“We will never regret giving our
son the opportunity to learn under
teachers who loved, prayed for, and
invested in his life by pointing him
to Jesus Christ every single day.”
Jesse dissecting
We enrolled him in our little mission school where he
entered kindergarten. His teacher and I developed a system.
She would give me his worksheets ahead of time, and I
would braille them for him, writing in print above the
braille letters and numbers so that his teacher could check
his work. He loved every minute of his school day. I recently
watched a home video of his first day of school. I could
hardly believe we actually had the courage to send him to
a school where he was the only blind student and the only
kid fluent in English! Thankfully, our mission school was
using English textbooks, and Jesse’s teacher taught both in
English and Tagalog (the basis of a standardized national
language of the Philippines) making it possible for him to
follow along with the lessons.
Years later, it didn’t take any genius on my part to real-
ize that high school algebra could very possibly destroy
my relationship with Jesse, now age fourteen. Algebra just
wasn’t my forte. This was one of many times when I simply
asked God to help me figure out another way. A short time
later, a good friend of mine who happens to be an educator,
came to me and offered to be Jesse’s math tutor for high
school. This was an enormous answer to prayer! It worked
beautifully, and Jesse excelled under her teaching. I could
write a book on the many times God came through for us
as we chose to step outside the norm in the education of our
special needs student.
36
a pig in science cl
ass.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Third, I would encourage parents not to fear the trial and
error approach when helping your special needs child to
succeed in school.
We returned to America in time to enroll Jesse into the
sixth grade. We chose to send him to a small Christian
school instead of the local public school. We felt that the
benefit of a biblical worldview instruction outweighed the
challenges we’d face getting him the services he needed.
Jesse was the first blind child to attend this school. Obvi-
ously, funds were not available to acquire all the special
services that may have been offered to us in a public school.
Also, the Christian-based curriculum Jesse’s school used was
not readily available in braille or audio. For the next seven
years, we worked together with the principal and teachers
in this wonderful school to give Jesse the best educational
experience possible. I won’t pretend it was always easy or
perfect. If something didn’t work, we simply scrapped that
idea and began implementing another.
I put all my braille skills to use and brailled important
study guides and tests for him. He utilized a small, handheld
recorder for the classroom and reading assignments. This
worked wonderfully. Reading textbooks onto this recorder
for Jesse to listen to at his leisure became a family affair. My
husband and I, Jesse’s grandmother, one of his cousins, and
even his younger sisters made this happen. On most school