A Parents Influence in a Child's Learning

I teach during summer for those children who need a boost in their learning. Any child starting out in Braille or Technology must have summer instruction for several summers for it to "stick" or they will be starting over in square one in the fall. It takes them even longer to catch up to where they were from spring and in that time of catching up, they get further behind their peers.

One of my students who was in first grade was losing vision fast. He was and still is very bright, but had a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder. He could not come to grips with his vision loss so he choose to deal with it by fighting everyone who got in his way....and everyone seemed to get in his way. He was so busy fighting everyone and everything that all learning in school was slow and arduous...especially learning his blind skills.

He had started with me in kindergarten, so a year and a half later with little progress his mom and I had a long discussion on what could possibly help him. I asked if it was possible that she could join us for summer lessons. She rearranged her day and I had early morning lessons to fit her schedule. Every day the two of them would show up and she learned the braille and technology right along with her son. The joy of her son was overwhelming. The excitement to learn and that his mom was learning it too, must mean it was important....and he learned!

That is how kids think. More importantly, that young child sailed in his learning and caught up to where he needed to be to begin 2nd grade. I see this often. Whether it is with deaf/blind students and the parent learning sign to "speak" with their child, or braille and technology to "speak" the language of blind skills; If a parent puts in the effort, the effort is 10 fold for the child. Parents do not even need to be proficient in the skills, but just sitting and learning even a small amount goes a long way. This extra effort excels the student forward in their learning in their confidence of who they can become