An Incredible Teaching Day

Every day is an incredible teaching day when I am with students, but this summer has been that plus some. During the summer, parents drive their children to my home as I have too many to drive to them and this way I can get in more children. The great thing about this is I grew a large garden this year. During the summer, the children get to feel the garden when it first starts out, then feel it in its different stages. The raspberries and strawberries come first and the great pleasure of picking fresh fruit and truly tasting what fruit should taste like always gets huge smiles. Even kids who thought they hated one of these fruits because of the bland flavor they always encountered at the grocery store soon discovered that fruit from a garden does not taste the same as at the store. Let's just say I have many converts now.

However today was the culmination of absolute joy as one of my students went through and picked her first zucchini, broccoli, carrots and peas--feeling the tiny little pumpkin and watermelon that she would be picking soon also. Each time she would reach down and figure out how to get the particular vegi's off its stem her smile grew larger and larger. I still am picturing her huge smile with each new adventure in the garden. What she never understood, she now does. Her understanding of the world has grown ten fold just by understanding how food grows. Now she has the much more to connect with her sighted peers and "get" what they are talking about.

Resources

If you are looking for resources.
American Printing House for the blind- http://aph.org/ offers just about everything under the sun for books and other materials for the blind/low vision

Grocery stores now have raised line paper from Mead--Thank you Lori for that info. It can also be had from APH

If you are looking for balls with bells and braille on games, go to
http://www.braillebookstore.com/view.php?C=Toys+and+Games


Another great source of toys, games, canes, and all things blind is:
http://secure.nfb.org/ecommerce/asp/default.asp

If you would like braille books free or to purchase, go to:
http://www.seedlings.org/

That should get you going...have fun.

Raise the Bar of Expectation

If you raise the bar of expectation for yourself, your children, your students, you will raise to that expectation.
However, if you expect little, do little, you will have little and reach that low bar of expectation too.

People live down or up to one's expectations. If you are a teacher, and we all are, raise the bar, expect a great deal, teach to that level and you will see people do more than they ever expected.

REACH HIGH!!