[nabs] receiving O&M service

[Patricia Kepler]

Ashly, O&M every other week is ridiculous.  I lost my vision suddenly, but I was given mobility instruction 3 days a week.  It was through the Braille Institute in California though, not the state. When I first moved to Oregon I  sought o &m training from the state and received a few oritenation sessions, but that was pretty much it.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ashley Bramlett 
  To: National Alliance of Blind Students. Discussion list for NABS 
  Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2011 8:11 PM
  Subject: [nabs] receiving O&M service


  Hi all,
  My first message slipped away by accident.
  I was just wondering your experience with O&M, or orientation and mobility. Some of you have dogs, but you learned O&M with a cane first. I plan to stick with a cane. I might get a pet, but the cane is the way to go for me.

  I don’t want this to be a novel. But these are some main points.
  How much O&M did you get growing up? If you received O&M from your VR agency, was it enough?
  What techniques did you learn and what has worked for you?

  I think the O&M I received was certainly inadequate and it did not help me problem solve or teach me to orient in new environments.
  Kids grow up receiving inadequate O&M, braille, and other blindness skills. Sadly, I don’t see this getting better; if anything it is worse due to the shortage of personnel and low expectations.

  So what happened? I have had a range of instructors and have covered some basic to advanced O&M but there are so many holes in my knowledge because I was not taught about layouts and spatial concepts and traffic patterns as a kid.

  I have been low vision all my life; I have tunnel vision. I had a great TVI who taught me braille. She was persistent and  had high expectations. She sent home braille reading in the summer, and I was expected to keep practicing. I finally caught on, but I progressed slowly; that is another story though.

  For O&M, I think I got a cane in second grade or maybe third grade. Before that, they tried me to use my vision by following  other students in line and finding landmarks. But that didn’t work; later I got a cane and was taught sighted guide and had guides assigned to me in class. So as we walked in a line, my guide was with me.


  My O&M throuout school was inadequate. I’m not sure where to begin. The basics were taught once a week, but keep in mind I had sighted guides in school, so when was the cane used? Well not much. I know you can’t use a cane well in a single file line, but isn’t it odd to get a cane and at the same time have your O&M instructor teach students sighted guide?

  Most of my schooling, O&M was given every other week. That is rediculous. How can you build on a skill with O&M twice a month?
  I used it a little on family outings, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged much.
  The teacher covered residential travel and then we went to a business district. What was wrong with this? Well, she simply gave me a route to fllow and drew a simple map. She would add onto the route sometimes hoping I’d improve and walk to a destination and reverse the route well.
  Well, that teaches you nothing about transferable skills like intersection analysis or problem solving.
  Another problem was she had me overuse my little residual vision. I find vision helpful; without it, I cannot walk straight and big landmarks help me in orientation. But it was just way too much. I remember her pointing
  to signs and trying getting me to read them wich sometimes I could, other times I could not; depended on the sin’s letter size. To find things, it was always visual landmarks. Never was I asked what do you hear?
  She did not teach me about the benefits of echo location or employ sound landmarks/clues
  While I was taught the tap method, I think its called two point touch, , I used either constant contact or the diagonal technique growing up.
  The instructor did not place much emphasis on cane skills.

  What was worse about my childhood / youth O&M was they said I had spatial problems. And yes I do a little bit. Orientation is very challenging, even though I know to find landmarks/clues and supposed to remember them and reverse directions.
  But I hate it when they say I have problems, but if they had taught me hands on about traffic patterns, address layouts, blocks, etc I may have done better. Maybe the issue is they failed to teach me spatial concepts, not an issue on my part of understanding.

  Then I got O&M as an adult. Okay, this is getting long. So, the highlights. 
  Again, it was infrequent,  but way better! The quality was better and I learned some! This instructor was from India; she was a traditional trained instructor though; she was sighted as most  instructors are.
  She worked with me in a business setting. She oriented me to GMU where I first was a student, then at MU.
  For the business travel, we crossed plus shaped streets, located some addresses and got into public transit. She taught me that I needed to count stops on metro subway so I knew where to get off.
  She explained that numbers change as you go to different blocks. She said that after you get to your desired street, then figure out if you’re on the right block and right side of the street since odd/even are separate sides.

  Even though I still saw her twice a month, the lessons were longer and more meaningful. I still was encouraged to use my vision to line up at streets and look at cars as opposed to listening, but overall she was better.

  Then I had an awful experience at the VA rehab center, VRCB. They have blind O&M instructors. This man’s way of teaching you is to use sleepshades on clients and just go guess how to go from A to B. He did not give clear directions.

  Now I’m going to get  O&M again from the vr agency again. They finally hired a new O&M teacher. We’ll see if she can fill in some gaps. I need to learn intersection analysis, how to cross streets other than plus shaped ones, how to line up at streets better, more orientation techniques  and how addresses are laid out.
  The point in this rambling is to say that many people get inadequate training
  and its sure hard to find quality instruction to address any gaps. If you as a client spend several months at a rehab center, you want them to teach to your learning style. That is not what happened. Finally I got out  of O&M. I was allowed to use my vision the last several months, but got little guidance from the instructor. he meerly dropped me off with his driver and waited m for me at the end.  Since he wasn’t with me, he could not teach me anything. Other times, during very cold, or wet weather, he dropped me off at malls saying this is a lesson in problem solving. He gave me locations to find and left me. Then I saw him at the end of the lesson. 
  If I had directions, it was in cardinal terms, north south, etc. They teach via structured discovery wich does not work for everyone.

  Ashley





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