This week's class was spent concentrating on not just people with visual impairments or people with hearing impairments, but instead we learned about people who deal with both at the same time. We watched several videos at the beginning of class about leading people with visual impairments and a video about deaf-blind theater. Our first activity was to lead a blindfolded partner around campus. Personally I found that it was easier to be led than to be the leader. Being blindfolded made me more aware of the unevenness of the sidewalks. The next two activities involved one group being blindfolded and the other group leading them without being able to vocally communicate. We did tape art and a project with modeling clay. I found leading my participant in tape art to be particularly challenging partly because I didn't know exactly what I was doing myself. The modeling clay activity was confusing both participating and leading. We were trying to make specific shapes, and it was hard to communicate that without words.
I didn't have any goals at the start of class but was simply ready to learn. During class my goal became just to understand everything that was going on around me. I learned that patience is more important than I first gave it credit for. I expected it to be challenging to lead a participant without talking, but it was hard not to force the participant to do something and still stay on task. It was tricky to know when I needed to provide more assistance and when I should just let the person use their own creativity. I'm glad I got to have a little first hand experience working with a participant without being able to verbally or visually communicate. I would like to have more training in this area because I feel there is a lot more I could learn about communication. I'm glad that I do know a little sign language, but here that didn't even matter. As instructors we were all on the same playing field. Working with people with hearing impairments is something I had considered as a possible career field, but I had never thought further to people with a hearing impairment and another disability. I'm not sure that I would want to work with that population, but if I did I would certainly look to get as much training as possible.
Here's an example of one of the videos we watched. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgcm83tyv3Y
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