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!