TEDI 3 Week 1 - Conversations About Our Schooling as Visually Impaired Children

Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle

TEDI 3 Week 1 - Conversations About Our Schooling as Visually Impaired Children

MOOC

2019-06-01

Abstract

In this video, Brian Watermeyer, Heidi Lourens, Benedict Leteane and Michelle Botha form a panel to discuss the topics brought up in Week 1 of the Teaching Children with Visual Impairment: Creating Empowering Classrooms MOOC. The members of the panel discuss their experiences of attending schooling in South Africa, both in mainstream education and the special school system. The panel members discuss the ways in which they were socialised and the kinds of anxieties and prejudices revealed in the social aspects of education, as well as the importance of the emotional aspect of care that can be ignored in the technical approach to 'fixing problems' that can become dominant in special needs education. Michelle discusses how she 'performed' sight in order to appease the emotional needs of her sighted teachers and classmates, and how these practices became increasingly maladaptive as she became an adult and she required additional assistance. The panel then discusses what they needed from their educators and the educational environment and members of their community in terms of dialogue and support, and how the educational environment could be improved to better support their learning environment.