WORKING TOWARDS SUCCESS
First, it was liberating for me to understand that despite
my fears and limitations, and on some days more questions
than answers, there was not one person on the planet who
desired my son’s success more than I. This incited me to
keep learning, to take a class and master reading and
writing braille, and to think of creative ways to help Jesse
understand math concepts. Most importantly, I asked God
to send the people and resources into our lives that would
assist us along the journey.
SMARTER THAN YOU THINK
Second, I would say to every parent who has believed they
could never assist their special needs child in a private or
homeschool setting that you’re smarter than you think! I
smile now as I remember teaching Valerie, our firstborn
daughter, to read. I sat with her day after day in our hot
tropical house ten thousand miles from home. I kept my
eyes glued to the teacher’s manual, not daring to change a
word for fear that I would mess this up and she’d end up
being an illiterate missionary kid. I was pleasantly surprised
at how quickly she learned. It gave me a little more confi-
dence but didn’t quite prepare me for teaching our blind son
a few years later.
I decided I wanted to enter the world of “braille” with
Jesse. With fear and trepidation, I enrolled in a braille
correspondence class. Jesse and I learned the braille alpha-
bet together. It was fun and challenging, and I surprisingly
found quite doable, even for me. Desire and effort go a
long way in enabling us to help our kids. Although math
has never been my favorite subject, I tackled long division,
multiplication, and fractions using an abacus. Surprisingly,
it was a very cool way to do math. Sometimes Jesse and I
would compete to see who could finish a problem first.
A very integral part of this “you’re smarter than you think”
concept is knowing when you’ve exhausted your capacity
with your child. Living in the third world during the first
six years of Jesse’s education was daunting. I knew that I
needed help. We prayed much about this need, and God
put us in contact with a missions organization who trained
Filipinos to teach the blind. They were located in Manila,
several hours from our home. We discovered they had a
teacher stationed only 15 minutes from us! She worked on
a Bible school campus where she adapted curriculum into
braille for several blind college students. Although she had
only worked with blind adults, she agreed to work with Jesse
three afternoons each week. This amazing woman laid the
foundation for Jesse in braille and in so many other skills he
needed to ensure his academic success. I learned with him,
slowly and painstakingly, tapping out my own braille lessons
on Jesse’s Perkins Brailler.
PERKINS BRAILLER:
a “braille typewriter” with
a key corresponding to
each of the six dots of
the braille code.
ABACUS:
an oblong frame with rows
of wires or grooves along
which beads are slid,
used for calculating.
Jesse’s teacher, M
ylen,
him three aftern who worked with
oons each week.
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