-Rehabilitation Teaching-
Alvin Roberts
Home lesson in Touch Reading given
by a blind teacher, 1926
If you suddenly became blind, from whom would you immediately seek services?
A
physiotherapist? An occupational therapist? A vocational counselor? A
psychologist?
You might need the services of any or all of these professionals
at some time during your adjustment to visual impairment, but your most
immediate need would be the ability to carry out the necessary tasks of
day-to-day living. You would need some techniques that do not require sight for
performing such routine tasks as color-matching your clothes, identifying your
medication, pouring your morning coffee, and setting the thermostat on your
heating or cooling system. In other words, you would need
a rehabilitation
teacher.
Don't be discouraged by such a clinical-sounding name. Although rehabilitation
teachers are highly trained professionals who enable visually impaired persons
to carry out virtually all of their daily activities, they do not practice their
profession within the limited confines of some distant hospital or
rehabilitation center. In fact, many states have a commission, bureau, or
department for the visually impaired that employs rehabilitation teachers to
instruct blind persons in their own homes using their own appliances. To
emphasize this fact, these teachers were originally known as ''home teachers of
the adult blind.''
Rehabilitation teaching had its beginning with the 'London Home Teaching Society'
in 1855. Teachers were dispatched throughout England to teach embossed reading
systems to the blind. "Home teaching" came to America with the establishment of
the Pennsylvania Home Teaching Society in 1882. Today, rehabilitation teaching
programs exist in every state. In addition to the delivery of instruction
directly into the homes of visually impaired persons, many public and private
rehabilitation hospitals and centers now employ rehabilitation teachers as
members of multidisciplinary teams, which can also include mobility instructors,
vocational counselors, social workers, and psychologists.
Besides instructing visually impaired people in such daily living tasks as
reading in Braille, writing with tactile hand guides, and homemaking,
rehabilitation teachers are also prepared to understand the emotional impact of
visual loss on the impaired person and his or her family. Teachers use this
understanding to enhance the success of the teaching program.
For example, one of the first assurances a visually impaired person might receive from a
rehabilitation teacher is the information that he or she is not the only person
facing the loss of sight on that particular day. The knowledge that 179 other
people in the nation have also experienced visual loss during the previous
twenty-four hours may lessen the feeling of isolation. Applying the formula of
.00253 legally blind persons per 1,000 people in the United States, the Illinois
Department of Rehabilitation Services estimates that there are 29,182 legally
blind people in the state, for example. (Legal blindness is defined as visual
acuity of 20/200 in the better eye or a visual field of 20 degrees or less [180
degrees is considered normal].) Application of the .00253 formula to an
estimated United States population of 260 million results in a projection of
657,800 legally blind people in the nation. Of this number, we estimate that
65,780 became blind within the past yearapproximately 180 within the past
twenty-four hours, as mentioned above.
Another service provided by the rehabilitation teacher is the organization of
support groups composed of just such newly blinded persons. In these groups,
people receive encouragement from each other and knowledge from invited speakers
about eye conditions and treatment, special devices for people with visual
impairments, career information, and the like.
Whether the services of a rehabilitation teacher will be readily available to
the 65,780 people who lose their sight each year is not certain. This dilemma is
related to the average age of the typical newly blinded person and the amount of
time needed to be an effective itinerant rehabilitation teacher.
The fastest growing segment of the population with visual impairments is over sixty-five
years of age, and most of these people will continue to receive instruction in
their own homes on their own equipment rather than attend a comprehensive
rehabilitation center, which is usually considered more suitable for young,
vocationally bound clients. Therefore, the time it takes for the teacher to
travel to the homes of students, along with the time necessary for
record-keeping, will continue to influence the amount of time the teacher can
spend with students.
Records indicate that, if teachers visit each student every
other week for one and a half hours and rely on family members and other
volunteers to monitor progress in such areas as handwriting and sewing, the
average newly impaired person will require one year to complete his or her
program. Research and experience have shown that a rehabilitation teacher can
complete teaching services with approximately 30 clients in a twelve-month
period. To determine the number of teachers needed to serve the 65,780 people
who will become blind in the United States each year, we divide by 30 and find
that the number is 2,193. This translates into 97 teachers needed in the state
of Illinois alone.
Determining the number of rehabilitation teachers needed is easier than
determining the number actually available throughout the United States.
According to estimates by experts in the field, there are between 500 and 700
teachers in the nation. Even if we arbitrarily double this to 1,400, this is
still 793 fewer teachers than are necessary to serve the thousands of American
citizens who lose their vision each year.
The best advice to any person who becomes visually impaired is to get on an application list of an agency for the
visually impaired as soon as possible. Fortunately, blindness usually progresses
slowly, allowing the person to continue performing most activities at reduced
efficiency until teaching services can be arranged. Finally, if it is necessary
for a person's name to be put on a waiting list, most agencies will refer that
person to another program such as the Regional Library for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped, which provides recorded books at no cost to the patron.
ϟ
Learning To Live With Blindness: Rehabilitation Teaching
in Coping With Blindness: Personal Tales of Blindness Rehabilitation
author: Roberts, Alvin.
Southern Illinois University Press, 1998
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9.Mai.2017
publicado
por
MJA
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