Last week at Gentry

I completed my O&M Internship at Gentry. It was truly bittersweet. I was to be going home and seeing my family which I truly missed. It was also difficult to leave because I have made such wonderful friends and had a great learning experience there. The O&M supervisor gave me a going away luncheon on my last day that was wonderful.

I felt like I made great progress with my student "A". She completed all the lessons and I could really see her confidence build during our last lesson into the busier city district of Sylacauga. I made this lesson a fun one for both of us by involving some yummy motivation- ice cream! In the town at the north end, there is a Blue Bell ice cream plant that also has a tasting ice cream parlor. On our last visit we went into the parlor and got a scoop of ice cream- what a great treat and end to our lessons. We both enjoyed it and new we had accomplished a great deal during our lessons.

Student "F" also began to make improvements in his lessons although it did take some time. My supervisor will be closing out his instruction time until he has employment near his home. Then she will work with him on the specific route he will need to travel back and forth to work.

Student "J" completed our lesson of the residential route and will continue by moving on to a business district route.

Student "AI" completed his campus route lesson with me and will continue lessons with the instructor on residential and business districts. When he has completed his technology classes the O&M instructor will also go to his hometown and college campus to work with him on routes their. This student requires continued rote learning of lessons due to his short term memory loss and is excited to learn the Trekker Breeze GPS device to help him learn his routes.

I am going to miss working with these students because I enjoy seeing each students' accomplishments and feel I have helped each student in a different way to become a more independent person and traveler.

Week of July 15th

This has been an interesting week. My student "F" is visually impaired and is autistic. His visual impairment does not really have too much of an impact on his travel but the autism characteristics definitely make it a bit more challenging. He travels very quickly so I discovered in the beginning of the week that one of the main focuses of his lesson was to slow him down when traveling. We have been working in a semi-residential/ business area because that will best mimic the type of area he will be working in once he is back in his hometown of Birmingham. The hope is for him to gain adequate skills to get some type of employment near his home where he can either walk or take a short bus trip to work. I had a meeting with his physician that he has worked with for a few years to work on ways that will best help him learn. He is very literal and concrete and has used picture cards with words on other assignments. I am working with him to develop the understanding of the steps he should take to determine when it is safe to cross a street. I made a picture card using picture to help him understand the steps to help us cross safely.
 

Student "A" is progressing very well we have moved onto the small business district of Talladega so that she has more opportunities to cross at business intersections. She seems more and more confident and very comfortable when traveling each day and is always very interested in what our next lesson is going to entail. I love it when students are motivated, eager to learn and really wants to be challenged!

I evaluated a new student "AI". He is a male in his early twenties that has cortical blindness, and alexia sine agraphia due to global anoxic brain injury. He basically had a heart attack (later found out due to a genetic heart defect) when he was playing a game of basketball. His brain was without oxygen for over 6 minutes causing trauma to the brain. He was in a coma for almost a month, in the hospital for ten months then had to relearn all skills such as walking, talking writing, eating, etc. One of the biggest issues is currently is facing is balance issues, short term memory loss and the ability to see print but not the ability to process print, therefore he cannot read any words. He is taking classes on a college campus about 2 hours north of Talladega in his hometown. I have recommended that he use an ID cane for safety issues as well as giving him some control and balance with drop-offs and curbs. I also recommended later on to try to use a GPS device to landmark his daily route because of his short term memory loss. I have found that his short term memory is about 5-8 minutes. He often repeats himself or asks the same questions. We will work on his class route here at Gentry repeatedly in order to get it into his long term memory storage bank.

Another student I evaluated this week is "J". He is in his early fifties and has been totally blind in both eyes since the age of 16 due to trauma to the head. He has detached retinas. He has been using a cane but does not travel alone anywhere almost always with a family member. He uses his cane well so I recommended we work on some residential and then possibly small business areas.

At the end of this week I traveled to another town called Sylacauga, Al. to work with a senior citizen that had come to the Gentry Camp SAVI program in early May. We went to his home to work on cane skills in his neighborhood. His streets near his home did not have sidewalks so we will be going back next week to take him into the downtown area to work some more with him.

I have enjoyed this week because it has gotten busier and we have traveled to other areas so I have been able to see the diverse communities here in Alabama. One more week and I am done!

The week of July 8th

This was the week after our 2 week break. All students and staff at Gentry took a break and the facility was closed. Starting back on Monday was tough! One of my students "B" did not return after the break due to medical reasons. I continue to work with student "A".

 I also evaluated a new student "F" and began O&M services with him. "F" is a 21 year old young man who is legally blind with autism and intellectually disabled. His eye condition is microphthalmia and coloboma with light perception only in his left eye. His eye condition does allow him to travel independently. He is able to learn a route rotely but has difficulty with problem solving and generalizations. I am working with him to help improve these skills when crossing streets safely. He had difficulty waving cars on so the people in the vehicles understood him(he used a very floppy fish hand) so I have taught him to wave cars on with the appropriate hand motions. We have been working on how to determine when it is safe to cross intersections. Once he is back in his home town he will need an instructor to teach him the route needed to travel to work on a daily basis.

My student "A" is progressing nicely. I am so pleased! This week began with rain so played the TREKKS game to increase and reinforce directional skills. The remainder of the week we began by
working in a semi-residential/business  area. She began her route in a residential area near the Alabama School for the Blind and traveled to a Walgreens located on Battle St. which is the main street through Talladega.  By the end of this week she progressed to completing and reversing the route with no problems. In her initial evaluation with her,  she explained that she had many fears about crossing big intersections. She had a "not so good" experience with a previous O&M instructor in a business district so I have purposely taken it slow with her to allow time to build up her self-confidence when traveling.

This week ended on Saturday with a trip to University of Alabama to observe my supervisor orient a student to fall classes. This student has been at the campus for 2 years but needed some review on bus routes and to find the routes to buildings to new classes. This was a beautiful campus! And a great experience for me!

break

The Alabama School for the Blind and the School for the Deaf as well as the Helen Keller School are all 9 or 10 month programs. The E.H. Gentry facility is different in that it is a 12 month facility. It offers programs that start up several times throughout the year. Because it is a 12 month facility it was closed for two weeks over the July 4th holiday. This was a much needed break for me as well and I really enjoyed going home and seeing my family. I even was able to get some projects completed around the house!

learning the Trekker Breeze

During this weeks lessons on residential routes, we began to use the Trekker Breeze. It was very easy to learn and easy to use as well. I went with another intern before a lesson with my students and entered the route into the device. Because this is an older neighborhood with older sidewalks I made sure to enter landmarks into the device for the student. In several areas on the route, there were places where the sidewalk had been removed, broken up due to tree root damage and even areas where objects such as large railroad ties or stone stuck out into the path of the sidewalk. When on the lessons with the students I taught the students how to use it when walking a routine path they might use. The students really liked using the device and felt it would be helpful for them to have in the future. I also feel this would be a great addition to the students "toolbox" and really liked using it.
I felt for student  "B" that already had good cardinal direction skills, it would be a great help because she travels so much. For student "A" who is just learning to use her cardinal direction skills, it would be a useful tool for her to confirm to herself that she is traveling in the intended direction. I hope theses students will be able to later use this device or a device like this to assist them when traveling.

Another week at Gentry

I forgot to mention in my last post about another student I am working with so that will this posts focus. I will call her "B",  she is a lovely lady who lost her vision around the age of 5 years old to Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis of the Optic Nerve. She has one prosthetic eye and only limited vision in the other. She is very independent and willing to explore the small town of Talladega. She has two homes- one in Alabama about an hour from Gentry and another in Atlanta. She has two homes, with a car and driver at each home as well as two small businesses. Because of the economy these businesses have slowed tremendously. This is why she is at Gentry. She is currently enrolled in the Gentry BEP program where they will teach her the vending machine business. Being a woman in her early fifties, she has developed some mobility habits that we have been working on. Indoors she uses the diagonal cane technique and has grown accustom to using it outdoors as well. This is not always the safest choice so we are working on her remembering to use the touch technique outdoors. She is getting better and found it helpful several times on our lessons. She has learned the Gentry campus and the classes she attends on the campus. We have also learned to use the catwalk in front of the campus in order to cross the street safely. She had little problems with it and only some trouble when in the shaded areas under the tree lined part of the route. We have worked on a residential route and we continue to work on cardinal directions when on the route. She feels most comfortable walking at a slower pace which sometimes can be difficult with the time frame allotted for her mobility class. We will begin to work on a business district route next week.

I really love being outdoors and moving with the students. I have gotten to know my students better and have a better idea of what kinds of things the students need in their daily lives now and for future use. 

Week 5 at Gentry

The last 2 weeks I  have been working with 2 students exclusively. One student-A, lost her vision in the last 5 years to Histoplamosis. She currently lives in a very rural area in Alabama with a friend but once she has completed her rehab at Gentry she plans to move to Birmingham which is much more populated and she hopes to be able to be more independent. One of her goals is to cross the streets independently in the business district. Previously she did receive some O&M instruction in a business district but states she was very uncomfortable with the instructor and that instructor made her very nervous. One of my goals with her is to teach her to travel safely in this type of area so I am working slowly to gain her trust and allow her to feel comfortable in doing so. We began by learning the Gentry campus and the routes to her classes. I feel I have built up a really good rapport with her and hope she continues to feel comfortable with me and the instruction.