Project Math Access DVD 06 - Perspectives- Part 01
Transcript Start

Audio Description: Part one, initial experience; having a blind student in your class.

Marien Massa: I am Marien Massa. l teach at a large suburban school outside the Chicago area. It has about 3,200 students, a little bit more than that. Our students are multicultural. We have a good minority population. We also have both mentally and physically handicapped students. Our building has three floors to it, quite large. I have been teaching here in the district for 26 years. 

I have a math major, and I have been teaching math all those years, anywhere from basic math all the way up to college algebra and trigonometry... which is basically just a step away from calculus. This is the first time I have actually dealt with a blind student. Before that, I have done physically handicapped, kids in wheelchairs, so this is the first time that it has been more of a challenge. With the physically handicapped you make adaptations, but they basically can see and know what you're talking about. 

With the blind student, I first found out when I was getting ready to pack up and go home for the summer. It was the very last day of school. Somebody walked in the room and said she was the blind itinerant... and she came over to me and she asked me who I was, and I said, "Yes, but I think you have the wrong teacher." She said, "No, I think not." I said, "Well, I don't have him in class next year; at least he's not on my schedule," and she says, "Oh, we have made a change, he'll be in your class next year." I said, "Oh," and she promptly left, and I thought okay... there is something wrong here, because this is not supposed to be happening. 

He would be in my geometry class. I was on a committee for over a year to adopt a brand new geometry book, so it would be the first time through... and knowing that another teacher had dealt with the blind student in algebra, you have to have all your tests and quizzes and everything... at least two weeks ahead of time, and I'm thinking not with the new book, that's not going to happen... and this is not happening to me and it's kind of like well, we'll deal with it when September comes around. 

Well, all summer long, though, I stewed about it and how am I going to get all this done and how is that going to work... and, yes, there are 32 kids in my class, along with him, and brand new book and not quite sure where you're going with the book. I came back in the fall and, sure enough, he's still in my class. I am like I knew he was supposed to be in somebody else's class... and they go well, he was moved to your class because you have more teaching experience and probably it would just be a better situation. 

So, I never saw the blind itinerant again until like maybe a week into school. Well, my student showed up, then I was informed that... I didn't really know how the textbook came; I just assumed it was just one big book. Much to my surprise, you get many different books. There are only a couple pages to each book. Well, we really have no place to store it. 

Then I found out it was not the newer version of the book either, it was an old edition... so I had not planned on trying to look at the old edition and the new edition and seeing what differences there were. About the third day when something wasn't matching up in his book and my book, and I cannot read braille... it became very frustrating right away as to okay, this is going to be a problem, so I had him start reading things to me... and I'm not sure he's me telling the truth. I mean, I can't see it and I'm not sure he's really reading it right either, and I go... "You know what, that can't be right," and he goes, "Yes, it is," and I go, "You're not on page so and so," and he goes, "Yes, I am." 

So, I finally found the blind itinerant and I said, "There's something wrong here because I can't read that book... and I don't think he's on the right pages." She goes, "Oh yes, they only come with maybe 10 pages of a regular textbook in braille and oh... by the way, we have a different edition." She goes, "Now do you have the old edition so I can at least compare his answers and help him." I am like, well I will try to search one out because all we have is the new edition. 

Basically most things matched, and I really didn't worry that much about it because he was very capable of trying to adjust... but at the beginning he didn't tell me everything that was really wrong... like there was no picture here when there was a picture in our book that went with it, so he was very patient. 

I did get an aide for him through our special services about two weeks into the year. I did have like the first week or so or the first two weeks of whatever I was giving them as a handout or a quiz or whatever for her to braille... and it took her a long time to do it. I am not quite sure why. I was like why isn't she getting all that stuff back to me... I have to have it, why wasn't I getting it back. 

Well, we didn't hit it off, me and the itinerant, right away. Then she came up and she goes, "You know, this is taking a long time to braille. I am going to need it sooner." I go, ''I don't understand what the problem is." She goes, "Well all the diagrams, she uses a glue gun to make." Well, since geometry is so visual, almost every single problem has a diagram with it, and I did not understand, and that is a lack of communication. So, one of the things that we were lacking at the very beginning is our communication. I think she just assumed I knew what goes on with a blind student or whatever. 

I had had no training whatsoever and really did not want to do this. Nobody told me what was going to happen... and I'm assuming he is in a regular class, he is supposed to be doing all the work all the other students is as he is not on a modified grade... so, yes, I expect all this. Well, about two weeks into school, one of the people in special education stopped me in the hall and says... "Well, by the way, how is so and so doing?" I said, "Well, I haven't seen a stitch of homework yet. I am having a hard time. I have no grades for him." She looked at me and she thought that was odd... but I thought it was odd because I didn't think she was working with him either. 

So, she relays that to the blind itinerant. Well, I have a phone call immediately. Well, that means he will have to "ink it"... and I'm thinking, well fine, "ink it", what's the problem here. So, not knowing what "ink it" meant, I was like okay, I don't understand. So, I saw the student in class the next day and said, ''I guess you're going to have to ink it,"... and he goes, "Yeah, she told me I'm going to have to 'ink it'." I am like okay. I just figured he typed it into something and printed it out; I don't know what ink it means. 

So the next day he comes and he has half of it out. I am like okay, where's the rest of it? Well, we didn't have time to ink the rest of it. I am like, I still don't get this. So, the next day comes and he doesn't have it done again, and I'm like okay, I better say something. So I call her up and I said, "You know, I'm still not getting any homework and I don't understand." She goes, "Well, you know it is really hard when he goes home for him to do all his homework and then his parents to write it out." I go, "That's what ink it means?" She goes, "Yes." 

So, I think my expectations were totally different. I just assumed he did the problems and then he typed them in and somehow it printed it out or something from some computer someplace, so communication is very important right away, and I think a little bit of training for the teacher would help a lot. 

I was basing some of it off the teacher that worked with the student the year before, and she wasn't very informative... just get this done two weeks ahead of time, get it to the blind itinerant, she'll get it back to you... and I'm like okay. She didn't explain to me maybe some procedures that they had worked out or whatever... so I was kind of going into it blindly, because I really didn't know what all this terminology meant or what I should be expecting from the student. 

He was grading his own papers and stuff, which was fine because obviously nobody else could grade them... but I could not give feedback as to if he was understanding it or not. He could answer in class. If l asked him what was the answer to 32, he could give me an answer, which was great, but did he do all the rest of the problems. In a basic sophomore geometry class, I give three points a day for homework, so he was getting all zeros in my book... because I wasn't seeing any homework, so there was a problem there. 

Before I ever knew that I was going to have John in class, or the blind student in class, or that there was a blind itinerant or anything... you just teach in your classroom and you go on because you have 150 students and, you know... there are some special ed students in there, and you deal with special ed services... and you get frustrated with them, because they didn't return the test, or the kid has to go there to make the test and so on... so you already have a bad feeling about special ed students that you have to deal with. The special ed teachers go track them down, they didn't return the test or whatever. 

One day I was sitting in the math office and the teacher behind me had the blind student in algebra, and I'm like hmm, glad that's not me... not going to be me. She got up from her desk. We have mail slots in the back, and she went and she picked up some mail out of her mailbox... and came back to her desk and was kind of cussing out about everything, and she goes, “That blind itinerant, she did it again. She put that braille test in my box. How does she think I'm going to grade that?" And she was going on and on, quite furious. And I'm thinking, man, am I glad that isn't me and still not going to be me. He's not going to take my class next year, there's no way he can be in regular geometry. And I was just happy as a thing and glad it wasn't me, somebody else’s problem. So then I thought about it and I'm thinking that has to be really frustrating, because what do you do with braille tests? 

I did talk to her later and I said, “What do you do with those things?" She goes, “Well, they go to the blind itinerant and she prints it out for me." I said, “Oh.” So I'm thinking that has to be a pain in the neck, because now you have to wait to get the kid's test. That means you're going to have to grade it separately than you grade the rest. I always have mine graded the next day and hand them back and go over it... so that means he wouldn't be doing that because it would take too long to get that back. 

So, now I'm like, yes, it's not me. Then when I got the word that it would be me, I'm like oh, that's not going to happen. To understand the point further, probably the test came from somebody in special services that the student was working with... and they put it back in her box for the blind itinerant to get it, but again we are on a communication thing where we really don't know... where the test came from, but the teacher made the assumption that the blind itinerant put it there... and that probably really didn't happen, because why would she do that if she knew she had to print it out? 

One way I avoided that problem is we did have somebody write for the blind student when he was in my class. That saved him a lot of time, him frustration from typing it in to the Braille Lite and then getting it all printed out again... an immense amount of time, so he could just say the answer is A and so on. The second year I dealt with the blind student, the blind itinerant didn't want him doing that. She did want him writing it out himself to get more life skills for himself, because nobody is going to be sitting there writing for him all the time... so there was some contradiction on that point. I could see her point. I saw my point. It's easy. It's done. I can grade it. It made life easier for me. He preferred having somebody else write it for him too because it saved sometime, but he did learn things by that. 

So, part of the thing is communication. I didn't pick up on what she was talking about with the test and everything until I was in the situation. So, if l had known some of that stuff before I actually walked into that classroom that very first day... it probably would have helped me cut down the anxiety level. When you're first going in there, it's like what am I going to do with this kid? What am I going to do? And, I think at the beginning it's like, you know, this is a regular student... he's going to have to do it like everybody else does it, and then you just find out it doesn't work. If somebody would have sat down and said, “Okay, this is how he takes tests. Somebody writes for him. Somebody doesn't write for him. Somebody reads him the test, or does he read it all himself?" 

The blind itinerant did braille a few things incorrectly. Some of that could have been my fault too, because ifl miswrote something on the test I can easily make that correction in my classroom... “Kids, hey just change that to a 5." Not easy for him because he has to go find where the problem is. Then how does he change that number? He doesn't. So, I had to give him a test when he took it in class, which 99% of the time he did. We had him take it outside of class a few times when somebody had to do a lot of reading to him. 

Then it was distracting to the other students. He did type on his Braille Lite, which did make some noise, but the kids had no problem dealing with that. I asked the kids when I put them there, I said, ‘‘If it's a problem, we'll move you." Nobody ever complained, so they all adapted that way. So, part of the problem was, you know, where is he going? Where is he going to do this? How is he going to do this? How's he going to do his homework? How do I get his homework back? I don't collect homework. I walk around and check it every day, so my next question was is if he had to turn it in... what would he be turning it? That issue I didn't come to, but I'm sure other teachers would have that issue. That was a problem, not for me, but I'm sure it's going to be for other people. 

So, if somebody could just sit down and say, “This is the way I work with this student." Every student is not going to be the same, obviously, but it's going to be basically the same thing. How do you do this? How do you do a fire drill? Does he go out with the rest of the students? Does he not? Does he need somebody to help him? Do you want him to go on his own? Can he work with other students, or should he have an aide and just work with the aide? Things like that, because I was afraid, okay am I putting pressure on the kid that's working with him? Now he has to rely on this other kid to read him the problems, and this other kid is hoping he's going to get help from him... but maybe he can't because they're not on the same problem because he has to go through all his reading first... where the other kid is just looking at the picture. There are some problems that way. How do I do that? 

Something that helped me too was possibly a magazine or something about just the blind in general. What needs do they have? What do they have available to them? How do they function every day? I don't know how he gets around town and stuff. That was one frustrating thing to me. I'm assuming he's down there every seventh period that first year and I could just walk down and give him some help... or talk to the blind itinerant. I'd come down many times and the door was locked, and I'm like, well where did they go? Well, every Wednesday he did his walk around town or whatever else. I didn't know that. I am like, man, I was supposed to come down here and nobody's here, I'm wasting my time. I don't know his other needs. 

And I think too is he was an above average student, so he is taking a full class load, not like a lot of our other special ed students... or low level students that take maybe only four or five classes. He is taking a load of six classes, plus his free time is taken up. I actually went down one time and they are having ice cream. I'm like hmm, I didn't get invited to this party. He's learning how to cook, he's learning how to clean off the table, things like that. I was not aware that's what he's doing during that time. 

I'm thinking, you should be doing your math, not realizing he has all these other things to do. And, he happened to be a wrestler, so in the morning before wrestling season started, he's lifting weights. After school when the season starts, he's wrestling. He doesn't have time for me. And I'm thinking, man, he should be giving all this time up. I'm giving this time up, where is he? So, I don't know what else he's doing. One day I walked in... there was a room the itinerant has with all her stuff in it... and I walked in and the science teacher is there, and I'm thinking... you know, and he's working on biology. And I'm like wait a minute, what happened to his math? And I thought I'm the only one he has to worry about. He really has to worry about all his classes and his workload... and as a classroom teacher you're not even thinking about his class load and what actually he has to do every single day.

When I asked him to have his homework and they told me he had to ink it, later on I understood first of all what "ink it" meant... and then I understood why there was such a problem with it, because he had all this other stuff to do... so if he got home by 6:00 at night and first started getting anything done, he had homework from five classes. 

One thing that as a classroom teacher I would suggest, when you find out the very last day of school that you are getting a blind student the... following year, your reaction probably is not going to change. I don't care what happens... you're probably going to be, oh no, this is not happening to me, and no I'm not going to do this. You have to understand that the laws allow those students to be in class. You have to accept those laws. And I think those laws, as more and more students come into the classroom that have different situations... probably teach us to accept that just a little bit better. 

You really need to right away start thinking about how to find out more about the student, number one... and what services are available for that student, what contacts do you have with people to help you. Who am I dealing with? Am I dealing with people in my special services? Am I dealing with just a blind itinerant? Who is going to help me get through this? Don't think you can get through it yourself; it's not going to happen. So, you do have to probably make some contacts. The problem was I had three months to think about it, and it was just like you went from anger... no, this is not going to happen... to well okay, let me see what I can do. I'm going to be the best teacher in the world for this kid, and I'm going to go out and buy all these figures and everything else. And then, what do I do with it? 

You have to do a little bit of research on your own, I would just say blind in general. What is their day like? What do they do? Actually, we've done it here. We've had physically handicapped students, so many years ago we used to make the teachers be in the wheelchairs for the day. How hard is that? And then we realized what their life is like. Maybe you need to try to be blind for a while. What is that like? And then try to think about, if you were the learner, how were you going to learn this without seeing it? 

So that also affected how I made my lesson plans after a while too because I'm thinking okay, if l can't see that, what am I going to do? Somebody would say, “How are things going?" And I'd say, “You know, teaching a blind kid geometry just is like, you know." And they are like, “A blind kid is taking geometry? How in the world do you do that?" So the suggestions then were, you have to make a lot of contacts on your own or really research what's available and then slowly try to... accumulate some knowledge about what's available and what you can do. Being hit all at one time with things isn't helpful either because if l get this big manual, I'm not going to read it. I need to talk to people. Just reading things wasn't helping me either. 

So, maybe some reading material might help. A list of websites was helpful. Maybe not just academic websites, but what do they do during their lives? Where do they go? How do they function? How do they go to the bank? How do they do this? I mean, that might have helped me a little bit too, I don't know, but maybe understand them a little bit better. So, maybe if l had some understanding of their situation it might have helped me a little bit better in those first couple of weeks. How can I help them their first couple of days in my classroom, not just throw this at them and, hey, that's too bad. 

So, you have to understand too that you have to make adaptations to them. They are new to you, but you are new to them too, and you have to understand that they are not going to come in and know everything either... and they are going to be leery of you. How are you going to react to them, what are you going to do, and so on. So, you have to find out a little bit about the student. I'm just thinking okay, this algebra teacher is screaming and yelling about the blind student... and his test and everything else, and I'm thinking what kind of kid is this? And a couple of other teachers are like, “Oh yeah, he's a great kid." Okay, is he bad, is he good, is he in between? I don't know. Maybe you need to find out a little bit more background about the kid. 

All I knew is he went here; I didn't know anything else. So, I needed to know more about his background. And then actually his second year here, his brother was here, so that helped out a little bit. If he missed class, his brother could come and do things. Maybe parent contact. I never saw the parents the entire year. Did not come to parent conference night. Did not come to open house. Anything I dealt with, I went through the blind itinerant and she would call home. I finally met the parents at the end of the year at the staffing. All they said to me was thank you for everything and that was it. And I'm thinking, lady, if you only knew the hours I put in with this child of yours. It was frustrating that way, so I think more parent contact. I was leaving it up to the itinerant to deal with it. She had dealt with the family for how long, she knows the family, why should I get involved? I just left it there. 

So, maybe some contacts with the parents right away. Does the kid have other problems? Does the kid need this? How does he react? They would know that more than the blind itinerant would. How does he go with setbacks? What goes on at home? Do you have a routine he does at home that takes away from his homework time? He did play softball, and he's explaining how to do that. Well, here he's going away on weekends and doing that, and that's taking away from what he's doing in my class. I needed to understand that. 

So, there's a lot of background information you need to get. Try to locate other people that have taught blind students. It doesn't necessarily mean to... if he's in a high school situation it doesn't mean you have to talk to high school teachers. Just talk to anybody just to get some feel on what to do. Now when I talked to the person that had him for algebra, not very informative. I was basing some of my summaries off of what she was saying, which wasn't really a good... I needed more than one person. I probably should have went and talked with the rest of his teachers. If he's a freshman, go back to junior high and say okay, what went on here? How did you deal with math here? Did they have a calculator? How did he do that? I didn't know when he came to class, what's a Braille Lite? I don't know. I don't know what equipment he comes with, what he has, what he needs. He needed space. He needed a bigger desk than what we had. Nobody told me that. 

Those are things you have to find out beforehand, otherwise you are scrambling and trying to teach the rest of your classes, and you will go crazy for a while. It got to the point where I don't want that kid anymore, move him to somebody else's class, I'm not doing this. It's just that whole big thing at the very beginning that would help out, but then you have to continue on. As the year goes along, you have to learn different things. How else could I do this? What other services are available to me? What can I get from other websites? Can I get things free? Other people's lesson plans, how did they do this? Is there an Internet site that I could communicate with somebody? Not just a chat room; people make up things there. I need somebody that's not just chatting with me and says oh yeah, whatever. I need actual places. Is there a college nearby that I could just call and say, “What do I do in this situation?" I needed to feel more relaxed with things too or, if I'm really having a problem, somebody I could go to and say, “What could I do with this situation?" 

Obviously, that didn't really happen here. The administration didn't know anything; the counselors didn't know anything. So, that would make my life a whole lot easier, plus I probably could have made his life a whole lot easier, and just the whole thing would have worked better. Just a little bit more information. What are their rigors of the day? What makes it difficult for them that a normal person, you take it for granted? Because, being able to see all the time, I'm like why can't he just do that? I mean, what's the problem here? Or, he should be able to do that and he can't do that, why? So maybe just some characteristics, just in general. Even a pamphlet or anything probably would have helped, just so you feel relaxed going in, and then the explanation... you're going to have to make some adjustments. 

You're going to have to make some every day contact. Talk to the kid. Don't just let him sit there. Find out what's going on with him. From the itinerant's viewpoint, I think it would be a great idea if they put out just like a little manual almost. Like, these are the basic things that they do. They have to do mobility. They have to do this. You expect them to go out with everybody else in the fire thing. "Ink it" means to write out your homework on a sheet of paper. What was available? I'm assuming he typed everything in and it printed it right out that I could read it. No, that didn't happen. The assumption I made wasn't true. What do I get from you? I have to give you this how much ahead of time? When should I expect to get it back? What forms do they need to be in to give you? With the computer, she did give me a program that really didn't work, but I'm sure now maybe there are different programs out. How do I do that? Do you give it to me and I give it back to you? Just, you know, some basic things that between you and me what happens, maybe not including the kid. When are you here? Where are you available? Are you available all the time? Can I go to somebody else if you're not available? What other resources are available? Maybe if I just had that to read through during the summer even, you know take it home and then... I've got a question on this, question on that, question on this. Then I could come back and say, “Could we sit down and talk about this?" 

So, some basic things like this. What do you do? What is your job with this child? I did not realize that she did the mobility or she did the cooking with him and stuff. I thought she came in, brailled and left every day. I didn't know what she did. You know, I'm not there, I don't see. Maybe a suggestion as to where I could go for different places of information... if she couldn't answer it, my specific mathematics or something like that. Those were helpful ideas to come up with, so that would have helped. Maybe a session, a couple of sessions actually before that student was in my classroom, with her that she had of me. 

Like how do I teach? What do I expect if it's a regular classroom? If I'm doing an altered classroom, how are we altering it? Can you help me make a lesson plan or come up with a plan of how I could teach him better? So, what was her background? She didn't have any background. She did have two student teachers while I was working with her. One had a great math background and was terrific with the kid. The other one wasn't, so that was fine. It took a lot off of me because now I could rely on this student teacher to help him. So, what is your background? What is your major area besides just blind itinerant? To me, that was type my braille, give it back to me, hello, goodbye. I mean I had no idea. So, what is your function, and what do you expect from me besides just stuff, braille it and get it back? You know, put it in my mailbox. So, those were some things that would have helped me, and communication probably would have been a whole lot better. We would have kicked it off a whole lot better than just being totally frustrated at each other. And, she didn't know what geometry was. She had an idea, but nowhere near the volume of papers she would be typing or diagrams she would be making. 

If l had been able to maybe sit down with her ahead of time and give her, “This is my first test. How do you do that?" She might have just said, “Hey, that's going to be a lot of work. Is there some way else we can do these diagrams or something?" And then that would have made it easier. I mean, we got to the fourth test and we're pulling each other's hair out because we are spending hours on top of hours... when even after the first test we could have just said, you know, this is going to be too much; let's do it a different way. Or, could I give it to her in a different form that would make it easier for her? 

So, there are things on our part as teachers that we need to do, but you need to know that. You need to know to go out and do this, and then the itinerant probably could have much more... even though, too, that came when she went on maternity leave... never even saw them. I don't even know what they look like, nothing. I just knew give me my stuff, braille it, get it back. I knew that was going to happen. What else happened? I didn't know. And I don't think the student knew either what he was supposed to do from day to day. 

So it was a challenge, but I had been working with it long enough, it didn't bother me anymore, but obviously other teachers were bothered by it. Those are some things from both sides that could be worked on, or at least ifl knew all that stuff and they knew my side of it. You know, I'm a classroom teacher, never working with a blind student. Now I would know different things to do, but never working with it, I needed something. The itinerant also found a program that science was using that I could type my tests, save it on a disk and, through that program... give her the disk and she should be able to run it off and it would braille it, and she wouldn't have to do all that. We tried it on my home computer because that's where all my math symbols are and everything else. We don't have those loaded on the school's system at that point. It was knocking me off the Internet and not letting me log on, and we had several other problems with it, so we had to give up that idea too. When I went into it too, I'm thinking, we have all this modern technology, it should be easy to do this... and I would think that they had all this stuff, and it's not. 

So, I can feel their pain sometimes when they struggle with... you know. And we had some interesting conversations in class, too. I rent out calculators, so if they didn't have a calculator it was 50 cents for a graphing calculator. So, if they were giving me a dollar, I said, “You know, if you gave me 5 dollars, how do you know I gave you the right change back? Or a 10 dollar bill, I owed you whatever, how do you know I'm not giving you just singles and you didn't get a 5 back?" So, it was interesting how he told us different things that are becoming modern technology... or different ways to see things that you would never think of, so the class learned a little bit too... because then I had these conversations to include him to say, “Okay, how do you do this?" or, “How can we help you to make it better?" But, it took me awhile to do that, to open up and let the class, because I was afraid they would ask questions that were inappropriate, and then what do you do? 

So, it came out okay. There were definitely lessons learned. A lot of it was communication. A lot of it is knowing what is out there available for you to use in your classroom. I had been given some sites that they had things on for the blind and so on, and I tried some of those... but some of them weren't actually as informative as I hoped, and as a classroom teacher, it's a lot of time, and that was the number one thing. I would advocate for if you were going to have a student like that in class... that you not go to your duty or somehow built in you have time to meet with that itinerant, either on a weekly basis or almost every day... in some cases, I was meeting with her every single day... and having extra time to meet with the blind student to help them that you cannot do in class, or give them alternates. Like, he couldn't do the projects we would do because a lot of them would be graphing, or they had to go on through the Internet. Now granted, he could do some of it. So we would downsize some of his projects, even in the advanced class, which was okay with me. I didn't have a problem with that, but I didn't feel he got out of it as much as he could have gotten out of it. 

You need to get your administration involved and let them know really how much time... because I really don't think they have a clue at all, or even the counselors. We had to have a meeting to change his grade from a regular class grade to an altered grade, and she just sat there, and she goes... “Well I don't see what the problem is." And I'm like, “Well, maybe you could come in and sit and observe or something." But that never happened, I mean no contact. So, I basically dealt with the itinerant then. The guidance counselor did not help. It was like, whatever you say, fine, just sign these papers. And I'm like, “Well, this makes a huge difference, if he gets a regular grade or an altered grade." And she goes, “Well, he's going to get into any college he wants. He's blind. He's getting a B average." And I'm like, okay, I really don't think that's the point here, but if that's the way you do it, okay. 

So, you get a lot of different viewpoints, and unless they are really involved... then they don't understand, and so you do have to get them involved. My department head didn't understand it either until every day she walked past my class in the morning at 7:20 and saw this kid sitting there... and then she realized how much time of the day it was taking. I just said, ‘‘I just can't do it all anymore, so something is going to happen some way." She was supportive in that, but I still don't think she even understood. She needed to sit in the classroom and she didn't do that either. She chose a different period to observe me and I'm like, that probably would have been the best thing in the world for her to see.