Teaching others to navigate the world
When Barbara Nixon says she works at Perkins School for the Blind, the response inevitably is, "Oh, so you know sign language?" But Nixon, a mobility and orientation specialist, says unlike Helen Keller, the school's most famous alumna, most students here are not blind and deaf.
She's able to communicate by speaking to her students, as well as using touch, sounds, and other senses. But she faces big challenges in her quest to help the younger school children, ages 6 to 15, learn how to become more independent and navigate their worlds. Many of them have severe cognitive disabilities and are not only blind but also lack communication skills and the ability to control their emotions.
There are higher functioning students like a 6-year-old girl who lacks depth perception and is unable to distinguish between flat ground and a stairway. Nixon gave her a cane to use, which she treated like a toy. "I have to teach her that a cane is a not a plaything but a tool she can use to find a safe place to walk," says Nixon, who works with an interdisciplinary team of occupational, physical, and speech therapists, as well as academic classroom teachers at the Watertown campus.
Then there is the 11-year-old with cerebral palsy who isn't able to talk, and wasn't motivated to push his own wheelchair until Nixon figured out that he loved Elmo so much that he'd maneuver a complicated hallway, just so he could see a homemade Elmo video.
"It's my job to view the world through my student's eyes, figure out how they are taking in information, and help them understand their environment," says Nixon, who works one-on-one with kids, walking them to and from their classrooms as part of the learning experience, showing them how to figure out exactly where they are. "If they can learn the sequence of clues and landmarks and find these things on their way to their destination, they can get around by themselves without being ushered everywhere."
Nixon, who has a background in movement science, says that instructors of students with visual impairments can earn about $40,000 a year.
Is a white cane still used by the blind as a mobility tool?
In my office, I have white canes of all different lengths and with a variety of adaptive tips. The cane tip is the part that touches the ground, and it can be shaped in various ways, because that affects the way that the cane sounds and feels. A typical pencil tip, which is a straight tip to the floor, can get stuck in cracks, so if a student is frustrated with that, I'll try a different tip. Or, if a student needs more auditory input, a hollow tip might help, because you can hear the cane better. I also can use PVC pipe to build custom canes, such as a two-handed cane or a cane with a certain bend in it.
One of your goals is to foster students' abilities to understand and take control of their environment. How do you do that?
I'll give you an example. One student didn't understand what a mailbox was. He was mixing up concepts - he thought that garbage went into mailboxes, such as broken bicycles, old bottles and cans, and trash, because he had heard of the term "junk mail." So we took him out to the nearby neighborhood - we push our social boundaries a little, but everyone here knows us - and had him touch the mailboxes. Then we mailed him a letter and asked his mom to bring him out to the mailbox. So finally he understood what we were talking about.
What kind of special facilities do you have to help students learn? We have a variety of different ramps and curbs, so students can practice locating a curb and crossing the street. A lot of our students have special sensory input needs; they need to seek out special activities to comfort themselves, so our "playgrounds" have air pillows, weighted blankets, spinning boards, and a ball pool. There's one little boy who is totally blind but very uncomfortable with any sort of vibration, and is even uncomfortable when the wind blows on his skin. He needs to use a cane, but he doesn't like the feel of it in his hands. I finally figured out that if I scrub his hands with a surgical scrub brush first, this helps him deal with the vibration of the cane and he drops it less and performs better. It's like a little puzzle, because many of the kids can't express themselves or their needs.
But do you really know what it's like to be blind? As part of my training, I had to walk blindfolded, without assistance, all over the city of Boston. I had an instructor watching, of course, but I found out how it feels to be disorientated and need help.
What do you do when you're not working at Perkins? I also foster cats from the shelter that have special needs, they can come live with me instead of being quarantined or euthanized. Recently, there have been a lot of abandoned cats, as homes foreclose and people just abandon their animals. I took in one cat that was left in a bathtub and near kidney failure.
You must be a very caring person. That's what they tell me. But I think I'm just lonely and want love from the kitty cats. 