TSBVI 100 Year Commemorative Video Transcript Start Fade up from black. [Slow guitar music] [Various voices] Twelve years after becoming a state, the Texas state legislature established a residential school for the blind. For sixty or so years, the school existed in various locations around Austin. ...rather nomadic for several decades. Everything changed in 1916. With funds from the legislature and land at 45th and Lamar, donated by the citizens of Austin, the state of Texas created a permanent site for the Texas School for the Blind. They no longer had to worry about 'where' the school was going to be, they could concentrate on 'what' the school was going to be. [music ends] Bill Daugherty: It was kind of a stark looking facility-- this nice little quiet neighborhood surrounding the school, but it was old looking in the 1950s. Mike Woodward: Looking around the campus now, you would never know that there was an older school here, at one time. Mike Garrett: Where the main building is now, was this huge open... field where we played football. Bernie Smith: We had five telephones. It was nice, then, even though now, I guess, we have more business then we used to, so everybody needs a telephone. Garrett: They had the ol' radiators to heat the building. They finally put in... central heat & air. Uhh, that was nice... [ soft music] Daugherty: My mother and I would drive by the school and she would point to the Superintendent's house and say, "That's where the nuns live, who take care of the blind kids." It was just her assumption that if you had blind children somewhere it would be nuns taking care of them. And, so, I now live in the house where- where the nuns have never lived. Mary Sue Welch: The school in our home town would not be able to teach me. So, my parents sent me here. I came on the day after my sixth birthday. Cyral Miller: When your kid went to TSBVI, you did not see them for months... for months. Ken Miller: It was basically a boarding school, in effect, for school districts to send their blind children to learn the basics... Carol Woodward: The hard part is when the... younger students have to leave their homes and come here. Welch: My mother and dad came and said, "Ah, honey, we're gonna leave." I said, "Okay!" [laughing] and sent them on their way. [soft piano music] Daugherty: If you wanted to go to one central point where Austin and TSBVI and then, ultimately, Texas started really emerging, I really look to Natalie Barraga as real pivotal person at a real pivotal time with that. Jane Rundquist: In 1990, when Dr. Hatlen was hired, this school changed so much! Miller: Kids used to come here, grow up here, and stay in Austin, because this is the only community they knew. And, you know, that's not bad-- Austin's great-- I live here. But isn't it... fair, I think, to their families and their communities to say, "What can we do so they can stay in their community, if they choose to?" Rundquist: Weekends Home, Outreach, Short-Term Programs... Smith: ...with the teachers encouraging them. They're teaching them. They're mentoring them, and... just pushing them on, pushing them on. And they're cheerleaders. They're in the band. Joe Paschalll: ...wrestling, goalball, track & field, tennis, triathlon, 10-Ks, beep kickball, beep baseball... Rundquist: All the things that started happening... Miller: We made those changes and we pioneered those changes with a couple of our sister schools throughout the country. That has made the Texas School for the Blind, you know, one of the... the premier schools for the blind in the whole country. Rundquist: I see people doing yoga with- with kids, and just infusing all of these things that just, you know, make a kid's world bigger. Mike Hanley: It was just a tremendous change in her quality of life, as well as our ability to communicate with her-- her level of growth... was exponential, almost every month, as she learned. Garrett: There are roughly 25 million people in Texas. It's estimated that there are about 10,000 blind and visually impaired students. We're a small population, in the grand scheme of things, but the impact that TSBVI has can make a huge difference in a student's life. Miller: One of the most powerful lessons that kids get when they come to TSBVI is that feeling that they're not alone, and that there are other kids like them, and that there are people in the world who understand visual impairment-- that they belong, in a way, in the world-- that, sometimes is hard to feel when you're out there in a local district, and your're the only one. Garrett: We have a right and the responsibility to lead successful and productive lives. [soft piano music] Welch: Independence will only be had if you learn how to take care of yourself. Daugherty: If you're going to really learn something, you've got to get kids in close to the learning, have their hands on it, have their eys and their magnifying glasses on it; whatever it takes to access that. Rundquist: It's not a cookie cutter approach to each kid. Kieara Mapps: So, I got here, and it was one-on-one. If I needed that moment where I was confused. I got that moment! Paschall: I wanted all of our students to have that opportunity, and it's not that it's just given to you. You've earned it! Miller: Now the parents were a participating partner in the development of that student's Individualized Educational Program. They had to be part of it. They had to contribute. For many of them, it was an opportunity. Miller: Families need to meet other families. And I think an important part of what our school does is provide a hub for families to meet each other... Pedro Lozano: [speaking Spanish] VO: ... the parents. When we go there, the staff cares for us. They welcome us with love... it feels like family! Miller: How can we expand, what we're doing here, to make an impact, out there, with families and school districts. Daugherty: The Texas School for the Blind truly has a statewide mission building local capacity, going in and doing training... Miller: How to do that with a state as big as Texas, geographically, is no small challenge. Miller: More students get that chance for immersion and really strong skill building. When they go back to their communities, more communities learn how to build a community that's successful to their students. Haley Moberg: The support for our teachers is huge. The demand is huge, but the support is huge. Daugherty: We have so much leeway to innovate, to improve upon, to take in ideas... Moberg: It's a team job. It's not just one teacher. It's all of us. [soft guitar music] Hanley: TSBVI is dedicated... to the students... that are here, and the students that are out there. Garrett: Why else would the legislature give us the money to build a new campus, this state-of-the-art campus, other than the fact that they know that what happens here produces a successful student-- and the fact that we're outreaching to students all over the state. Miller: They are proud of what we do, from all that they hear, because the feedback they get-- from school districts, from professionals in the field, most of all, from parents-- their constituents, who vote for them. So, you know, ninety-nine point nine percent positive-- they don't want to... do a bad thing to us. [piano "The Texas School"] Miller: I can't walk a mile in the shoes of these families, or these kids, but I do get to opportunity to see lots of different experiences, and to grow from them. Choir: ...to make each moment shine. Sparkling, glistening merrily, it will take all care from me... Garrett: All I can say is that, I believe that the students that come from here, know that they've been cared for. Woodward: I think of it more like a family, and it takes a family support to make those things happen. Mapps: I got here, and I went from believing I was nobody, to believing I was somebody. Maria Lozano: [speaking Spanish] VO: If one day I'm gone. I know he will succeed, because that school changed his life. Welch: I felt safe here. I felt important... here. Mapps: The people that do come here change lives, whether they know it, or not. You do more do save lives... then... you know. Know that you are appreciated beyond words. Miller: I would call it dynamic, because the level of change that goes on here, all the time. But that's a long period of time to be constantly reinventing. Every department has been... reinventing itself, over time, in really exciting ways. Choir: ....till eternity. Fade to black.