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Amy Parker
10/12/2014 1:38 PM
And so the song goes- "Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes. Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, I'll never love blue eyes again." He cradled her in his arms, singing to his daughter, a young girl with cerebral palsy, intellectual, and multiple disabilities. She smiled up at him, her face alight with joy- a daddy's girl for sure. This brown eyed girl is my sister. And this memory is one of many happy ones that I have of her as a part of my family of origin. She was born in 1970, before the time when PL-94-142 passed in Congress. She started school at the time when special education was being implemented in states. Although she was never denied access to school, which is a fate that many other children like my sister faced in previous times, there were many times in her school journey that she didn't have access to a qualified teacher, let alone a teacher with formal training in special education. My sister was born with visual impairment, along with her other disabilities and in her mid forties she is experiencing a mild to moderate hearing loss. I went on to get a doctorate in special education with an emphasis in deafblindness, but she was my first teacher. Her visual impairment is called cortical visual impairment (CVI) and many students with multiple disabilities and complex communication needs have CVI, a brain related visual impairment. For more information please see- http://www.aph.org/cvi/define.html My parents were the ones who recognized that my sister could see or attend to the color red better than other colors. Although they did not know that this was a part of CVI, they did see their little girl reach for a brightly colored red toy or flower. The purpose of this post is to remind teachers and practitioners to find out more about your student's vision and hearing. I encourage you to work with vision and hearing professionals to find out what your students can see and hear in functional environments. Not only will this shape your communication interventions, it may help to find more ways for your student to participate in the world around her. For some practical resources on CVI and other visual impairments, you can't go wrong by checking out Perkins School for the Blind. Here is a link to just some of what they offer: http://www.perkinselearning.org/scout/causes-blindness-and-visual-impairment Today, my sister and I, both in our 40s are working and are engaged in our communities, although we need different levels of support to do so. My beautiful brown-eyed sister can now engage in basic reading activities, can use an ipad, and works part-time at a restaurant. Our father is not alive to sing to her, but together, we remember his songs. She is still my teacher and I hope through this short story that she will be yours too.
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0 repliesThanks for sharing your personal story to draw our attention to the importance of vision and hearing and an accurate assessment of these capacities in children with disabilities. Sometimes sensory impairments aren't caught for years, causing severe and unnecessary lags in learning that may take much longer to overcome than they took to occur in the first place.
charity.rowland@gmail.com - 10/13/2014
© 2024 Charity Rowland, Ph.D.
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Each question you will see is related to a certain message that your child might be able to express using a variety of behaviors. Read the question and decide whether your child is able to express the message described using any of the listed behaviors. If the answer is YES, then you must also decide whether your child has mastered the use of each behavior or whether it is still at an emerging stage. Check either the mastered or emerging box next to any behaviors your child uses to express the message. Use the following definitions to decide whether a behavior is mastered or emerging
