FamilyConnect®

For parents of children with visual impairments

Reading

Making Decisions and Keeping Track

Hi again everyone!

I thought maybe this week I would discuss the issue of making literacy decisions throughout your child's educational life. I think that the people who visit this Family Connect website are at various levels in their journey. Some of you will have preschool children and will just be beginning to find information that you need. Others of you will be "seasoned experts" with older children and years under your belt. Still other families are here because their child may have experienced a decrease in visual acuity or ability recently, regardless of their age.

One important issue for parents is the decision about their child's reading media. Some people consider this a decision between two options: print OR braille. I'd like to challenge that assumption and give you another way of thinking about this decision. I'd like to give you some things to think about as you consider decisions related to your child's reading media:

1. As I mentioned in the previous post, I like to think of a child's "literacy toolbox" as big, open, and flexible. Our goal should be to fill the child's toolbox with as many tools as appropriate so that as your child grows, he or she will have many ways to gather information and can choose the best tool to use for the task. Have you ever heard the old saying "If all you have is a hammer, all you see are nails"? We want children to grow with many options for gathering and conveying information including possibly print, braille, large print, print accessed with the use of optical devices, auditory books, live readers, use of slate and stylus, use of computers...the list goes on and on!

2. I believe that the decision to focus on braille or print or a combination of braille and print in initial reading and writing instruction should be based on specific information about your child, not on a philosophical stance or attitudes. PRINT and BRAILLE are equal in value, anything that can be represented in print can be represented in braille; please remember that this is a decision that empowers your child! Looking at your child's unique characteristics is the best way to make good decisions.

3. I believe that your voice, your thoughts, your opinions are critical in this decision. There are creative, experienced professionals who can provide you with their thoughts and opinions based on their (often extensive) experience and these opinions can be incredibly valuable, but ultimately, you are the expert on your child. Sometimes the decision about reading media is complex and having several different perspectives can strengthen the decision-making process.

4. Please don't forget that decisions about the tools in your child's literacy toolbox should be revisited often (at least once a year) with two things in mind--how is your child progressing in the current medium and are there literacy tools that should be added to your child's toolbox?

So, those are my quick thoughts on this Thursday morning. Next week, let's talk about literacy INSTRUCTION! That will be fun!

Cay

Falling in Love with Braille

Hello everyone! Happy New Year! I'm Cay Holbrook. I am thrilled to be connecting with you this month and hope that we can have some very interesting discussions and learn from each other.

First I will tell you a little bit about myself. When I was an undergraduate student at Florida State University, I happened to know a fellow student who was in the program to prepare teachers of students with visual impairments. I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon and he was completing his braille homework and I started looking at the Perkins braillerwriter and his textbook. It was love at first sight! I was so intrigued with those six dots and I spent hours pouring over Louis Braille's ingenious code! In fact, my friend was very happy because he was able to go in the other room and watch a football game while I monopolized his braillewriter!

I became a teacher of students with visual impairments and worked directly with children (mostly elementary aged) in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia. Then, I realized that I had a passion for "spreading the word" to other people who were interested in teaching children with visual impairments and so, I went back to school and completed graduate work, eventually a Ph.D. Since that time, I have been preparing teachers in Baltimore, Maryland (at Johns Hopkins University), in Little Rock, Arkansas (at The University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and currently at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada!

Without question, I would say that my most powerful memories in my work have been my connections with children and their families. I am so grateful when parents invite me to join them in their journey and I appreciate how much I learn from these families. I have been fortunate to have had many opportunities to step far away from the "ivory tower" of university life as teachers, parents and student generously include me in their lives.

I'd love to hear your stories!

I am interested in everything concerning children and youth with visual impairments! How is that for an open door for discussion? But, I am most interested in the development of literacy skills. This includes the development of reading and writing in print, braille, a combination of print and braille and other methods of accessing information in our world! During the next few weeks we will mainly focus on literacy, but I am happy to address other topics as well.

Editor's note: Dr. Holbrook is also the author and editor of many books and articles, which are available in the AFB bookstore.