Using Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in the classroom

This afternoon I’m giving a presentation to school teachers attending the Sandberg Literacy Institute at University of Toledo. Part of my job is to give them ideas of how to use Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in the classroom. I figured heck, as long as I’m gathering resources to share with these teachers this afternoon, why not also share these terrific resources with you, my loyal blog readers?

An entire lesson plan devoted to Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is right there for the taking on a web site called Learning to Give. The site suggests “Reading Experiences to Inspire Acts of Kindness,” and features lists and lists of activities for kids who read our book. Example:

During Reading

ASK: How does Hanni keep Beth safe during the day? What senses does Hanni need to use to help Beth?

SHOW: Look at the pictures of Hanni guiding Beth.

CONNECT: How is the way that Hanni takes care of Beth similar to how your parents or friends take care of you, or how you help others? For example, have you ever helped a younger child or elderly person cross a street or perform a task? Imagine what kind of help you would need if you could not see or hear or if you could not move easily.

The site also mentions Braille:

In addition to having special dogs to help them get places, those with a visual impairment also have a special alphabet that helps them read. This alphabet is called Braille. It is made up of dots that are raised off a piece of paper, so a person can feel them. All letters are made up of a combination of six dots. For more information, go to the Monroe County Women’s Disability Network webpage on Braille. Practice writing your name in Braille.

You can order Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in a special print-Braille format (no illustrations) from Seedlings Braille Books for Children. Braille words appear directly under the printed words, providing visually-impaired children and their sighted parents and teachers a wonderful way to enjoy learning together. The Seeing Eye also offers oodles of resources for teachers and librarians.

And finally, this fantastic resource: Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is one of the books on the Martha Speaks Read-Aloud Book Club list. Each book selected for the Martha Speaks Book Club is coordinated with a Martha Speaks episode on PBS. For Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, PBS suggest kids watch an episode where Martha wants to pursue her dream of becoming a real firehouse dog, but then realizes the job is not as easy as it seems.
You can download this episode from the PBS Kids site here.

The Martha Speaks Read-Aloud Book Club resource guide is three pages long so I can’t go into all the details here. It does suggest inviting a special guest to read-aloud sessions, so if any of you teachers or librarians are thinking ahead about special events for the next school year, please know: Hanni and I would love to come.

Woman gets fired after employer figures out she’s blind

I swear, when I first heard about this I thought it had to be a story from The Onion. A federal judge here in Chicago has entered a consent decree requiring a company to pay $100,000 to a woman whose job offer was revoked after the company’s owner realized she is blind.

How did this happen? Did the woman apply on line? Was she hired, ahem, sight unseen? Was the owner simply not paying attention when the blind woman showed up for the interview? Was she interviewed over the phone?

According to a (subscription only) story in the Chicago Law Bulletin, Jocelyn Snower was hired as a recruiter by the owner of Balance Staffing and had already worked a couple of months before the owner realized she doesn’t have 20/20 vision.

“What’s unique about Jocelyn is that she’s legally blind, but she doesn’t use a walking stick or guide dog, or anything like that,” { trial attorney Laura R. }Feldman said. “When I first met her, I had no idea she was blind.”

The EEOC attorneys said Snower started working for the staffing company in June 2006 and that on Aug. 9, 2006, she received notification that her job offer had been revoked. They contended that the owner of the staffing company found out through another employee that the woman was blind, specifically that she couldn’t drive.

Okay, let’s review. This woman had gone through the application process, passed the interview, was offered the job, and had worked for two months. She must have been capable, right?

“It’s the EEOC’s position that she did not need to drive for the job — that there’s great public transportation, and she takes public transportation,” Feldman said.

{ EEOC supervisory trial attorney Diane I.} Smason said the woman served as a recruiter in the past at other companies, and she had already proved to be a capable recruiter despite her disability.

The EEOC alleged that the owner revoked Jocelyn’s job offer the minute he found out she was blind, even though she had already started recruiting for him. The EEOC further alleged that the defendants refused to pay Jocelyn wages for hours of work that she already performed, because of her disability.

I didn’t use a white cane or a guide dog when I first started losing my sight. I quit driving or riding my bike, but I could still see well enough to walk to work. Most of my day was spent counseling college students on study abroad options, I could have done that with my eyes closed. As my eyesight got worse, though, I started making mistakes in the office. I still remember spilling grounds all over the place on my way to make the morning coffee. I had to sit close to my computer screen to see the words. I ran into tabletops. At one point my boss took me aside and told me I wouldn’t be going to the annual convention with my colleagues. “You’ll embarrass the office,” she said. Months later, my contract was terminated.

But that was way back in 1985, before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. This is the 21st century. An employer today would never dream of firing someone simply because they couldn’t see well enough to drive, would they?

The defense, which denied the allegations, was represented by Seyfarth, Shaw LLP partners Gerald L. Maatman Jr., and Christopher J. DeGroff, along with associate Brandon L. Spurlock. They could not be reached for comment.

Obama celebrates Father’s Day weekend at White Sox game

Wow. Everyone knows the White Sox are red hot right now (7-2 so far against National League teams and seven and one in their last eight games) but who would’ve guessed they’d draw a sell-out crowd against the Nationals in DC last night?! An AP news story says even the President showed up:

Obama’s arrival wasn’t announced inside the stadium, and there wasn’t the stringent security for fans that usually accompanies a public appearance. Joined by daughters Sasha and Malia and sipping a beer in a private box, the president wore a White Sox hat in support of his hometown team just as he did when he threw out the first pitch at the ballpark on opening day.

No doubt everyone was there to see White Sox phenom pitcher Gavin Floyd, who had no-hit the Chicago Cubs through six innings in his last appearance. It was the third time Floyd took a no-hitter into the seventh. I was sipping wine with other authors last evening after a successful day at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books so didn’t get to listen to the game. By the time Hanni and I returned, Safe & Sound, to our hotel room, the White Sox had managed a 2 to 1 extra-innings victory. No surprise, I guess. The starting pitcher for the Nationals last night was just a rookie. Straussberg? Strassberg? Something like that.

Beth’s blind blogging buddy

Hello from our seat on the Hiawatha train to Wisconsin. Hanni and I are on our way to Waukesha, where I’ll be leading a couple sessions at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. I’ll be sitting on a panel about blogging, too, and the moderator sent some questions for we panelists to ponder in advance.

Each of you plays a significant role as a blogger, bringing entertainment, news and social commentary to the world. But you also appear to write your blogs in lighthearted ways. Is this intentional?

You’re often connecting to people who need a voice in the community. How does this influence the specific content of your blog?

As a writer I’m often encouraged to keep a blog and although I have a page on my web site, my writing tends to feel a lot like navel gazing. What advice would you give a blogger in this situation?

What is the most heartwarming connection you’ve made with a reader through your blog?

I’ll have to give those first few questions some thought before our 4 pm

That's OJ, Jen's guide dog.

panel tomorrow. I’m ready with an answer for that last question, though.

I’ve made plenty of heartwarming connections through my Safe & Sound blog, but one I find particularly touching is my connection with Jennifer Doherty, a guide dog user an Ireland. I know all this internet-blogging-connecting stuff is old news by now, but I still find it amazing that a woman in Ireland could pres the keys on her talking computer to search for “guide dog” or “blind” or whatever,, come up with my name, link to my blog, type a few words and shazam! She’s responded to me here in Chicago!

If you enjoyed Jenny’s comments here, you’ll be pleased to know Jenny keeps a blog of her own, too. Paws for Thought talks about life in Ireland with OJ, Jenny’s guide dog. Jenny keeps up with blind bloggers all over the world, and last month she asked a few of us if we’d be willing to write a guest blog for Paws for Thought. I was flattered to be asked, and wrote a post about retiring Dora, my first Seeing Eye dog. You can link to my guest post at Paws for Thought. While you’re there, check out the other guest bloggers that week. Interesting stuff!

Uh-oh. They’re calling the Milwaukee stop, and I still need to come up with answers for those other panel questions. Better stop blogging about blogging here and think about what I’ll say when I’m blah, blah, blahing about blogging at tomorrow’s panel instead. Waukesha, here we come!

Roll out the (Crate and) Barrel

Things sure are exciting lately. Last week I spent my Sunday evening with a crazy Canadian hockey fan dressed in party shoes, party hat, Dustin Time t-shirt and the “all important Crown Royal Black.” A week later? Hanni and I are heading to a Sunday evening cocktail reception at an estate on Chicago’s north shore. We’ll be guests of Gordon and Carole Segal, the co-founders of Crate and Barrel. . From Gulfnews Magazine:

There is something storybookish about the way Crate & Barrel came into being. The inspiration for the store came after college, when Segal and his bride, Carole, travelled across Europe. “We found quality cookware in France and interesting pottery in Denmark,” says Segal. “We were 23 years old, and a year out of university. We didn’t like the gifts we had got for our wedding, and the things that we saw in the marketplace in Europe, and the Caribbean were beautiful and inexpensive. We had never seen anything like these in Chicago.

“A year later, I was washing dishes and an idea came to me. ‘How come there is no store that stocks such items,’ I asked my wife. ‘There must be other young couples like us who don’t have so much money but would appreciate such items’. So I said to her, ‘Let’s open a store!’ Initially, my wife was not so enthusiastic, but I prevailed.”

After spending about $10,000 on merchandise from Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, they only had $7,000 left for making an old and dirty factory site that was to be their store presentable in just 17 days.

“My wife was very clever,” says Segal proudly. “When the packing crates and merchandise came in, we just pitched them over to use as display cases and we said, ‘Let’s call the store Crate & Barrel’”

The Segals have adopted a retired dog from the Seeing Eye and are eager to have their friends learn more about the organization. They invited a number of graduates to join them tonight for cocktails, and I’ve been chosen (along with two other graduates) to give a short talk about our fabulous dogs. Each guest will receive a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to take home — I’ll sign them in Braille, and Hanni’s pawprint will be stamped in each copy, too.

I plan on keeping my talk extremely short tonight, as I expect a number of guests might want to gather in front of the Segal’s TV set at 6:45 pm. Blackhawk players are going to be honored before the ESPN Sunday night White Sox/Cubs baseball game, they’ll have the Stanley Cup with them, a few will throw out the ceremonial first pitch and then gather to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch.

So who knows, it may be another Sunday night in front of the TV for Beth, just like last Sunday. Minus the party shoes, party hat and “Dustin Time!” t-shirt,though. Tonight, I’ll be wearing Marimekko.

My new love

Some friends invited us to a Stanley Cup party last Sunday. We always have fun with Dana and Art, but I was reluctant to go.

That's Dennis on the left. He was there the whole game except for the times he stood, inches from the screen, yelling at Chris Pronger. Thanks to Dennis, even I could enjoy the game. (Thanks to Bryn Benson for the photo.)

Without being able to see, hockey can be a tough sport to follow. What would poor, poor Beth do at the party while everyone’s eyes were glued to the 60-inch TV screen? I do love a party, so decided I’d figure it out. Maybe rather than try to follow the progress of the game, I should choose one player, follow his progress instead. Which Blackhawk to follow? That, my dear, was a no brainer. Who else but Nick Boynton.

What?! You’ve never heard of Nick Boynton? Well, he was a plus-two on Sunday night, and Philadelphia’s star Chris Pronger was an unheard-of minus five. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Three months ago, when the Blackhawks called Boynton up, he was playing with the Rockford Ice Hawks. The NHL web site says that before Boynton joined the Blackhawks, he had “five assists and 22 penalty minutes in 15 AHL tilts with Rockford and the Manitoba Moose.” Not sure what all that AHL tilt gobbledygook means. The most important fact there is this: my man Boynton played for the Manitoba Moose. How. Cool. Is. That?

And if playing for the Manitoba Moose isn’t enough to make you love Nick Boynton, there’s this, from the Chicago Tribune:

One day when Boynton, a 19-year-old first-round draft pick of the Bruins, was working at his family’s farm in Canada, he couldn’t get out of bed.

A misdiagnosis and 35 pounds of weight loss later, doctors in Boston correctly identified that Boynton’s pancreas basically had stopped producing insulin.

You read that right. Nick Boynton has Type 1 diabetes. Just like me. The Tribune story said that after finally diagnosing him correctly, doctors told Boynton to sit out a year. The mighty moose refused. He wanted to play hockey.

One of the other guests at Dana and Art’s party Sunday was a Canadian-born hockey fan named Dennis. Dennis teaches third grade by day and still plays amateur hockey at night. He sat inches from the big-screen, totally focused on the game. I asked him to alert me anytime #24 was on the ice, and Dennis didn’t disappoint.

Throughout the entire game, the cheers and groans from Dennis gave me a clue of what was happening on the ice. “Woooooooo! Ugh. Ahh. C’mon lads! Woooooooo! Argh. Damn. Wooooooo!” By the second period, I had diagnosed my new Canadian friend with Hockey Tourrette’s.

The best part of the game, duh, was any time the Blackhawks scored. With every Blackhawk goal (and there were a lot of goals scored on Sunday) Dennis would run to my seat, say a polite excuse me, and then crush me in a hug.

I love hockey. Go Dennis! Go Boynton! Go Hawks!

Learning to read Braille

That's some of the Eastview kids, who all liked reading and learning about Hanni. Photo by Andi Butler, http://www.mrsbillustrations.com.

When I found out that three students at Eastview Elementary School were blind, I arranged to have Braille copies of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound sent there before our visit this week. I’d use one myself to show the kids at different grade levels what Braille looks like and how it works, and the other three copies would be given to Miguel, age 10, and Seth and Ethan, both age 8. I didn’t expect that these three little blind kids would be able to read the Braille books on their own, I just thought that if the other kids at Eastview might be getting books, these three should get a copy they might be able to read someday, too.

The Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound was produced in contracted Braille, a form of Braille I’ve never been able to master. Contracted Braille has a bunch of shorthand symbols (contractions) for commonly used words and parts of words: there’s a cell for the word “and,” another for the word “the,” and so on. Most of the letters of the alphabet are also used as shorthand for common words, such as “c” for “can” and “l” for “like.” Kind of like texting, only you can’t make as many mistakes!

When I met the vision teacher at Eastview, I apologized that my book was only available in contracted Braille. “No problem,” she said. “That’s the only Braille these guys read!” Sure enough, the little buggers were Braille experts.

Really, all the Eastview kids seemed to have a strong interest in reading. The school’s principal, Jim Zursin, emphasizes reading with all the students, and with the help of his staff and the PTO they are making sure reading doesn’t end when summer begins. Every child who participates in Eastview’s summer reading program and reaches their goal will march in the Founders Day Parade this summer, each star reader wearing a sandwich board with a drawing of the cover of his or her favorite book on the front. “There’ll be hundreds of books marching down the street,” Mr. Zursin exclaimed. You didn’t have to be able to see to know there were stars in his eyes, just thinking about it. Kids who read this summer will be invited to a community pool party, too, where Mr. Zursin promises to jump off the high dive – with his clothes on!

That's Miguel on the left and one of the twins in the center. Photo by Andi Butler, http://www.mrsbillustrations.com.

I’m pretty confident Seth, Ethan and Miguel will be marching in the parade. And swimming at that pool party, too. They love to read, and turns out they can write in contracted Braille, too. Seth, Ethan and Miguel each wrote a poem for me, and they had to work hard to hold back their laughter as I stumbled through some of the contractions when I tried reading their work out loud. They were happpy to help me through, and in the half hour the four of us were able to spend together in their vision resource room we became fast friends. Miguel showed me how his talking watch works, and Ethan and Seth, twin brothers, counted off their favorite rides at Disney World. We all laughed at how other kids find Space Mountain so scary. It’s in the dark” we said. Big deal.

The boys had lots of questions about Hanni, and I told them that in order to train with a Seeing Eye dog they’d have to learn good orientation and mobility (white cane) skills first. “Judging your location by what you hear, how the ground feels, which way the wind is blowing – you’ll need those skills when you get a Seeing Eye dog, too,” I told them. “Most guide dog schools won’t let you train with a dog until you know how to get around with a white cane first.” Later on one of their teachers expressed how glad she was that I’d said that. Apparently the boys haven’t been using their white canes as much as they should. “Now they’ll have an incentive.”

Before I left their room, each boy proudly presented me with a special collar he had made for Hanni. “We strung the beads ourselves,” Seth said, proud of their work. The collars were made of ribbon, and in addition to the beads, each ribbon had a big bell on it, too. “That’s so you’ll always know where Hanni is,” Miguel explained.

The three of them came up after the all-school assembly at the end of the day to say goodbye. When I reached out to shake Seth’s – or was it Ethan’s? – hand, I felt a rubber handle. He was using his white cane! Now I was even more confident he and Ethan and Miguel would be marching in the parade this summer. Marching alongside their book reading schoolmates, but marching independently, using their white canes.

Once home, I tied all three collars around Hanni’s neck. Hearing those joyful bells ring when Hanni prances around makes me think of our new friends at Eastview School. Music to my ears.