One time I lost my head and mistook myself for a sighted person. I don’t know quite how it came about, or how long it had been brewing. Mostly I chalk it up to the giddy euphoria of getting my Master’s degree.
Getting a Master’s is one of the few life goals I ever set for myself. I envisioned it before I was twenty. Actually I didn’t really envision getting a Master’s, for I knew that would be hard, given my tendency to be an average or slightly above average student. But I envisioned myself as having a Master’s. So when my fortieth birthday was rapidly approaching, I gambled on the possibility of being admitted as a mature student, hoping I’d somehow picked up some real smarts along the way. My Master’s degree was everything I’d hoped it would be. With those letters—M.Ed.--behind my name I felt emboldened to do things I hadn’t done before, like applying to teach a humour course at the Naramata Centre summer program. And when the Naramata people accepted my proposal, I set out to teach a course that would be so visually satisfying that no participant would be able to claim they’d been cheated by the narrow view presented by a blind instructor. With a little help from the sighted world I assembled overheads, posters, cartoons and other funny pictures. Then I planned out a program of humour that I hoped would keep us laughing for the entire week.
We arrived early at Naramata, the way instructors do, and set up our campsite. We got the keys to my classroom. David helped me set it up. While we were putting stuff on the walls he glanced out the window and noticed a blind man passing by.
“There goes a blind guy,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe he’ll be in your class.”
“Surely not,” I said. In all our Naramata family summers, taking everything from massage to storytelling, we had never once encountered a blind person. But later on that evening, when the classes assembled in their rooms for the opening welcome, I heard a cane tapping and a classmate volunteering to find him a seat.
My heart sank. I couldn’t believe my terrible luck.
I had been a blind student so many times, but I’d never once considered the possibility of teaching one. I remembered the early university years, before the advent of disability services, when I would stroll in on the first day of class and introduce myself to the professor. “I’ll need some system for writing exams,” I would announce. “And I’ll need you to talk while you write on the blackboard.” And those professors faced with a lecture theatre of 500 first-year sociology students, would start calculating before my eyes. Some of them weren’t too gracious. Most of them were amazing.
Then there were the years of disability services. I would phone professors several months in advance to warn them that I would be taking their class. Disability Services would arrange my exams. I would ask the professors to read the material they were showing on the overheads. I expected them to be gracious. After all, this time I was in the Faculty of Education. The classes were small. Most of them were gracious. But some of them would simply put up an overhead crammed with information and leave a silent time for the class to copy it down. I turn to my neighbour who would begin reading in a hoarse whisper that could be heard all over the room. Some profs would actually start talking again over the sound. The life of a blind student is always a mixed bag. You want to fit in but you need special consideration.
Three seconds after he arrived, my new blind student came forward to introduce himself to me. I tried to reach out but words of welcome caught in my throat. We were on two different planets. I could hardly speak to him, so furious was I at his presence. Here was I, making my teaching debut with a stimulating class for sighted participants, and he wouldn’t be able to participate. He, on the other hand, was delighted to find me. He hadn’t been blind for long and was having a little trouble adjusting. He’d been feeling pretty down, he confided. He thought maybe in a humour class he’d be able to make it without feeling too conspicuous. He had never imagined that he would find a blind teacher. Already it was giving him hope.
That night, while the other campers slept in the fresh mountain air, I fumed in my sleeping bag. In all my years of teaching professors how to teach a blind student I had never once considered that my presence might have angered them, might have ruined their plans, put them on the spot, made them feel inadequate. A mild inconvenience, is what I would have called it. What was I going to do with all my visuals now? How was this guy supposed to participate? Why hadn’t somebody warned me?
By the time the crows had begun to welcome the dawn I was ready to set about undoing a whole week’s curriculum. Every day’s activity had to be re-planned. There would have to be choices participants could make. In each block of choices, there had to be at least one choice that would work for a blind person.
Now a humour class is not the easiest thing to teach. It doesn’t work if people don’t laugh. The class turned out to be a group with mixed abilities and expectations. Many a time I thanked fate for sending me the blind guy. He had a natural gift for humour that kept us all in stitches and made my job much easier than it would have been without him. I ended the week happily.
Then I made myself a promise. I would never again try to teach like a sighted person. Anybody who ended up in my class would have to do without visuals for a while. I’ve kept that promise through twelve years and hundreds of classes. It has saved me a lot of work. And if a blind person ever again shows up without warning, I will be ready.
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