In his 1919 fable, "The 51st Dragon," Heywood Broun describes the exploits of Gawaine, a childlike student in knight university who is so timid and fearful that he is in peril of being expelled. Instead, the university's headmaster decides to lug Gawaine under his wing and train him to slay the countless dragons plaguing the countryside that year. In preparation, Gawaine studies adjectives about dragons and their traditions, and he practices beheading paper and wooden ones on the practice enclosed space.
When the faculty feels he is set to confront real dragons, Gawaine is given a diploma and a investigational battle-ax. The headmaster calls him to his bureau for a few words of advice: "Here you own learned the theories of energy but, after all, go is not a matter of theories. Life is a situation of facts. It calls on the infantile and the old alike to obverse these facts, even though they are sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons." Unconvinced, the whimpering Gawaine asks for an fairylike cap to manufacture himself invisible. The headmaster offers him something better: a trickery word. All Gawaine has to do is utter "rumplesnitz" and he can lop off the head of dragons easily and fearlessly.
The sleight of hand word works, at least for the first 49 dragons. Gawaine grows so brave that he even slays one beside his right hand tied bringing up the rear his back. He become so confident that, at night, he engage in long drinking bouts at the rural community tavern. On the day he confronts his fiftieth dragon, his mind have become so sluggish that he cannot remember the magic word. As the creature charges, the word flashes into his mind, but he has no time to utter it beforehand swinging his battle-ax and chopping off the dragon's commander.
Puzzled, Gawaine goes to the headmaster's department for an explanation. The headmaster laughs, believing that Gawaine has finally figure out that his own bravery and not the word rumplesnitz is responsible for his success: "It wasn't artifice in a literal sense, but it be much more wonderful than that. The word gave you confidence. It took away your fears. If I hadn't told you that, you might enjoy been kill the very first time. It be your battle-ax that did the trick."
Convinced that Gawaine just wishes to kill another couple of dragons to return with his confidence back, the headmaster drags him out of bed and into the forest the subsequent morning and shoves him into a thicket where a small dragon is hiding. But Gawaine never returns. All that is to say later found of him are his medal.
Like the knight school's headmaster, we at the Iowa Department for the Blind's Adult Orientation and Adjustment Center administer students magic words by which to live: "It's OK to be blind." Unlike those of the knight arts school headmaster, however, these words do not disguise hollow confidence and insufficient preparation. Instead, we back them near effective blindness training base on an approach that will give students a solid foundation surrounded by the skills, positive attitude and self-confidence they need to slay the abundant dragons they will encounter as they strive to live independently and work competitively.
We use the words, "It's OK to be blind," to help students to progress through the three stages of adjustment to their blindness: dependence, unrest and interdependence. Like Gawaine when he first began his knight academy training, students enter the center with a great several insecurities, fears and low expectations, ranging from man afraid to cross the street alone to worrying about ever holding a commission, having a people or being official socially. They will often adopt more help than essential and will avoid such "dragons" as going up and down stairs and crossing streets alone. Once they have overcome some of these fears and own slain a few dragons of their own, they begin to gain confidence and to realize that they can draw from about undamagingly and efficiently and complete day-to-day living activities competently. Proud of their accomplishments, they normally assert their independence by rebelliously swinging their battle-axes against any sighted human being who might offer assistance. When students manage the end of their training, however, they see that the artifice words take on the substance of truth, reinforced next to the skills and self-confidence they need to slay any dragon they may ever encounter. They come to recognize the natural interdependence that exists in society and initiate to view an submission of help not as an insult but as an opportunity to train.
The training we provide at the orientation center is base on a positive philosophy of blindness. In fact, this philosophy is the foundation for adjectives of the Department for the Blind programs, including Vocational Rehabilitation, Independent Living, Transition, the Business Enterprises Program and the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. The department is committed to the belief that center training must be an integral part of the rehabilitation process, for rehabilitation can only be truly achieve when consumers have reach their fullest potential in personal nouns, employment and integration into the community. This approach is powerful, because it gives blind populace control over their own lives as well as responsibility for their own successes and failure. This philosophy further contends that the real problem of blindness is not the physical loss of eyesight but fairly society's misconceptions about it.
The majority of location centers in this country floor their training on the notion that the individual who has become blind is "broken" and that`s why must be "fixed," both physically and psychologically. The training they provide is based upon the beliefs that the problems of blindness are inherent in the blindness itself, that blindness impose upon a person severe limitations that cannot be overcome, that optical techniques are intrinsically better than non-visual ones and that the point of one's success is inextricably tied to the level of one's visual acuity. Nurses and a psychologist are habitually on staff, and emphasis is placed on the lessons of skills, avoiding blindness techniques as much as possible and maximize residual vision through the use of low reverie aids. (1)
The training we provide at the Iowa center, on the other hand, is successful because we authorize that the problems of blindness stem not only from the blindness itself but, again, also from public misconceptions just about its true nature. Center students must not solely learn the blindness skills needed to cope near the physical loss of eyesight, but they must also adopt new positive attitudinal concepts to replace the stereotypes that both they and society adopt about blindness. To accomplish these goal, students receive training that has four objectives:
* Learn simplified and effective blindness technique.
* Develop self-confidence and a positive attitude about blindness.
* Learn how to matter with public misconceptions give or take a few blindness, including those of family, friends and employer.
* Develop strong work habits and appropriate social skills.
TRAINING IN EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE BLINDNESS TECHNIQUES
To swot the skills they need to function competently, trimly and comfortably, our students take eight hours of classes respectively day covering home and personal guidance, cane travel, communications and industrial arts. They revise non-visual techniques for cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and sewing. They swot to use a long white fiberglass cane to budge up and down stairs, walk along sidewalks, cross busy streets and purloin public transportation to wherever they longing to go. They practice reading Braille and writing it beside a slate and stylus, and they become acquainted with such assistive technology as computers equipped near speech synthesizers. They become comfortable with tactile measure devices and power tools, and then they choose a project of their own that could involve woodworking, metalworking, weld or engine repair.
The training provided in each of these classes is rooted contained by the structured-discovery method of instruction. First developed to provide more effective instruction in the nouns of independent cane travel to blind those, this approach has be proven to be superior to the guided learning approach used by traditional position and mobility instructors, who themselves are usually sighted persons. (1) In guided learning--commonly call route or point-to-point travel--the instructor continually provides very specific instructions and feedback while closely monitoring the student visually. Teachers place strong inflection on rote learning, ensure safety and maximize the use of residual vision. As a result, students do not develop the fitness to generalize what they have academic and become too dependent on the instructor for help. Students are not expected to solve the problems they encounter independently or to apply what they own learned within one lesson to another.
The structured-discovery approach to travel training, on the other hand, is base upon the concept of training teachers of the blind to edify their students the same non-visual technique that have proven to be most successful by blind individuals. Canetravel students are first given specific instructions that will allow them to master such basic technique as holding and arcing the cane. The focus later quickly shifts to generalized instruction that emphasize problem solving by providing the students with one and only minimal information, forcing them to rely upon themselves to explore their environment and gather and process the information they requirement to move about soundly, freely and efficiently. Through this method, students revise more, retain it better and develop greater confidence in their own ability to travel independently.
Through the carrying out of the structured-discovery method of teaching, the center emphasize the use of alternative techniques of blindness, elevated expectations and the development of self-confidence and problem-solving skills. Blind students beside residual vision and sighted students training to be instructors receive programme under sleepshades, or blindfolds, from instructors who are any blind or who have also received intensive blindness training lower than sleepshades. Students are encouraged to rely upon their own ingenuity when they encounter a hot problem or situation instead of turning repeatedly to the instructor for guidance and reassurance. After being skilled a basic set of technique, they are asked to experiment, explore, solve problems and apply what they have widely read in one project to another as they move through a progressive series of more and more stimulating activities. Once shown how to boil and drain pasta for one recipe, for example, they are expected to numeral out how to apply that training to the cooking of not only pasta but of any food that must be boiled and drained. As a result, they develop confidence in their own skill to solve problems and to use techniques that will be successful no matter what smooth of vision they own.
DEVELOPING SELF-CONFIDENCE AND A POSITIVE ATTITUDE ABOUT BLINDNESS
Through learning and practicing their problem-solving skills, students develop confidence in themselves and a more positive attitude in the order of their blindness. As a result, they raise the expectations they hold going on for their own capabilities, ascendant to vocational goals that are more fulfilling and more predictable to be achieved. The study of skills and the development of self-confidence and a positive attitude are inextricably intertwined. A student who walk around the block alone for the first time becomes agreeable not only to credit to crossing streets but also to take his or her children to the park after completing the center's training program.
Developing self-confidence and a positive attitude give or take a few blindness are critical to a student's progress. Without self-confidence, students will not use the blindness skills they have widely read, and without a positive attitude they will cling to the unenthusiastic misconceptions and stereotypes about blindness. The untold majority of students begin their training near very glum attitudes about their sight loss. Often, many of them sit at home for years--cared for by their friends and families--rather than admit that they are blind, especially if they still enjoy some remaining vision. Sometimes they will deny to recognize that blindness have had any detrimental effect on their lives, even though they no longer read, drive, work, walk out or take trouble of their homes. Many believe that the adjustments they own made--limited as they are-are the best that can be made under the circumstances. Others look for a prompt fix, usually through technology, so that they can ignore the devastating effects blindness have had on their lives. Lacking self-confidence, they avoid taking risks because they fearfulness failure and do not expect nouns.
Self-confidence is a difficult concept to define. Self-confident populace have positive, but realistic, view of themselves and their situations. They trust their own abilities, hold a general sense of control within their lives and believe that, within idea, they will be able to do what they decision, plan and expect. They take risks and remain positive even when they go wrong. Because they accept themselves, they do not consistency the need to conform basically to be accepted by others.
Adult students at our center enjoy defined self-confidence in a variety of ways, as evidenced surrounded by a group discussion held on September 15, 2003. One student said that it is what allows you to walk instead of crawl through energy. Another said that self-confidence is knowing that you are capable of doing things beside dignity, like taking public transportation and going through a buffet dash without a mishap. A third said that it is what allows you to join fully in arts school, work and the other things in life. A fourth student put it best: "You know you hold self-confidence when you can trust yourself to figure out how to overcome successfully the fears and challenge you must face every afternoon." (2)
The development of self-confidence and a positive attitude roughly speaking blindness are linked. Students must swot that they and not their families, friends or society as a total should control their attitude about themselves and their blindness. In his 1982 book, Strengthening Your Grip, Charles Swindoll described the necessity of attitude this way:
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on energy. Attitude, to me, is more important than yesteryear, than education, than money, than circumstances, than disaster, than successes, than what other people assume or say or do. It is more key than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable point is we have a choice every hours of daylight regarding the attitude we will embrace for that daytime. We cannot change our previous. We cannot change the certainty that people will achievement in a consistent way. We cannot move the inevitable. The only item we can do is play on the one string we have, and i.e. our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happen to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is for you ... we are contained by charge of our attitude!" (p. 126).
The development of self-confidence and a positive attitude roughly blindness are the focus of every class in the center. This process is a lengthy one, because it requires students to brand name a 180-degree turnaround in their attitude. For this intention, students train in the center for an average of six months. They must come to trust the teachers who are demanding so much of them, and teacher must learn to quantify the right levels of sensitivity, encouragement, prodding and confrontation that will give a hand each student pull off this objective.
The story of Janice is typical. Throughout her training, she struggled beside the notion that she could become competent as a blind person and as a result have to be told constantly to keep her sleepshades down. For their final cooking project--a seven-course dinner--students are expected to write their menus and recipe in Braille, clutch the city bus to the grocery store, purchase their groceries from lists they own written in Braille, and prepare and serve the feast for their families and friends. As she confronted this dragon, a emotional Janice became paralyzed next to fear and threatened to pack her plenty and go home. Letting her avoid this dragon be not an option, since it would destabilize any self-confidence she had acquire and make it easier for her to mask from the next dragons she would inevitably encounter. Reasoning, encouragement, and prodding have no effect on her. Finally, taking the risk that she might run, as the program administrator I resorted to confrontation and called her a quitter. At first she be angry, but after thinking about it for awhile she fixed that she had to prove me wrong. She unpacked her oodles and successfully went to the store, bought her groceries and prepared and served a wonderful dinner to almost 50 relatives.
A variety of center goings-on help students build self-confidence and a positive attitude roughly their blindness. We tell students that "a class is a class is a class"--that everything they do while at the center, morning and night, contributes to their training. We expose them to oodles ordinary experiences that they thought no longer possible, close to grilling steaks, shopping, going to a museum or play, bowling, camping, hiking and canoeing. Just as historic as formal classes are their walks to a local restaurant for dinner and their long conversations in the evening more or less their blindness, fears and plans. Veteran students give tours to prospective students and serve as mentors to fresh ones. By participating in speaking engagements at schools, clubs and service groups, students become comfortable conversation about their blindness and develop the self-confidence they inevitability to educate the public.
In a discussion group we give the name the "Business of Blindness," we deal directly next to the subjects of our philosophy and of skill and attitude development. An essential cut of center training, the group discussion provides students with an get underway environment where they can address about their hopes, fears and problems and where on earth they can challenge the prevailing denial myths about blindness and the devastating impact these myths can enjoy on their lives. "Business class," as one student put it, is "the glue that holds everything together." (2) Most momentous, it is where they will come to adopt their blindness and truly believe those magic words: "It's OK to be blind."
As the center's program administrator, I serve as facilitator for the class. I liken my role to that of an orchestra conductor, but sometimes I touch more like I'm sitting on the lid of a pot set to boil over. I must maintain an atmosphere of responsiveness and respect so that students feel comfortable chitchat freely and sharing some of their most intimate feelings next to each other. Through question, comments and active listen, I guide the discussion of that day's topic. My dream is not to give them the "right answer" but to coach them how to discover it for themselves. After all, when they complete their center training, they must be capable of solve similar problems on their own.
To achieve this aspiration and maintain interest, I use a choice of formats and media. I invite competent blind individuals to talk something like their jobs and the effect center training have had on their lives. We scrutinize movies and go to plays feature blind characters and we read articles and short stories that I have gather from magazines, journal, newspapers and the Internet. To expose students to diverse blindness techniques for reading, I read to them in Braille, use reader and play cassette tapes.
The subjects we discuss come from an assortment of sources. I maintain a hulking outline of resources and am always on the lookout for spanking new items to add to it. While I try to plan ahead, a topic may come up that wishes to be discussed immediately, such as a student's cynical encounter with a sighted own flesh and blood member. We may enjoy an expert explain Social Security incentives or a blind person communicate about consumer organization. Each October, we talk in the order of Iowa's White Cane Law and the effect of similar legislation on their lives. We explore the purpose of center training so students will have a better kind of the program and their involvement in it.
Gradually, students come to understand that once they own developed self-confidence, a positive attitude and good blindness skills, the definite problem of blindness is not the loss of vision but, again, the misconceptions both they and the public hold almost it. Blindness is no longer the controlling factor in their lives, and they begin to be paid important life span decisions base not on it but on their interests, talents and ability. Instead of being ashamed of their phantasm loss and the blindness skills that represent it, they view their blindness as another one of their personal characteristics, similar to their height, their age or the color of their pelt.
DEALING WITH PUBLIC MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT BLINDNESS
As students begin to swot up effective and restructured blindness skills, develop self-confidence and overcome their own misconceptions about their blindness, they become frustrated by the refusal treatment they receive from family member, friends and the general public. They grow angry when their spouses do not permit them go down the vault stairs to do the laundry, a friend asks them not to take their wicker on an outing or a waitress speaks to their companions rather than directly to them. Students come to endorse that there is not one and only a need to adaptation these notions and their manifestations but that they share surrounded by the responsibility to help bring that revision about.
In the center, we provide students next to a variety of ways to cram how to deal appropriately near negative attitudes and reaction toward their blindness. In Business Class, we explore the origins of these misconceptions and talk more or less the best ways to deal near them. Our students are often surprised to revise that their own behavior can perpetuate or abet dispel these myths. We encourage line members to stop by and sometimes even to attend classes under sleepshades. Giving tours of the center and participating in speaking engagements give students opportunities to practice educating the public going on for their blindness. Training is frequently provided in such public settings as malls, restaurants and parks so that students will become skilled at handling negative public reaction to their blindness.
The ability to cope next to these uncomfortable situations cautiously is critical to future nouns in charge interviews and in workplace situations. Most of the students who come to the center are vocational rehabilitation consumers of the Iowa Department for the Blind and will either be in motion to school or to work upon completion of their training. At lowest twice a year we hold a "Job-Seeking Skills Seminar" for students to explore careers that run into their talents, interests and ability. They also learn technique for dealing appropriately with blindness issues in the resume, in the living interview and on the job itself.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRONG WORK HABITS AND APPROPRIATE SOCIAL SKILLS
Many students come to the center near low expectations about themselves and what they will know how to accomplish as a blind person. Lacking self-confidence, they sometimes avoid the risk of dud by procrastinating, getting too involved in the problems of other students or refusing to try at adjectives. Burdened by the low expectations of their families and teacher, students who have be blind since an early age hold often not be expected to support themselves at all and so be never taught the strong work behaviour and socialization skills necessary for them to become fully integrated into the lives of their family, workplaces and communities. Unless they receive training that raises their expectations, students will go away the center only to live on the frame of life, going through college near few or no friends, surviving on Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance, and unable to develop the social contacts so impressive for success contained by the workplace.
Center training helps students build their expectations within a variety of ways. We constantly remind them, both subtly and overtly, that they will not purely work but that they will do so successfully and at their fullest potential. We treat them like adults, giving them key to their own private rooms and to the building that houses the center. We teach them how to run their own budgets and medications and to contact staff that live surrounded by the building only for emergency. We expect them to attend their classes on time and to do their best within them.
When necessary, we drill them such social skills as table etiquette, ballroom dancing and communicating in social situations. Fashion, makeup, fuzz styles and other aspects of grooming may also be covered.
We also raise expectations for students through what we bid "the three have-to's" of the orientation center. In writ to participate contained by training, students must agree to take adjectives of the classes, wear sleepshades if they have any residual perception and carry their cane at all times. Students who do not agree to these requirements can choose from other training option, such as individual and group training in their home communities or attendance at another orientation center that they perceive better meets their wishes. These have-to's are designed to help students confront and overcome the biggest dragons they frontage as a result of their blindness: the fear of injury, the suspicion of failure and the unease of being identified by others as blind. If students are not given opportunity to overcome their deepest fears, they will never believe they can and they will suffer the fate of Gawaine--being eat by a small dragon that leaves only their meaningless medal behind.
Students are required to purloin all of the classes. Orientation center training is close to a jigsaw puzzle--the pieces must all be surrounded by place before the undamaged picture can be seen. Not taking a class is approaching losing one of the puzzle pieces and therefore losing the total effect of the training. If students be allowed to pick their classes, they would choose the "safe" ones, like Braille and computer. They would avoid the classes where on earth they fear injury, resembling burning their hands on a hot stove, adjectives off their fingers beside a power saw or losing their lives to a speeding car. Students receive individualized instruction inside each class to get together their needs. A young-looking blind man who has never be in the kitchen must cram both how to cook and how to use the blindness techniques for cooking. A newly-blind woman who have prepared meals for her family connections for years, on the other hand, wants only to cram the relevant blindness skills. A diabetic student who has be sedentary for years may need frequent rest period as he builds up his stamina.
To help dispel the "can't see, can't do" misconstruction, students who have any residual reverie must receive their training under sleepshades. In demand to determine the effectiveness and success of the blindness techniques they are erudition, students must practice them constantly under sleepshades until these skills become hopeless. When they take their sleepshades rotten, they can then combine the non-visual technique they have mastered near visual ones to their greatest efficacy. They will also come to understand that the problems face by the partially and totally blind do not differ significantly. Without the use of sleepshades, they will constantly want to rely on and attribute any successes they may own to their remaining vision, no thing how poor and inefficient it may be. Those students who have the most nouns are the ones who have the readiness to see the relevance of sleepshade training to their lives, come to understand that the scope of their success is not contingent on the point of their vision and replace "can't see, can't do" next to "I can do it--I just hold to figure out how."
Finally, students must transport the long white fiberglass cane--better known as the Iowa cane--at adjectives times. To become proficient travelers, students must constantly practice using their canes. By doing so, they also become desensitized to public reaction to their blindness and to being identified as a blind personality. The cane afterwards becomes for them both a tool for undisruptive travel and a symbol of pride and independence. Because they can be efficiently hidden away, folding cane and cane holsters are not permitted.
Students do not receive training at the center for any fixed length of time. While the average stay is six to eight months, some students stay a lesser amount of months and some stay more. Students themselves are responsible for evaluating their progress and for determining when their training is complete. As the center's program administrator, I meet beside students and their vocational rehabilitation counselors at critical times during their stay to discuss their progress and goals and to determine if any modifications in their program obligation to be made. Students usually decide to bestow the center when they can competently and efficiently use their blindness skills, when they own the self-confidence to put those skills into practice, when they thoroughly understand and own a positive attitude about their blindness, and when they are aware of and competent to deal effectively next to public misconceptions.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The success of the situation center and its program can be measured through statistics, through continued relationships with the center and through the long-term positive effects the training have had on the lives of former students. After completing their training, students may attend college or a vocational training program, enter a tentative career or return to a former living. The center is an integral part of the services offered by the Iowa Department for the Blind, and the department's nouns in providing significant services that lead to job for consumers is also the success of the center itself. The information for the 2000, 2001 and 2002 federal fiscal years tell the story. In those years, 171, 175 and 140 vocational rehabilitation cases respectively be closed successfully rehabilitated (Status 26). Consumers who developed Individualized Plans for Employment during those years had an over 83 percent providence of successfully getting a job. They could expect to earn an average of over $12.40 an hour, and give or take a few 68 percent of them would become the primary source of support for their families.
The program's nouns can also be seen surrounded by the relationships that develop when students begin their training and verbs long after that training has finished. New students notice promptly that, when they enter the center, they soon become members of the position center's "family." This political leanings continues after they complete their training. Center staff often contacts former students to see how they are doing, and former students frequently contact staff to discuss about their most modern news or get hold of some advice. Students who own shared the center experience sometimes become lifelong friends. The center itself promotes this unity through a quarterly newsletter detailing the undertakings of the center and its graduates and through the annual Orientation Alumni Day. Each nose-dive, students host a day of events for former students culminating in an evening banquet and spring. An average of 200 people attend respectively year, and many of these are some of the center's strongest supporters.
Most far-reaching, though, the center's success can be measured surrounded by the long-term positive effects the training has have on the lives of former students. Participation in the position center is a life-altering experience for most students. When they complete the program, they find that blindness is no longer the controlling factor in their lives. They have internalized the truth that "It is OK to be blind," and they know they are powerfully equipped to slay any dragons they might encounter. One former student put it this way:
"I have decided to come to the Orientation Center after completing my glorious school schooling. I was lead to understand that by attending this program, it would relieve me to raise my GPA [grade point average] in college. After man in situation for a few weeks, however, I had discovered that my motives be in the wrong place. This program's purpose is not to prepare me for college, but to prepare me for vivacity and how to live it as a confident blind person. This program works on the attitudes of blind society, helping them to become confident, capable relations by letting them know there is go after blindness. Although I have be blind since birth due to cataracts, this program have helped me form a different attitude nearly my own blindness, as well as other blind ancestors. I have widely read that it is OK to be blind, because I know that it does not make me any smaller number of a person. The classes surrounded by the orientation center are made up of Braille, home ec [economics], shop, technology and travel. All of these classes combined are not merely to coach the techniques of blindness, but to build confidence by the use of them. My stay at the center have not been an uncomplicated one, but it will be one I will take near me and use for the rest of my life." (2)
NOTES
(1.) This information is base on the author's understanding from years of experience touring location centers for blind adults and studying the subject; thus, no specific source is given.
(2.) For reasons of confidentiality, the author is inept to give the name of center students who are quoted in this article.
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