It’s a first for the county.
By JONATHAN ATHENS, Staff Writer
April 5, 2007
Printed courtesy of Imperial Valley Press, El Centro, CA
For eight Imperial County teenagers, Wednesday marked their first Independence Day.
This was not a graduation ceremony, nor was it the staging grounds for some revolt.
This was a field trip, but it was revolutionary in another sense — it marked the first time blind Imperial County students were given the chance to learn how to get around the community on their own.
“We try to promote independence,” said Michael Bliss, an orientation and mobility specialist with the Imperial County Office of Education.
Two of the eight students have very limited vision, the rest are blind. They gathered under an aluminum shelter at El Centro’s Public Works facility.
Clutching red and white foldable canes, the students stood close to each other. They are quiet, shy, happy, and humble. Some have vague ideas of what they want to become when they grow up, others are still deciding.
Joel Grijalva, 14, of El Centro joked that he wants to become a race car driver.
Rick Okoshi, 14, of Imperial said he wants to become a school principal.
Christian Perez, 16, of Calipatria said she wants to become “a best-selling author.” Unlike the rest of us who can simply look around and look ahead, these teenagers will have to develop special skills to know their location and be able to get around.
Beyond feeling Braille text on signs, these students will learn how to determine which direction they are facing by feeling the warmth of the sun, Bliss said. They will become familiar with their surroundings by learning nuances such as the incline of a particular sidewalk, he said.
“Orientation and mobility is a life-long process,” Bliss said. For 15-year-old Leslie Leon of Imperial, the hands-on field trip is the start of a long journey toward self-sufficiency. All her life, in order to get around, she has had to depend on her parents.
“I hope to learn the different signs and what they mean and how I can relate to them,” Leon said. At a nearby table there was an assortment of traffic signs, a stop light, traffic cones and street signs for the students to touch.
Bliss said the students know these traffic devices in a conceptual sense but they do not know these items in their actual context.
That is because those who are blind from birth find it difficult to understand concepts that are strictly visual such as color, he said. Bliss said he was inspired to create this type of hands-on travel learning 24 years ago when a blind sixth-grade girl explained her idea of a stoplight. She believed it was a singular bulb that hung from a chord and controlled traffic by changing colors, Bliss said.
“Because they don’t get to touch some things, they have difficulty learning environmental concepts,” he said.
>> Staff Writer Jonathan Athens can be reached at 344-1221 or jathens@ivpressonline.com