Sonia Kim ETA :: 2011-2012 Hanbit School for the Blind
I
teach at a school for the blind. People’s responses upon hearing what I do for a living generally fall in two categories: the first, a laundry list of questions about the blind, or a “Wow, that’s so awesome,” tethered to a strange belief that I must have superhuman patience. For the first, I generally answer what I know, and for the second, I assure them that my students think differently. In the beginning, my school seemed like a completely foreign world. My first few weeks were an intensive crash course in everything related to the blind. And I made plenty of mistakes. I terrified blind colleagues with my over-enthusiastic “Good mornings.” I mistook blind students for sighted ones. I gestured too much in my classes. As was the custom for new teachers at my school, I ate my lunch blindfolded, dropping curry onto my skirt. “Be grateful it wasn’t fish and soup today,” my coworkers quipped. As the novelty disappeared and the school year came into full swing, routines became more established. I prepared class handouts in multiple formats: .txt files, which students read using their Braille notetakers, and largeprint materials for low-vision students. I made mp3 recordings of myself reading textbook passages; my students who used them as study aids would laugh at my clumsy Korean translations. I taught grammar to advanced students who couldn’t attend hagwons due to their disability and introduced the alphabet to students who had previously been ignored in traditional schools. To my students’ amusement, I started learning English Braille, clacking away at letters with my stylus and tablet and painfully typing out
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