Shortly after arriving at Millet, I was asked to write a job description. I was hired to work with blind children, that much was clear to everyone. Beyond that, no one had a clue what an orientation and mobility specialist actually did. Since my graduate training was with adults, I was somewhat at a loss myself. Having children of my own helped more than anything. It turns out that blind kids are 100 percent children; blindness is a secondary characteristic. Over time, blind students and their parents taught me a great deal. Since kids like Jason grew up to be happy, skilled, swash buckling adults, I guess my efforts were successful.

Swash buckling is a good image for Jason. From the time he was three, sword fighting his way through preschool hallways, right through his "Go, go, gadget cane" days in high school, he kept me entertained. I mixed comments about Jason and his fellow students throughout this book; it provides relief from the textbook stuff.

When I sat down to write the job description, I asked myself some fundamental questions. What is it that a mobility specialist does in a public school? Teach cane skills? Teach orientation? Sure, and a dozen other things. But I understood even in the early years of teaching that there was in my job description something more significant than the skills I taught.

Orientation and mobility specialists teaching in public schools are, above all else, advocates for blind children and their families. We are advocates because the world is waiting with backbreaking negativity to discourage Jason and all the other blind children on the planet. Often the negativity is cloaked in well meaning smiles, a combination of benevolently low expectations, mixed with the stubborn habit of making blindness the chief defining characteristic of the child. Never mind that a child might be funny, bright, articulate, and have a name. Too many people referred to Jason over his school career as "You know, that blind kid."

Over time, cultures around the world evolved mythologies, prejudices, and well meaning assumptions about blindness. In some emerging nations there is the belief that blindness is a penalty from God because of sins from a previous life. In developed countries people still believe that blind individuals are helpless, or have superhuman hearing, or were chosen by God to carry this burden.

These prejudices and assumptions are based on ignorance and have nothing to do with the unique human attributes that each person brings to their life. People who are blind are simply individuals who cannot use the sensory channel called "vision" to gather information about the world. This seems obvious and yet ignorance and prejudice, well meaning or not, persist.

Barbara Pierce, editor of the Braille Monitor, put it this way: ". . . blindness is neither good nor bad, and blind people, . . . are neither virtuous nor depraved, worthy of neither pity nor praise . . . It takes most of us a long time to arrive at this rather obvious assessment."

How sophisticated a blind child becomes during his or her life depends upon the same factors that influence any child's life: the expectations and teaching skills of parents and educators, the absence or extent of secondary handicapping conditions, the opportunity to develop in a supportive environment, innate personality, and opportunity for self expression and self sufficiency. Along with these important ingredients, the nurturing power of special educators plays a crucial role. Regular education teachers change with each passing grade, but special educators work with the same students over many years. The bond that develops between parents and special educators is especially important. The mobility specialist must have a genuine appreciation for the primary role of parents. Parents, for their part, need to be intimately involved in the education of their blind children.

I remember vividly the first day I met Jason. I knew for several weeks that he was coming, but as time approached I grew more emotional. Jason was about the same age as my oldest son. His mother was my age. Blindness had come suddenly, in an accident. One moment Jason was a normally sighted three year old and the next moment he was fighting for his life on an operating table at Saginaw General Hospital. Somehow, after the surgery, his intelligence was preserved, even though his vision and some hearing was gone for good. As I rode from one school to another, I thought how I would feel if this was my son and my fate.

Jason was coming with his mother to see me, to talk about blindness, to make plans for his future. They were late. As time passed I fought back tears. I could not stop feeling his mother's pain. I kept seeing images of Jason; a sad little boy, devastated by his tragedy, afraid to move. Then I heard footsteps in the hall. I rose from my desk and pushed open the door to greet them.

Jason went by the door at mach one, leaving a vapor trail and shock waves. When his mother finally ran him down and dragged him back to my office, he was glad to meet me, so he said. He had a lot to say, in his cheerful, almost radiant manner. While his mother and I had a tearful first encounter, Jason dashed from one end of the room to the other, exploring my office and getting into all my stuff.

Wasn't there something we could do, his mother wanted to know, about the cuts and bruises and stitches he was getting, on account of he never slowed down and the door knobs and table corners all being at face level and all. I looked at her, then I looked at this kid, who wasn't sad, showed no signs of being affected by great tragedy, and who certainly was not afraid to move through space, and I made a decision. Jason left my office with a tiny cane that he took to right away, riding it like a horse as he galloped out the front door. "Just have him stick it out in front," I told her. "I'll teach him how to use it as soon as I can."

Kids like Jason kept me in pretty good shape over the years; sprinting after them to prevent their falling into tar pits and elevator shafts. This book is dedicated to my students. They might recognize themselves in these pages, although I changed names to preserve privacy.

As I began to write this book, I realized I was talking often to parents; especially the parents of blind infants, preschoolers, and elementary aged kids. For these parents, I hope this book is a reassuring guide.

I was also talking to graduate students in the profession of blind rehabilitation. I have this nagging feeling that when they leave school as fully ordained mobility specialists they believe that mobility is mostly about teaching proper cane skills. After teaching for close to 30 years in the public schools of Michigan, I know that mobility is a wonderfully complex profession. I hope this book gives new practitioners a deeper appreciation for the complexity and beauty of their chosen field.

In the next five to ten years, an entire generation of mobility specialists will retire from service to school age blind students. This is the first generation to ever work in the public schools. I felt strongly that their ideas and feelings needed to be collected and saved. Therefore, I made a modest plan to interview all the mobility specialists in the world who worked with children. I set out to write the definitive book on public school orientation and mobility (It's easy to be naive, isolated as I am in the rust belt of Michigan). Later it dawned on me that my life span was limited, that I had a family to provide for, and students to nurture. Before reality set in, I did interview a few colleagues. Their names are listed in another section of this book.

I then discovered the Internet. The rest is electronic history. I know, and you should too, that most of the wisdom in this book is collective.

The question arises from time to time whether or not orientation and mobility specialists belong in the public schools. The implication is that O&M is a rehabilitation service and that it does not relate to academics. It is also true that many school administrators have not one clue about blindness and know even less about the profession of orientation and mobility. This was driven home to me personally when my school system went through one of those traditional financial panics (they're cyclical like the seasons). After a few minutes of forethought, the powers decided that music, gym, and orientation and mobility had to be cut. It took me an entire year to get people to understand what I did and that my services were mandated by federal and state laws. If they cut mobility services, they would have to go to jail (this was my unemotional response).

Anyway, orientation and mobility is still a service is Saginaw, Michigan (and so is music and gym).

Laurie Hudson from the Perkins School for the Blind addressed this issue over the internet. The following list includes Laurie's justifications (mixed with my own):

Blind students have immediate problems like getting to and from school, to and from transportation sites, and to and from indoor areas like bathrooms, lockers, etc. If they can't do this independently or are too slow, academics will suffer (and teachers will have nervous breakdowns).

Blind students need to learn environmental concepts. They need time set aside to explore the world, and they need the opportunity to move outside the school to examine diverse environments. Their ability to learn in school is directly affected by their understanding of the world. Blind students learn skills best in the real world. Indoor, school based simulations don't necessarily transfer to real life.

Schools have a responsibility to educate individuals to become self sufficient, tax paying adults. Blind children will not develop self sufficiency without good mobility skills. Our responsibility is to help shape blind students into contributing members of society, not financial and emotional burdens. Schools have a broader mission, beyond academics.

Some skills can only be taught in unfamiliar areas (self -familiarization, spatial problem solving, using optical aids, etc.).