Students use innovation to help visually impaired schoolmate to ‘see’

Brian Clarke, a visually impaired student at the Old Harbour High School in St Catherine, loves learning about the world through the sciences, but his disability makes it difficult for him to immerse himself in the subject areas.

Noticing his struggles, Brian’s schoolmates, with the help of their teachers, decided to create three dimensional diagrams that would help him better envision the things they were learning about in class.

The students, who are a part of the school’s Robotics Club, created a tactile learning graph, analog metre, and functional diagram that depicted how the different organs of the body worked together for him to use in his physics, chemistry and biology classes.

Moved by the gesture, the 16-year-old told The Gleaner that these thoughtful schoolmates have made learning more interesting for him.

“I was a bit shocked when I discovered it, because I was saying, ‘how did they manage to make these things?’,” Brian shared.

“It was so surprising and overwhelming.”

Theo Carr, a grade 13 student and captain of the school’s Robotics Club, explained that they used different textures to represent different organs in the body, so that Brian could use his hands to identify each of them.

For the graph sheet that he has been using in his physics classes, thumps are used to create the shapes that his physics teacher, Alphadine Dennis, would draw on the board.

“It mostly is about empathy. This is a student that has gone through a lot. He doesn’t know how to experience the world like you and me, so we wanted to find the best way to help him ‘see’ things that we see,” Theo told The Gleaner.

EVERYBODY’S FAVOURITE STUDENT

Brian, who is in Grade 10, explained that he was born visually impaired and is only able to see light and shadows. He said his impairment hindered his participation in classes.

“As a visually impaired student, I wasn’t able to read graphs and stuff. So what they have done gives me a better understanding about the graph. What they usually do, let the children draw the graph like normal, was a bit rough for me back then without the diagrams,” he said.

The youngster from Brown’s Hall in St Catherine is the only visually impaired student at the school, and who Dennis described as being everybody’s favourite student.

The physics teacher said she felt inspired by the altruism displayed by the students when they created the tactile learning graph, and encouraged them to create more diagrams to enter the annual Young Inventors and Innovators Science Fair hosted by the Scientific Research Council.

The event, which was held at Hope Zoo in St Andrew on Thursday, aimed to promote a culture of innovation in schools and to encourage youth to use their knowledge and skills for critical thinking and scientific exploration.

And, although their compilation of inventions, dubbed ‘Seeing Through Their Eyes’, did not get any awards, Dennis believes their motivation and the impact it has had on Brian is rewarding.

In fact, she is hoping that this project is duplicated across schools to assist students with similar struggles.

“You have many visually impaired students right across Jamaica and teachers don’t know that you can use any type of equipment to build things that they can use to manipulate and learn,” the physics teacher noted.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com