Leslie Zucker (front) and Susan Baliss from The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation listens to Mike Tutaj, Hadley’s digital media technician, explain how a course is recorded in the sound studio.

Mary Close, a production assistant at Hadley, shows Leslie Zucker (front) and Susan Baliss from The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation some of the brailled books available to students.

The Hadley School for the Blind Receives Grant from The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation

The Hadley School for the Blind has received a grant from The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation, based in Deerfield, Illinois, to develop an online course for educators who work with visually impaired students.

The $45,000 grant will be used to develop a course in low vision that will be geared toward educators. By designing this course, Hadley seeks to address the critical shortage of qualified teachers trained to work with the visually impaired population, a void left by the closing of many university vision rehabilitation programs.

“We look forward to combining The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation’s ideas with our experience and expertise at Hadley, and hope to assist educational professionals to apply validated best practices to their methods,” says Mike Rydel, dean of curricular affairs at The Hadley School for the Blind.

For many parents of children with low vision, a new school year means repeated conversations with teachers about classroom practices and how their child best learns. A go-to course on visual impairments for education process can help alleviate stress for both parents and teachers.

“Often a student with low vision is the first that teachers have had, even if they have previously worked with a blind student,” says Leslie Zucker, co-founder of The Vision for Tomorrow Foundation and parent of a 10-year-old son with low vision. “I hope we can create a better understanding about what it means to have low vision and how to work with children who have low vision. I think it’s a very important part of our education system.”