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Being able to teach visually impaired students to assess and cross streets with no traffic control requires a paradigm shift for many
Orientation and Mobility specialists.
An hour or two of feet-in-the-street exercises is not enough -- the only way I have been able to help O&M specialists achieve the necessary paradigm shift and be prepared to teach students to analyze and cross streets with no traffic control is to either attend a one-day seminar/workshop that includes the information from the Self-Study Guide or, better yet,
take the "Self-Study Guide: Preparing Visually Impaired Students to Assess and Cross Streets with No Stop Sign or Traffic Signal" and then attend a 3-hour hands-on workshop applying the skills.
The first all-day workshop was held in Kansas City when intrepid O&M specialists got together to arrange such a seminar on Saturday, February 20, 2010 -- the Alphapointe Association for the Blind graciously allowed us to use their facilities. At the end of the seminar, the participants took the quiz from the Self-Study Guide to earn their Certificate of Completion (pictured to the right) -- click here to watch their struggles and triumphs!
Pictures below are from the most recent workshops, which were offered only to those who had completed the Self-Study Guide -- details are below.
Want to schedue a workshop?
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If you would like to arrange a workshop in your area, you can contact me at dona@sauerburger.org.
- In 2010-2011, I did more than 30 workshops, and the Kansas City O&Mers were joined by hundreds of workshop participants who committed themselves as Early Adapters to
- extensive checklists have been developed to facilitate our instruction of these skills and concepts;
- strategies of scanning for cars were refined; and
- teaching tools were adapted to introduce these concepts to people with brain injury and to young children -- click here to see it being taught to groups of children in New Brunswick, Canada.
- "incorporate (and/or develop!) teaching tools and strategies to prepare students to recognize
situations of uncertainty for gap judgment, and analyze and cross streets with no traffic control."
Following are just a few examples of the influence of these Early Adopters since February, 2010:
