A rewarding five days in Florida

One woman at the Teaching Children About Blindness session I gave last Friday was a teacher trainer at Head Start in Tampa. That very morning she’d been told that a three-year-old who’d just enrolled is blind. “I have no idea what to tell the teachers to do with him,” she said. “I thought coming to hear you might be a good place to start.”

Another audience member taught sign language at a nursery school that regularly has teenagers who are blind come in as volunteers. She’d come to find out if there was some way to incorporate Braille in her preschool. Another audience member had taught at a school for the blind years ago. “I came just to hear what you have to say,” she said.

And so, here’s what I had to say: screw my presentation. We need to help this Head Start woman!

I’m happy. Baby Kennedy’s happy. Callie, not so much.

Okay, not really. What I actually said was, “How about we move our chairs and sit in a circle?” Everyone there had the handout I’d put together with lists of resources and ideas to teach children about blindness that they could read on their own when they got home, so instead of talking about that we all shared ideas and resources about how to include a child who is blind into a preschool classroom.

At the end of the hour the Head Start teacher trainer walked out armed with the Braille copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound that I’d brought along, and a list of names and email addresses others in the circle had come up with for her to contact for help. Most importantly, she left with reassurances from people in the room who had dealt with blindness before. “I bet you’ll be surprised at what fun this boy will be at Head Start,” the teacher who had taught at a school for the blind told her as she left. “You’ll all end up learning a lot.”

My reward for a successful session? I got to spend the rest of the weekend wining and dining and swimming and playing and… holding babies!

I have a niece and nephew in Florida, and both had daughters born this past year. My sisters Cheryl and Bev flew down with Whitney and me, and our brother-in-law Rick greeted us in their Orlando home with a very special dinner: Sloppy Joe’s made from Flo’s famous recipe. He even made red Jello with bananas, Flo’s signature dessert! His wife (and our sister) Marilee drove us miles and miles to visit their grandbabies

That’s Whitney leaping into the water to chase the ball I just threw.

Whitney was a trooper for the entire trip, whether squeezing under the seat in front of us on the airplane or curling at my feet in the front passenger seat of Marilee’s car. She didn’t mind sharing my attention with baby Callie and baby Kennedy, either. Her reward? Chasing tennis balls in my niece’s backyard pool.