This semester the hearing-impaired student comes back and wants to work on a project helping/educating normal people to understand and empathize deaf people. It's quite an experience having students like them.
God bless Tony and your teaching to him.
I share your joy of getting the TonyAward as a music teacher !
Thanks, ablogaday.
Anonymous, your witty style as always.
One of my cousins is legally blind. When she went to college, she had to memorize how to walk to class from dorm, and how to take public transportation. Her mother "stalked" her for the first week or so, just to make sure.
As you can imagine, her memory and the ability to recognize voice is far superior to most people. And she can sing and play piano better than most people too.
Tony explained to me about his computer that "reads" to him. There's a feature of "fast-reading," which is analogous to our fast-reading/scanning/browsing. Tony can things that are read pretty rapidly!!
I like that "fast-reading" feature, especially when I have to read those boring papers.
Imagine pressing the "play" and "fast-foward" buttons at the same time. That's the kind of sound that Tony can decipher.
I do that sometimes when watching movies.
Sometimes I skip to the last episode and then decide how much in between stuff I want to watch.
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