Today’s guest post is by Elizabeth Seebeck, the founder of Oglesby Montessori Foundation. by Elizabeth Seebeck Last February, 31 little bodies sat still in their small, Montessori classroom in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago: the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. The children were absolutely mesmerized by Beth, her dog, and her story. It’s not every day that schoolkids get […]

Last May my friend Lynn LaPlante Allaway, the principal violist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, came to our apartment to perform a private concert to help me heal from open-heart surgery. Whitney and I tried to thank Lynn for her music therapy by visiting her kids at St. Petronille School, and gee whiz, now I have […]

Remember my post about Vision Forward, the conference about educating kids who are blind? I signed more Braille copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound at that conference than print ones, and this thank-you note from the mom of a five-year-old boy I met there was so moving that I wrote her back to […]

Whitney and I visited four different classes at Drummond Thomas Montessori School in Chicago last Wednesday morning. After I told one class that even when my eyes are open, all I see is the color black, one preschooler wondered, “Then how do you know when you’re tired?” I can tell you this much: I’m pretty […]

At the Q & A session during our visit to St. Anne Catholic School last month a first-grader wanted to know, “How do you cook if you’re blind?” People who are blind can cook, and lots of them are very good at it. “I’m just not one of them,” I said with a shrug.  A […]