Anna Schuck’s fingers ran across the raised bumps twice. She found a mistake, then felt the paper once more, smiling because she recognized the misspelling.
Standing in a sheltered area in front of Cedar Street Elementary School in Mason, she passed her child-sized cane toward her teacher’s voice so she could fully grasp her book. With rain dripping off the chipped red and white paint of her cane, she continued to read Braille.
Earlier, Pam Arbeiter, an intern through MSU’s orientation and mobility master’s program, had led Anna down a wet cement sidewalk, often stopping the 9-year-old from entering busy intersections or puddles thick with mud.
“Working with children who are blind is just like working with any children,” she said. “The difference is they need to be taught specialized skills so they can live and work in the field at levels comparable with other students.”
Anna, a home-schooled Mason resident, has retinopathy of prematurity, an eye disease that can affect premature babies. She was diagnosed at birth and her sight has since decreased slightly. Her condition only allows her to determine if the sun is out, if a shiny object is near her or if a light has been turned on.
But Anna has learned to use her other senses.
Walking down a residential street across from the elementary school, Anna can keenly hear cars approaching, rain hitting rooftops and engines starting.
Although she’s never seen Arbeiter’s face, she feels comfortable resting her head on her shoulders as she waits for her mother’s van to enter the circle drive. Anna said she’s getting used to having the cane.
“Well, a little bit. But not too much. I don’t mind the cane except when it makes the horrible, achy noise,” she said about vibrations in the cane. “I don’t want to think about it.”
Arbeiter, who came to MSU from Missouri after reviewing MSU’s orientation and mobility program, said the nation lacks instructors for visually and hearing-impaired people.
“There is an incredible teacher shortage right now, it is a crisis,” she said. “We need so many more teachers than we have out there. Without the teachers to teach them these skills, they’re not going to be able to have the options.
“Someone who is competent in Braille and can read and write is more likely to get a job than someone who has to listen to tapes.”
According to the American Foundation for the Blind, 64 percent of visually impaired adults are unemployed and 68 percent of legally blind adults are unemployed.
And a vote coming up by the MSU Board of Trustees could determine whether the shortage will grow or decline. The board will hold a meeting Friday, when community members may speak about the issue.
“I’ve learned a lot from the program here,” Arbeiter said about MSU’s orientation and mobility program. “We need teachers in the field and anytime you close a teacher preparation program, that’s lessening the number of teachers available to teach students.”
Seeing clearly
In February, MSU’s Academic Council voted to eliminate the visual impairment education undergraduate and graduate programs and the orientation and mobility graduate program within the Department of Special Education. MSU’s deaf-blind education program, which is the only one in the Midwest, will not be eliminated.
University officials say the roughly 30 students enrolled in the programs do not compensate for the amount of money spent on the programs. Administrators could not provide costs for the programs.
Arbeiter said without instruction from visual impairment and orientation and mobility specialists, a person such as Anna wouldn’t be able to learn living skills, making it harder for her to succeed.
“Orientation and mobility can help make a student more independent,” she said. “It helps Anna travel in familiar and unfamiliar environments and allows her to do things her peers can do.”
And Arbeiter said although Anna’s mom helps her daughter and is taking a Braille class, techniques and tips are things that only can come from a specialist.
“She’s an exception, she’s an awesome mom,” she said. “Most parents don’t know Braille, even though they are really good with their kids.
“You’ve got cooking issues, dating issues, all these other things are associated with adolescence. They can’t pick these things up on their own.”
MSU’s visual impairment education and orientation and mobility programs received a five-year $1.5 million grant in 2000. Out of that, 55 percent goes to students in the program. The rest of the money goes toward paying salaries for faculty members and other costs.
MSU Trustee Colleen McNamara said board members have discussed the programs’ situation and respect the administrators’ interests in closing them.
“I think the board generally understands and supports (the reasons given by administrators) to shut down the programs and feels that there are other resources beyond MSU,” she said. “It’s not that a program will be gone from the state but the smaller number will have to be consolidated elsewhere because it’s just too expensive.
“Sometimes you just have to weigh and know those people can go elsewhere.”
There are 24 visual impairment education institutions in the United States. Eastern Michigan University has an undergraduate visual impairment education program. Western Michigan University has graduate programs for visual impairment education and orientation and mobility.
A moratorium was placed on the visual impairment education program’s enrollment in the summer during its review. Three students graduated from the program last spring and four are expected to graduate in May. The students enrolled in the program will be allowed to finish.
But Susan Langendonk, a graduate of Western Michigan’s visual impairment and orientation and mobility programs and a teacher consultant for Ingham County Intermediate School District, said little attention has been given to the two MSU programs in recent years.
“It’s virtually been closed for a long time,” she said. “I think it’s wrong they haven’t invested in it, but if they aren’t going to put the money in and just keep it as a name, that’s as big of a disservice as closing it.”
And Langendonk said MSU’s graduates have proved their abilities in the field. Although blindness is a low-incidence disability, that doesn’t mean the number of teachers and programs for it can be cut, she said.
“We have plenty of kids to keep us busy,” she said.
Teaching the teachers
Kevin Germain, a 14-year-old student at St. Johns Middle School, began learning to read Braille last year with the help of his teachers.
“It was actually easier than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “I’ve been kind of wanting to do it for a while and I think I’m doing pretty good.”
Kevin was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa about seven weeks after his birth. The disease prevents parts of the eye from functioning.
“I can see a little bit,” he said. “I can’t see far or small text very good. I have to use (closed-caption television) to read small print mostly and all my school textbooks are large print books. Mainly, it’s just school activities that affect me, so during school I have to use my glasses with the telescopes on them to read the overhead and the board. I don’t take gym because there’s too many games that involve sight.”
But Kevin said he’s just a normal kid. He listens to Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins and can’t wait until he gets his own Playstation 2.
“His condition affects his social life to a degree,” said Irene Germain, his mother. “Especially in elementary and middle school, because sports are so big, he kind of felt left out. A lot of extracurricular activities are geared around sports, that he kind of feels left out of but he has a lot of the same interests everybody else does and as he gets older, children’s interests expand.”
Clarisa Suarez-Miller, teacher consultant for the Clinton County Regional Educational Service Agency, has been working with Kevin since he was in second grade. She received her master’s degree from MSU’s visual impairment education program in 1981.
“I never had any complaints,” she said. “I felt like I was learning and being well-prepared for my job and what I wanted to do.”
Suarez-Miller said the closure of the programs will tarnish MSU. Since she began working in the field, demand for teachers has not been met, she said. She has been offered jobs over the telephone from desperate school districts.
“It is going to hurt the College of Education and the special ed department because the numbers of students going into special ed and attending MSU will decline,” she said.
“Unfortunately, there is going to be a big gap made by people retiring and taking other positions due to family obligations. Most of the time the interns all have jobs before they graduate, that has been the case since I’ve been there.”
Kim Watson, a visual impairment education intern from MSU, has been working with Kevin for almost a year.
“She’s very well organized,” Suarez-Miller said. “Her skills of blindness are excellent, she’s able to teach the students Braille very well and has the knowledge to provide accommodations that will make students successful in the classroom. She’s very flexible, always willing to try something new.”
Watson was hired Monday as a teaching consultant for the Saginaw Intermediate School District - but she won’t graduate until May.
“I am excited, I can’t wait because I know I’m just gonna love it, you know?” Watson said.
Although she is confident in her abilities at the job, she said she wouldn’t be if she hadn’t taken the internship in Clinton County. Courses in visual impairment education prepare students for teaching Braille, understanding eye conditions and using technology for the education of the visually impaired. The teacher also helps visually impaired people learn to take care of daily living skills such as cooking.
“Mostly my internship is where I have learned so much,” she said. “As far as our course work, the teachers at MSU prepared us for what they could, but with this type of a job, it’s hard to get into what it will really entail.”
The main reason for closing the programs is the low incidence of students enrolling, Watson said, but that was one of the things she enjoyed. Her biggest concern with the closure of the programs would be the retirement rate of current teachers and the lack of institutions to prepare new ones.
“We’re so close that when we do go off and get our own different jobs we’ll still have connections to other (visual impairment) teachers,” she said. “Our teachers all know us by name, you feel like you can ask them any questions you may have.
“Will there be a shortage here like there is in other states? How can someone take the place of a (visual impairment) teacher without the education out there?”
Kevin and his mother said they feel his success in school and everyday life would not be possible without the graduates of MSU’s visual impairment program.
“It’s terrible,” Irene Germain said. “Just having that resource has been so important for Kevin. He’s a really good student and a really smart kid, but he needs special things to be able to do that. We’ve been really impressed with how well taken care of he is.”
Kevin said working with MSU interns has helped him fit in.
“I’d say I wouldn’t be doing very well in school if I didn’t have Clarisa or Kim,” he said. “It’s helped me and lots of other people. Closing the program down would probably mean a lot of kids won’t get as much stuff as they need.”
State of need
Ralph Putnam, acting chairman of MSU’s Department of Special Education, said the programs have been under a watchful eye for more than a decade.
“About 10 years ago, we made the decision at the departmental level to eliminate the visual impairment education program, but it got overturned further up in the Board of Trustees,” he said. “At that point, we did not eliminate it, but at the same time, we’ve gotten this grant (of $1.5 million) to help support, and that’s enough to kind of keep a program going in some sense, but it’s not enough to hire tenure-line faculty into the program.”
Putnam said the last tenured faculty member in the programs retired in 1998, reducing the programs’ quality.
“Our general rule of thumb for having a solid program is that we need to have ideally three tenure faculty lines,” he said. “The notion is, that since we’re teaching and researching, that we have the people resources to teach in the area as well as build research.”
And although Putnam said money isn’t the major focus in the closures, it has put pressure on administrators.
“We have a situation where we’ve got a very small number of students enrolled,” he said. “If we had a big program with a lot of students, those would be generating income from tuitions to pay for the program.”
But Putnam said the special education department intends to hire more tenure faculty in certain, higher-populated programs, such as emotionally impaired education.
“Some people feel like we’re neglecting an important population or somehow not meeting the needs of the needy kids,” he said. “It is an important population, but we can’t, as a single educational institution, do everything well. If we had unlimited resources we could.
“All that thinking about other possibilities in the state and small number of students and so forth is what led to targeting that area as the one to eliminate.”
Pat Cannon, director of the Michigan Commission for the Blind, said the closure of MSU’s programs will affect the number of teachers in the field.
“It will make it increasingly more difficult for students to be able to get the instruction they need to help level the playing field for them to compete academically and professionally,” he said. “We simply hear of too many incidences of parents who are exasperated because they are unable to find the kind of support services for their blind children.”
There is no greater need than for a disabled child to have adequate instruction from knowledgeable teachers, Cannon said.
“The absence of adequate training in these areas for independence can have a very significant impact on the individual’s confidence, self-esteem and capacity for learning,” he said.
According to the American Foundation for the Blind, about 45 percent of visually impaired or legally blind individuals completed their high school education and about 80 percent of people without visual impairments have their high school diplomas.
Annette Skellenger, Western Michigan’s graduate program coordinator, said there are about 100 students in the program, but enrollment varies year to year.
“Last year we had a lot of openings, this year we’re almost full,” she said. “I think that’s one of the reasons that a decision like this is so hard to make because we don’t have any real data on the number coming in each year.”
Between the two programs specializing in teaching children, Skellenger said between eight and 13 students graduate each year. About 16 students graduate each year from the adult orientation and mobility program.
“I know there is a drastic need for teachers throughout the U.S., so my guess is that having less universities to train them would mean there would be even less teachers,” Skellenger said.
Alicia Li, professor of visual impairment education at Eastern Michigan University, said graduates of their program also are equally as sought after.
“It’s a huge demand nationally for the (visual impairment) teachers,” she said. “We receive phone calls, ‘When are you going to have graduates available?’”
Li said four students will graduate in May from Eastern Michigan’s visual impairment program. There are 15 undergraduates in the program this year, she said.
Although she thinks the combined resources at Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan can handle the number of students that would have gone to MSU, she said they won’t be able to add an orientation and mobility program or a deaf-blind program.
“MSU does have an excellent visual impairment educational program,” she said. “It’s really sad to see it go.”
Megan Frye can be reached at fryemega@msu.edu.
