With the click-click of her cane and a little help from a friend, Alice Harada, 13, tentatively navigates her way through the hallways of Heatherwood Middle School.
She can see only differentiations in light and some figure movement, but her hearing proves sharp as she turns her head towards a boy asking her:
“Why are you always blind?”
When he doesn’t receive an answer, the boy sticks out a foot to trip Harada. If she hadn’t been walking arm-in-arm with fellow eighth grader Tia Lee, she might have fallen in the crowd of rushing students that day.
While it may seem a cruel joke, this lesson proved to be an important one for Harada, who without the hindrance of special “blind glasses,” has perfect sight.
“I now know what blind people go through,” Harada said without taking the glasses off. “It’s really scary.”
Harada and the other sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Heatherwood all participated in the school’s Mobility Awareness Week Oct. 27-31. For one day during that week, each student experiences a different physical disability, including wearing the blind glasses and using a cane, or being wheelchair-bound. It’s the only program of its kind in the district, said Anne Grindy, Heatherwood Mobility Awareness Week creator and health room assistant.
This year was the first time the blind glasses were used, and a lot of students were leery of signing up for it, Grindy said.
“I think they just don’t see being in a wheelchair as a real disability right away, they see it as something fun,” Grindy said. “But the whole wearing the glasses and not being able to see – they saw that as a disability right away.” Students who used the blind glasses also attended a one-hour workshop at the school led by Denise Mehlenbacher, a teacher for the visually impaired in the Everett School District. The workshop included how to properly use the cane, navigate stairs and other important skills.
The empathy students gain through the program has made Mobility Awareness Week an integral part of the school.
“You look at people who can’t see that well in a different light,” said Lee. “I appreciate anyone who has that much courage to walk around like this everyday.”
Eighth grader Andrew Haskel and seventh grader Chaz Barnfather both spent a day in a wheelchair.
“I had to use the elevator, and I’m used to going down stairs,” Haskell said. “The idea is to be as independent as possible, so I couldn’t ask for help.”
Barnfather added, “People are rude – they push you (in the wheelchair) when you don’t want to be pushed.”
After the experience, Barnfather said he will “be a lot nicer” to people in wheelchairs, and “I’ll try to help them around the school.”
Mobility Awareness Week, created in 2000 by Grindy, became an annual addition to the curriculum after students began asking questions about several kids in the school who use wheelchairs.
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