“I Can Fix That!” Creating an On-campus Job for a Student

Abstract

Every year on or near October 15, our school, the California School for the Blind, celebrates National White Cane Day. Over the years, all kinds of events have been planned to celebrate the day. About two years ago, the school decided to do something different. Early that fall, staff members in the Orientation and Mobility Department at the school started teaching students how to fix and put together pieces of canes. Our idea was to have students make canes to send to an O&M program in Russia. The canes were eventually made and sent to Russia and are now being used by Russian students who are visually impaired. This activity gave us the opportunity to teach students how to take apart and put together canes at whatever level of competence they had. One of my students, Natalie (a pseudonym), was excited and found that she was adept at fixing these canes. Natalie, a 19-year-old student with some light perception, has many concomitant disabilities, including a slight hearing loss in one ear and cognitive delays. She had surgery for scoliosis when she was in elementary school and has a heart defect. In the past few years, Natalie was diagnosed with a thyroid condition as well as asthma. The origin of her disability is not known. Natalie has difficulty recalling essential information and a good deal of difficulty understanding and following written and verbal directions without many repetitions. For example, it is not unusual for her to forget important telephone numbers or addresses if she has not had to write or tell someone this information weekly. Natalie tends to shut down or freeze when asked questions that she cannot answer, leaving the questioner wondering why she has not responded. But Natalie is adept at doing anything that involves movement and working with her hands. She is also well oriented to the campus and can get to various classes and dormitories using more than one set route. A NEW JOB FOR NATALIE Last year, Natalie was bemoaning the fact that the school was not having a cane-repair type of White Cane Day activity as we had the year before. We began talking about the idea of creating a cane-repair job for her on campus. Many transition-aged students at our school have paid off-campus jobs working at pizza restaurants, offices, churches, and mortuaries, all funded through the Department of Rehabilitation. Natalie had an off-campus job cleaning tables at a fast-food restaurant, but was interested in also having a cane-repair job on campus. After checking with the supervisors and job coordinators, I received approval to create this new job. Natalie would work one day per week for 90-minute sessions at this new job. Cane repair technique During the fall before White Cane Day, Natalie learned how to take a cane apart and put one back together. She learned how to remove different styles of cane tips (hooks and slip-ns), sometimes by the sheer force of gripping and pulling at the same time or, when she could not do so, by using a vise to hold the cane tip in place while she pulled. After removing the cane tip, she then learned how to pull the elastic cord through the last cane piece to get to the knot in the cord. Sometimes it was too difficult simply to use her fingers to pull the knot apart, so she learned how to use needle-nose pliers to remove stubborn knots (she continues to refine her use of this tool). Once the knot was out of the cord, Natalie could easily take the cane apart. To put the cane back together, Natalie learned how to put the pieces together in a particular order, so she would not try to put the bottom piece next to the grip piece. She has excellent fine motor skills and can easily feel the difference between cane pieces that insert into each other and can tell what type of cane piece she is feeling (Ambutech, WCIB, or Revolution). At our school, bent canes and broken joints are the most common types of cane repairs needed. Natalie needs a little help bending canes back to their original shape but can make other repairs with little or no assistance. …