Barbara Black

Elementary School Teacher and Administrator

Barbara Black was Born and raised in New York, but she ultimately taught in Northampton, Massachusetts. Starting in 1978, she worked in early childhood education until her retirement in 2017. She studied education and sociology at Stony Brook University and later took graduate courses at Bank Street College of Education.

Barbara is dedicated to improving childhood education, becoming the Daily Hampshire Gazette's third "Person of the Year" in 2017. Her students learn about the role of her guide dog, Ms Pie, and she encourages them to learn through play. During her spare time, she advocates for fair wages for childcare workers, expanded services for low-income families, and the accessibility of education.

Trades Win Interview

This section is an excerpt from our book, Sailing Farther Than the Eye Can See.

Award-winning educator Barbara Black knows a thing or two about following your nose into the right career for you. “Sometimes you may have an idea of what you want to do and you may do that, but it will change along the way. Or you may fall into something and find that you really like it, and that you didn't know you were going to like it.” That sense of openness to experiencing what’s in front of you led her into a decades-long career as an early childhood educator and later, into working in school administration. Throughout her long career, what has mattered most to her has been the chance to be helpful to people and especially to children.

She didn’t set out to be a teacher. When she went to school in New York City in the 1960’s she was far more interested in social protest and anti-war demonstrations than in academic studies. Graduate school sharpened her focus, and she earned her MA in education: “It was a surprise,” she admits. “I hadn't expected to like it, but I did.”

In the midst of discovering her life’s work, her own life changed dramatically in her late twenties when she realized that what she had assumed was just clumsiness was, in fact, vision loss. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and had to find and construct a new sense of herself. As she worked through mobility training and came to grips with the white cane and a guide dog, she was reluctant to let friends and acquaintances understand the full scope of what was happening to her. It was a very difficult transition, she says.

Nevertheless, she continued to follow the thread of interest and opportunity. After graduate school she fell into a job teaching in a daycare center, moving after a time to a different center and eventually becoming its director. In time, she began teaching in public schools and eventually became a mentor to other teachers and a point-person for working with families. She liked both the kids and the families a great deal. She calls parents the “most important teachers” to their children, and children, she says, are “really interesting and really curious and they're pretty fun to be around.”

Life as a teacher calls for great flexibility and resiliency and the job changes from year to year. “I worked at this childcare program for 18 years,” she says, “and for a lot of that time I had the same title, but what I did changed all the time.” Eventually, she found her way into an administrative role in which she worked with kids every day, but teaching was no longer her primary focus.

Her relationships with children and, eventually, her own child, have been deeply satisfying to her. She appreciates the directness of children who are not afraid to ask “why I have this dog with me or why I'm using this cane.” These questions can lead to learning on both sides: “We talk about it, and they ask questions, and we have a lot of conversations.”

When Barbara became a single parent, she was amused to discover that children often learn purely by observation and imitation. For instance, she shares that when she dropped something, a common way of finding it was to pat the floor all around until she laid a hand on the missing item. When her daughter was about two years old, Barbara “noticed that when she dropped things and went to pick them up, she would be patting the floor. She had perfectly fine vision, but it was what she saw me do. So, she thought, that's how you pick things up. You pat the floor first and then you pick them up.” She laughs, remembering that we all find our own ways to handle life’s challenges, whether large or small.

In her work as an educational administrator, Black served as an important advocate for children and families in her community in western Massachusetts. Her service did not go unnoticed and in 2017, she was awarded the Daily Hampshire Gazette Person of the Year award. Here, too, Barbara demonstrates her commitment to opening doors of education and opportunity to children and families. The award includes a cash prize which Barbara donated to The Center for New Americans, a nonprofit agency that offers English-language classes to immigrants. Barbara had worked with the center before receiving the award, setting up a childcare classroom so that parents could freely attend classes while their children were happy and cared for. “I was very committed to them as an organization,” she notes. The award itself was “a lovely honor. I felt very celebrated and honored.”

When asked what advice she would give to her younger self or to someone starting out today, she advised “chipping away at the impostor syndrome” which can steal ambition and hobble progress. Instead, she said, it’s worth giving yourself some gentle words of encouragement: “Maybe I’m doing an okay job at this!” We go further on praise than on criticism. Her other piece of counsel is one that she herself seems to have followed from the very beginning: remember the value of friendships. Make connections and “take advantage of what’s out there.”

Barbara Black has certainly lived by that counsel. Countless children and families have benefitted from her instinct to follow the thread of opportunity, to be an advocate for those who need it most, and to create warmth and community everywhere she goes.

Vision Towards Success Podcast Episode
Transcript

Elana Regan Forward. Forward. Left. Find the door.

Speaker 2: There are over four million working-aged blind and visually-impaired people in the United States, and over two million of these people are unemployed. This is a staggering statistic, but many people defy these odds and are happily and gainfully employed. We wish to share their stories with the world.

Elana Regan Hello. Welcome to Vision Towards Success, the podcast that highlights stories of career development and lived experience. This podcast is brought to you by the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development. In our program, we feature employment success stories from visually-impaired individuals for people with disabilities and their allies, in hopes of showing just how smart, hardworking, and capable this diverse community is.

David Gonzalez: Hello. Welcome to Vision Towards Success. My name is David Gonzalez. With us, we have Barbara Black, a retired teacher and supervisor. Now, we will hear from our interviewer, [Shahim 00:01:39] Sutherland, and our guest, Barbara Black.

Shahim Sutherla...: Good afternoon, Barbara. My name is Shahim Sutherland. I am a intern with the Trades Win program. Today I will be interviewing you. It's nice to meet you. Start off with introducing yourself, and who you are, and a little about your background.

Barbara Black: My name is Barbara Black. I am 71 years old. I've worked in the early childhood world for very many years. Maybe, I don't know, more than 45. I live in Northampton, Massachusetts. I have retinitis pigmentosa. I haven't had any usable vision for the last 20 to 25 years. Before that, I had central vision that was getting progressively smaller. I travel with a guide dog.

Shahim Sutherla...: Now, when you lost your vision, was this before you retired or after?

Barbara Black: Oh, it was way before. Until I was 28, I just always thought I was a klutz, that I was very clumsy, that I was a space cadet, because I didn't have any peripheral vision, but I didn't know that. I just, again, thought I was kind of spacey because that's what people would tease me about.

Then I found out that I had no peripheral vision, and that was kind of surprising. Over the next 20 years, I'd say, my visual field got smaller. It kind of disappeared. In retrospect, I always had a vision impairment, but again, I didn't know it. I just thought that was how the world is.

Shahim Sutherla...: I can relate to that. As a child, I was never able to catch a ball flying in the sky. I was always made fun of by my friends. At the time, I didn't know that I was legally blind. I had no clue. I thought I just sucked at catching. Later on, I found out, hey, this is why I'm legally blind. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Barbara Black: I had exactly that experience. I stopped playing catch fairly early on because I would be looking across the sky to find the ball, and people would tease me. I didn't know that most people had a big vision of the sky, of what was coming. I just thought, "Well, how would you find the ball if you don't look for it?"

My mother would always say to me, "Don't look down. It's not polite. Don't look at the ground." I would think, "Well, how do you know that there's going to be a hole, or a sewer, or a curb?" I just assumed that other people were sneaking looks instead of looking all the time. I had no clue that by looking straight ahead, people with typical vision could see the ground.

Shahim Sutherla...: When it comes to working with children in their early ages, is that something you've always wanted to do, or was it something decided later on?

Barbara Black: I didn't always want to do it. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had no clue. I went to college. I had no idea in school, not knowing what I wanted to do. I majored in sociology in college because it was kind of, I don't know, something that made sense. Then I started taking education courses, basically, only because my mother pushed me into it.

I grew up at a time when, really, the options for women were, you would be a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, or a social worker. That was it. My mother kept saying to my sister and to me, "Well, you have to take education courses. You have to get licensed as a teacher. If you don't do it, that's okay, but you will always have it to fall back on."

I took education courses. I had a teaching license, but did not intend to use it. Then I was a little bit at loose ends. I was looking for a job. It was in the early 1970s. It was when childcare programs were just becoming much more widespread. There was public funding. It was a place I could get a job.

I thought, "Well, all right." I had a friend who was working at a childcare center. She told me how to go about it. I figured, "All right. I'll do this for a while. Then I'll do something else. I don't know."

I grew up in New York City. At that time, if you lived in New York City, you probably thought you'd move to the West Coast. If you moved on the West Coast, you probably thought you would move to New York City. It sort of was just how it is. I thought, "All right. I'll work in daycare for a while. Then I'll save a little bit of money, and I'll move to the West Coast."

Well, it turned out I actually really liked working in daycare. After a few months, I thought, "Oh, I like this. I think I'm going to keep doing this." I did. I never did move to the West Coast. I ended up, while I was working, getting a master's in early childhood education. I worked in this daycare center in a low-income neighborhood for about six years.

Then I moved to Massachusetts. I was living with a friend who really wanted to leave New York. We moved to Northampton. I got a job, again, in a low-income daycare center. It ended up being my home for 18 years. I loved the kids I worked with, the families I worked with, and the grown-ups that I worked with, the people, the other teachers.

After about a year and a half there, I became the director of... What was it? A two-classroom childcare program. Then the program grew and changed over time. I grew and changed over time too. We added classrooms. We worked with some home providers. We started having infants and toddlers, where before, we had only had preschoolers.

I learned a lot. I kind of learned on the job. The first year that I was the program director, I had to submit proposals for funding to the state. It was sort of traumatic. I was like, "I'll do this. Then as soon as I'm finished, I'm quitting because I'm never going to do this again."

Well, I'd finished. I submitted the proposals. We got the funding. I didn't quit. I ended up realizing over time that I loved doing that work and that I liked, actually, being an administrator. I liked supervising the teachers. I liked working with families and being the connecting point. Surprise of surprises, I liked doing the budget, which had terrified me.

That's sort of how I got there. Then after being at that center for 18 years, just about at the same time as I was losing any functional vision, I decided I had to find out if I could ever work anywhere else. It was a kind of a crazy thing to do. I ended up moving to the public schools where I became the early childhood coordinator. I was still working with childcare programs, but I was also working with public school teachers. I was there for 21 years and retired three years ago.

Again, I learned a lot. My job changed. I mean, I think one of the things I found out is that you could be in the same job for a very long time, but it doesn't stay the same. It changes. I changed with it. We changed what we were doing. Programs changed. There were new things that we were doing. There were things we stopped doing. There were things we started doing differently. It was always changing.

If you had asked me when I was 21, if I thought that I was going to be a teacher or an educator for my life and for a career, I would've thought it was kind of funny. In retrospect, that is what happened. I have loved it. I'm still connected to my field. I still do advocacy work and some consulting. That was a long answer to your question.

Shahim Sutherla...: It was a great answer. It seems like you have an extremely long career in working with children who are in the early years, whether it be preschool or infants. Now as the years went on and your vision ended up deteriorating, were there any assistive technologies that you used throughout your time working with the children?

Barbara Black: Well, my job really became less working directly with children and more administering programs. I started using... I guess it was VOCALISE at the time. It was screen-reading software. I still had a little bit of vision when I started using it, but not a lot. I just had trouble finding the cursor. That was why I needed the screen-reading software.

When I started using it, I was still reading the screen at the same time as I was listening. Then over time, I couldn't see much. I just started to depend on listening, which was a good transition. VOCALISE was in DOS, which is old computers. At some point, it became clear that I needed to switch over to Windows and to JAWS. I did that.

I actually went to the Carroll Center for, I don't know, a few days for computer training. Then I had somebody through the commission follow up with me back in my office. I adapted. I've been using JAWS ever since then, whenever that was. I think that must have been around, I don't know, 1998, maybe.

I did also, actually... I'm trying to remember when I had this. Again, this is ancient technology that one doesn't need anymore because there's much better things, but I used a Type and Speak, which was a portable, pretty lightweight keyboard thing, note-taker. I guess that's what it was. It was a note-taker. I used that for meetings and when I wanted to take notes in meetings because it was before I had a laptop. It was when I had just a desktop computer.

I used those. Before that, when I still had some usable vision, maybe in 1992 or '93, I got my first guide dog. I've since had several. I had the first one for about almost 12 years, I think. The second one, for almost 11 years. Then I had one that I had for nine months, and it was really not a good match for me. I should probably not even have kept him that long, but I kept thinking I could work it out.

Now I have a guide from The Seeing Eye that I've had for eight years. She's great. In terms of adapting, when I was working with kids, I don't think I used any particular tools so much as just really trying to be aware of what was happening around me. I mean, certainly, even when I was an administrator, I spent time in classrooms.

Once I didn't have any vision, I wouldn't be in a classroom alone. With older kids, I think it would be fine, but with two, three, and four-year-olds, especially because I was working with kids often who had disabilities and might need specific, I don't know, supports. I would sometimes go in and be another adult in the classroom, and I could be helpful. I could be at a table with a bunch of kids. I often would joke that when I came in, it was like the dog center.

In preschool classrooms, you have the block area. You have the art area. You have the dramatic play area. I was the dog area. I could have eight kids around the dog, and we could be very entertained. I could do circle times. I could run meetings. I stopped doing like diaper change and things that required more hands-on where... Would I be getting it right? I spent time on playgrounds with kids. Mostly, I wasn't the only one there, so that there was somebody who had eyes on, supervision skills as well.

Again, I think with older kids, that would be less of an issue because I mean, kids that I worked with when I didn't have any vision knew that. I had questions like, "Well, why don't you just get some new eyes?" I would say, "That's a good idea, but there's not a way to do that right now."

Early on, I just remember this one kid who took it in that the dog was helping me see because I would say that the dog is helping me see where I'm going and those sorts of things. One day, he's showing me his picture. He says, "Here, take a look at my picture." I said, "Well, could you tell me about it? Could you tell me what you did?"

He looks at the dog. I'm assuming he was looking at the dog, and says, "Can't he see it for you?" as if we had one brain and if the dog was looking at the picture, I would know what it looked like. That was just an interesting little-kid thing.

Anyway, I'm a pretty, well, relatively functional JAWS user. I do a lot of spreadsheets, word documents, web browsing. Some things work better than others. That's really been my biggest tool when I was working still. That was the main tool I used.

Shahim Sutherla...: I was going to say, I'm not too familiar with a lot of the assistive technologies out there. I pretty much only know about JAWS and ZoomText, I believe. It was really interesting to hear about the assistive technology you guys had back then in the '80s and '90s. It was really cool to hear.

I'm really curious. At first, it started off with you maybe bumping into things or knocking things over. You didn't know that you had peripheral vision issues. Over the years, it progressively got worse and worse. You start to realize, "I'm going blind." I'm really curious as to how that affected you mentally.

Barbara Black: Well, it was a mix, I have to say. The reason I went and got my vision checked was that I was planning to move out of New York. I was a subway rider. I was a bus rider. I could get any place, but I did drive. I was always uncomfortable driving. I had a driver's license. I had driven when I was in my early 20s.

I thought, "Well, if I'm going to move to a more rural area, I need to just deal with this." I assumed I had a psychological block, and that was why I was always walking into things. I have to deal with this psychological block so that I will feel more comfortable moving around in the world and driving.

I decided I would get my eyes checked just so that I could rule that out. Then I would deal with my psychological block. Well, I went to get my eyes checked and had a visual field test. The technician kept trying different machines and trying different things. Clearly, she was getting very anxious. I was getting anxious because she was anxious.

Then finally, she finishes, and she says, "Well, you'll have to see the doctor tomorrow." I said, "Well, is there something wrong?" She said, "Well, you'll see the doctor. I can't tell you," which is not a very reassuring thing to hear. I was a little unnerved. What was funny was I was on my way to work because I was working late that day. I made an appointment early in the morning at this New York Eye and Ear Hospital, which is sort of like Mass Eye and Ear. It was near where I worked.

There I am, feeling like, "Oh, something is wrong, but I don't know what. What's going on here? Now I have to go to work, and I have to be functional in my classroom. I have to be with kids." I pulled myself together. I went, and I was with kids. I thought, "Okay, fine."

The next day, I went back to see the doctor. I brought a friend with me because I was kind of like, this is weird. I don't know what's going on here. I see this doctor who says, "Well, you're legally blind." I said, "Well, that's ridiculous. I can see fine," because I had good central vision. Sort of, what kind of stupid thing is that to say to me?

He said, "Well." He tells me I have retinitis pigmentosa and that my field is whatever, five degrees, and that's within what the realm of legal blindness. You could go see a retinal specialist. I thought, "Oh. Well, that's pretty weird." That's crazy. That's horrifying. Being told I was legally blind, I was horrified, and that I would probably lose the rest of my vision. Ooh.

That was my initial response, but over the next few months, it sort of became a relief because I felt like I had spent my life feeling like there was something wrong with me, with my personality, that I was a space cadet. Somebody who was handing me something and I couldn't see where it was... They would say, "Boy, are you spacey." It was just not good.

I would say that on the one hand, it was horrifying. On the other hand, it was a relief because I felt better about myself, and that I had been actually compensating really well, and that I had figured out ways to be in the world without knowing I had a disability, but managing it.

I always read fairly slowly, but I didn't know that was because I had a vision problem. I just figured I was a slow reader, that I read one word at a time. In fact, it was because I could only see one word at a time. It just explained a lot.

It explained why I couldn't catch a ball, why even, I couldn't even figure out where the volleyball was when those are big why I bumped into people on the street, why I was always tripping on the little short chairs in my preschool classroom that I was teaching in, why I sometimes... It just explained a lot. That was actually really helpful.

Although I was still somewhat in denial, in the first few years, if I ever saw anybody with a white cane, I would cross the street, was like, "I don't want to be near that person." It's like, I might be catching even though I'd already caught it. It took me a while to get past that. I was really uncomfortable with the idea of needing a cane.

Somebody from the commission had suggested that I do mobility training while I still had usable vision. I said, "All right, fine." I met with this mobility trainer. I was so nasty to him because I so much didn't want to do it, that after one session, I said, "I don't think I'm ready for this."

I didn't do it for another several years. I don't know how many years. Maybe four, four or five years, I didn't try again, because I just couldn't accept that, but then once it became clear that I was going to need to do it, then it was easier to do it. Then I wasn't nasty to the mobility trainer. I don't know if any of this makes sense to you.

Shahim Sutherla...: Oh, trust me. It makes a whole lot of sense. I completely understand why you felt the way you felt. It was really interesting to hear you mentioning mental blockage because for a long time, in my younger years, in my elementary days, I had a pair of glasses that never did anything to improve my vision at all. I would always tell the teachers and the TVI's, like, "Hey, these aren't helping me a single bit."

For a long time, I thought I was crazy. I was like, I'm not blind. These glasses don't even help me. Later on in life and once I entered high school, I went to a different eye doctor and got a new pair of glasses. These changed my vision a lot. I was like, "Wow, I am blind." I just thought it was a mental thing for me for a really long time. Having seen how much clearer things were with the glasses on, the new glasses, I literally started crying because, one, it was life-changing. Two, I was coming to the realization that, yeah, I am blind. I have to live with this now.

Barbara Black: Much as the idea of not having any vision at all was kind of frightening, it was also freeing to know that I was functioning.

Speaker 7: Phone call. +1-413-695-4498.

Barbara Black: My... is ringing. I'm going to just try to ignore it here.

Speaker 7: Message button.

Barbara Black: A second. Sorry.

Speaker 7: Cellular. One of four bars. Signal strength. Status bar item.

Shahim Sutherla...: It is perfectly fine.

Barbara Black: It will stop ringing, eventually.

Speaker 7: Signal strength. Status bar item.

Barbara Black: Okay. Okay. There we go. Sorry about that. If my other phone rings though, I may answer it because I'm waiting for a call from a plumber. Anyway, it's a funny thing. I mean, I don't know if your vision is changing and if it changed from more to less, but I have to say, for me, sort of the gradual change made it pretty manageable that I sort of grew to rely on what usable vision I had less and less. It was getting less and less. It was a good thing. I was figuring out other ways of doing things.

A funny thing... I have a daughter who's an adult, who's 36. I mean, she wears glasses. She's very, very nearsighted and has an astigmatism but is not legally blind and doesn't have the same condition that I have. When she was very little, if I drop something and I have to pick it up, I feel around on the floor. I'll pat the floor all around me to find it.

Well, when she was about two, I realized that she would do the same thing, even though she could see. She had no idea why I was doing that. If she dropped something, she would pat the floor, even though she could see perfectly well where it was, to find it. It was just a funny thing because it was what I did. It was how I found things. She just thought that was how you pick something up. You pat the floor first. Then you pick it up.

Shahim Sutherla...: Back to what you said about your vision gradually going away, I never really thought about how that'll make it easier. Now it makes a lot of sense because it's gradually going away. You know my vision is going to be totally gone. Now I can prepare. Now I know this reality. Now I can practice mobile transportations, and things like that, and skills, and using my hearing, and touching, and maybe get a cane, and practice using JAWS, and things like that, instead of one day waking up and going from perfect vision to it being completely gone.

Barbara Black: I mean, I think we sort of gradually adjust to things. It does happen to people. Either they have accidents or things happen that do that. That, to me, is so much harder. I mean, this way, I was used to figuring out where I was by, I don't know, different ways, and by touching things, and feeling things with my feet that I didn't realize I was feeling with my feet. Just, you sort of do it.

In terms of my work, I feel like... I mean, I ended up being an administrator in the public schools. I was part of the school leadership team. People were very supportive. It was tricky. People would sometimes send me things that I couldn't read. I would say, "I can't read that," that it was not in a format that I could read it. People got really good at figuring out how to make things readable for me, to send me the note, the things they were going to hand out beforehand.

Those sorts of things, I felt like people were really great about. If I had to go to meetings, I would just figure out who else is going to that meeting and arranged to go there with them. Or, if nobody was going, I took cabs, or I scheduled van rides, which are a little tricky, just because you never know exactly when it's going to be, but you manage it.

I mean, we now have morphed back into my work life. I often had meetings in Worcester or Boston. Now it would be much easier because now, one could do it on Zoom. I would sometimes do them on speaker phone, but it wasn't very effective. I just would figure out. I would find out who else is going to that meeting from Western Mass., even if they don't live near me, that I would schedule a van ride to go to Springfield, and meet them in Springfield, and get a ride with them. Then I would figure out a way to get back from Springfield when we came back from Worcester or wherever it was.

You sort of become, and I'm sure you already are, pretty resourceful. Funny thing... In the daycare center I worked in, I knew where everybody lived, all the families, all the staff in the building, so that if I was trying to figure out how I was going to get home, I knew who it was okay to ask because I knew they were going to be driving in my direction.

I mean, I'm pretty good at asking people for help, but when I would ask someone for a ride, I would always say, "I'm going to... " I would say, "It's fine to say no. I'm going to ask you again unless you tell me not to." It's like, "It's fine. You can tell me never to ask again. You can tell me no. Or you can say yes. Whatever works."

I do the same thing now. I row on the Connecticut River. I'm a nutcase rower. I row three or four times a week on the river. The boathouse I rode from is... It's about a 20, 25-minute ride from my house. The only way I can get there is in a car, either with somebody, or I can schedule a van ride, a paratransit.

I've worked it out so that I know everyone that lives in my direction. I ask them if they can give me rides. I say, "I'm going to ask you until you tell me you don't want me to ask you." That's worked pretty well because I'm fine to say no. I always tell people, "Fine to say no. I will figure it out. Don't worry." I'm sure you've worked out some of those ways of getting around as well.

Shahim Sutherla...: Yeah. I think it's really important to use the resources at your disposal. When it comes to the no thing, I find it that a lot of people don't like to say no in fear that they're going to hurt your feelings, but no is a very powerful word.

A normal person won't take offense if you don't want to do something. It's completely understandable, if they have something to do, or if they don't have gas, or I don't know, whatever the reason. Maybe they don't even need a reason to say no. It's perfectly fine. I think it's really important to use the resources at hand. MCB is really helpful with things like that, and assisting in mobility training, and other things.

Barbara Black: Yeah. Yeah. It's important to let people know that it's fine with you if they say no, that you won't be offended. People don't want to let you down, like you said, or they don't want to make you feel bad or offend you. I think putting out there right at the beginning that.. It's okay with me if you say no. I don't mind.

Shahim Sutherla...: For my next question here, it has to do with you as someone who's lived a long life and is experienced with using their resources and getting around as a visually-impaired/blind visual. What tips do you have for our listeners or those out there who are visually impaired?

Barbara Black: I guess to try not to get too mad at yourself. I mean, I walk into walls. I tend to lead with my head. I often have lumps on my head. I just have to forgive myself for that and not just forgive myself, but also just... It's like, it's what it is and to try not to feel really frustrated by it. I think to just sort of be easy on yourself and on the people around you.

I live alone and have... I mean, I was a single parent, but I always had people around. I always have asked. I'm not shy about asking for help, but as I said, I'm also not shy about saying, "Don't say yes if you can't, if it doesn't feel right."

As you said, people really do want to help. They really want to be helpful. I will ask someone to pick something up at the grocery store for me when they're going. If I'm having trouble with a website and with, let's say, ordering something online, I'll ask somebody to do it for me, or I'll ask them to do it with me, or I'll call it in instead of doing it on the web.

Keep in mind, I didn't grow up with a computer or a smartphone. I'm not as tech savvy as people who are growing up now and as young people now, young adults who are... I think that devices are extensions of your bodies. I really struggle with the iPhone. I can use it, but I'm not good at it at all. I often ask for help. Not being shy about that, but also recognizing that sometimes you just have to figure it out.

This is a funny thing. A lot of times, people say, "Oh, you want to get together for a cup of coffee? We can meet in a cafe and get together." I'll say, "I'd love to get together, but could we do errands instead, or could we do grocery shopping instead of getting a coffee?" because you can still have a conversation. We can still have a visit.

I have some friends who the way I visit with them is by going grocery shopping or by doing funny errands that are hard for me to get to. We'll talk in the car, and we'll talk when we're pushing the shopping cart. You also learn about other foods that other people eat, and they learn about what you eat. You try it. It's like, "Oh, I didn't know I would like that."

I think just being able to be open about those things, about what you need, and recognizing that other people have to go grocery shopping too, so go grocery shopping together. Things like that. I mean, I think something that sometimes is hard for me is social settings, figuring out who's there. Are people talking to each other and I'm not? Who am I talking to?

That's something that maybe that was an issue even when I had vision. I'm not sure, but it can be tricky where people will say, "Oh, you want to sit down?" They'll put you in a chair or a table, and no one else is sitting. I'm thinking, "Well, I don't want to be at this table by myself."

Now if someone says, "Oh, do you want to sit at the table?" I'll say, "Well, if other people are sitting at the table, sure. Otherwise, no." It's not like I can't stand up and be in a crowd. I think just figuring out how to negotiate social situations can sometimes be tricky. Again, I don't know how much of that's just me and my personality and how much of that is I'm not exactly sure what's going on because I can't see it.

Also, as I've gotten older, like a lot of people when they get older, we lose our hearing. My hearing is pretty bad. I have hearing aids, and that makes a huge difference. It's sort of a little bit of a double whammy, so that I may be asking people, "What? What did you say?" in addition to, "Where? Where are you?" It's a tricky thing that happens sometimes when you get old.

Shahim Sutherla...: Now I have one final question here, and then I'll hand it over to the other people in the call with us to see if they have any further questions for you. This is a question that I like to ask every guest that we have on, is if you can go back in time and give yourself advice, what would you say?

Barbara Black: I guess I would say, you never know exactly where you're going to land, so just don't worry too much about it. I would never have expected that I would have this career that I've had, and be so passionate about it, and become an outspoken advocate who does stuff on the state level. You just don't know. I don't know. I guess I would say I should be open to what comes.

Shahim Sutherla...: That is some great advice because that is something that I'm struggling with heading into college now, is I'm not sure what I want to do. That's some advice that I hear from other people as well, is, "Don't worry too much about it. You'll figure it out as you go on throughout life." There's a lot of people, like yourself, who go down one path, and ending up changing directions, and heading down another.

Barbara Black: I'm going to just add what you just said. My daughter who, as I said, is 36 had no clue what she was going to do when she graduated from college. She knew she'd do something and it would be something that had to do with some kind of social justice kind of support work for people, and whether it was union organizing or something.

Anyway, she lived in South America for a while. Often when you live in another country, what do you do? You teach English. She taught English. She came back to the U. S. She got a job that she figured she'd do for a little while and see what she'd do after that. That was teaching English to immigrants. She ended up having the same experience I had. In six months, she realized she loved it. She has since done many jobs that are related to that. Got a degree in it.

I heard her say recently to someone, "Well, I love my job. I'd say 90% of it are the things that I love doing." I thought, "Wow, that's amazing," because if you had asked her when she was in college, she had so many majors. She majored in, or she minored in Spanish, and environmental studies, and art, and anthropology. She majored in Latin American studies. She was all of these things. She didn't know. It ended up working out. Thanks for asking.

Shahim Sutherla...: Yeah, no problem at all. Thank you for answering all my questions to the best of your ability. This was definitely one of my favorite interviews that we've done. Thank you for taking time out of your day to come out and meet with us today.

Barbara Black: Very fun for me.

Shahim Sutherla...: I'm glad.

Barbara Black: Be fine with whatever it is you decide to do. It might change. Won't always be the same thing.

David Gonzalez: Hello. Welcome back to Vision Towards Success. My name is David Gonzalez. With us, we have Barbara Black, a retired teacher and supervisor. Barbara discusses the struggles she has faced over time from her vision loss, such as previous positions she has taken on.

After Barbara's interview, we had a chance to discuss her early career path from being a daycare director to working in the educational system. Even though Barbara worked in this field for over 40 years and found this career to be extremely rewarding, she experienced discrimination and access challenges centered around her disability that left her questioning whether she could continue in this field.

Barbara Black: Okay. Well, I have to say, when I was leaving the daycare job, the director job that I had had for 17, 18 years... I mean, it sort of was crazy. I'm going to digress, but I will answer the question. A friend of mine who was also in the field asked me if I would meet with her to give her information on... It was then called Title 20, which was subsidized childcare, because she was applying for the childcare director job at UMass.

I said, "Sure, I'd be happy to do that. I'll meet with you," because I knew a lot about subsidized childcare. I hung up the phone, and I burst into tears. I realized that I had... I was sort of in my late 40s, and I was feeling like, "Am I going to be here for the rest of my life? Is this the only job I can do because I know it? Why didn't I apply for the UMass job?"

That made me realize that I needed to start looking and thinking about what else I could do, so I did. I started looking. It turned out that there was this job that I knew the person who did it. I worked with her on a lot of issues. She was applying for a principal's job. I thought, "All right. Well, I'll do that. I'll apply."

I applied, and I was offered the job. I told someone who was a director of another program in my agency. I told him I was leaving and what I was going to be doing. He said, "Well, they hired you?" I said, "Well, why wouldn't they hire me?" He said, "Well, because you're blind."

I mean, I felt like punching him. This is somebody who... I had a parallel job to him. I was doing it well. I was known locally, regionally, and statewide as an advocate. Here is this peer, saying, "Well, you're blind. How could you do that?" I'm thinking, "Ugh."

Anyway, I didn't punch him, even though I really kind of felt like punching him. I think the people that interviewed me and that hired me... Because I had done a lot of work with them, they didn't have any qualms. When I was interviewed by the superintendent, I said, "I know you can't ask me anything about my vision, but I will need some accommodations." I said, "I know you can't ask me anything about my disability, but I will need some accommodations. Let's just put that out there now."

He was great about it. He was actually really good. I mean, for me, being able to say, "I'm going to need some accommodations," was really important. Two years before I retired, I had a lot of problems with my supervisor. I had never had a problem with a supervisor for 40 years. I had worked with a lot of different people because I worked in large agencies. Even though I was a director, I had somebody over me. I wasn't the last word, which I was always really glad of.

I had always gotten along, and I had never had a problem. All of a sudden, I'm having a problem with this woman who is questioning everything I'm doing. I had been working with her for a few years, but things were not going well in the preschool program that year. She was very unhappy with me, and she started criticizing everything I did. She started asking me to do things that were not very accessible and then would comment on how slow I was at doing them.

It was really demoralizing. I mean, I was in tears all the time. I was a mess. I was ready to quit. I thought, "Well, I'll just retire now." I hadn't really planned to retire then. It was a few years before I planned to retire. I thought, "If this goes on, I'm just going to leave because I can't do it."

I talked with people about it. It was sort of, should I file with MCAD? It was not good. I was ready to file a discrimination case. I was a member of the teacher's union, and of the administrator's unit of the teacher's union. I hadn't spoken to anyone in the union because I just kept feeling like I can deal with this myself. I can take care of it.

Finally, I got in touch with the union. I met with the union, president of the local. She said, "It's not okay. She has to agree to the accommodations you need. She has to not ask you to do things that are inappropriate. She has to just back off."

I did that. I had the union president sit in every supervision meeting I had for a while because I just felt so attacked. Some of it didn't have to do with my vision. Some of it had to do with, she didn't like the way I did things. She just didn't like the way I did things and that I allowed myself to be vulnerable or showed that I was vulnerable with people that I was supervising.

I don't think that's the end of the world. I think it's okay to show your weaknesses. That's who I am. She was somebody who would never let someone see her weaknesses, who she supervised. No one should ever know that she had questions about anything. That definitely wasn't who I am. Some of it had to do with asking me to do things that were inappropriate. Some of it had to do with how I supervise, how I operate in the world.

Anyway, she then realized that she was treading on very thin ice. She said, "Okay, I want you to write up what accommodations you need. Then we'll have a formal agreement." She ran it by the lawyer, and it was fine. The next year was fine. She totally backed off because she realized it was not a good idea. I decided I would stay and tough it out and that I would retire maybe a year later because I would be ready.

David Gonzalez: As Barbara mentions, being questioned about her disability was an emotional struggle. Experiencing discrimination almost caused her to walk away from the job. Instead of retiring early, Barbara took a stand and advocated for herself by seeking help from her union. As a result, she was able to get the accommodation she needed and continued working.

Unfortunately, discrimination can be a common experience for people with disabilities throughout their career. To receive the accommodations we need, it's important to speak up and advocate for ourselves. The journey of advocating for herself made Barbara realize and appreciate the importance of community support. She admits that while she did not work in the blindness field, this experience made her realize how important it is to be supported by others who have similar experiences in life.

Barbara points out that the work of the blind community to promote accessibility creates an impact for career-driven, blind and visually-impaired people in any career. In addition to being part of a community, having role models is an important part of discovering your own identity. As an educator, Barbara believes that the need for role models starts at an early age.

Barbara Black: I mean, I know that a lot of people who are blind or work in the blindness world and those of us that don't were more distant from it. I feel like I've come to value the work that people in the blindness community do as having allowed me to do the work that I did that if nobody had developed JAWS, I would never have been able to do my job. That's an interesting piece. I also think that being able to talk to other people who go through the same stuff is incredibly important.

David Gonzalez: While in the classroom environment, Barbara was able to answer questions about blindness from the children she worked with. She explains that they asked questions about how she performed everyday tasks. By receiving these open and unfiltered questions from young minds, Barbara realized that she could have the same kind of conversations with adults to help clarify the misconceptions they had surrounding blindness.

Barbara Black: It's really important to have lots of different kinds of role models for kids. Blindness is one of them, just recognizing that people can do things. I tended to mostly talk with younger kids, elementary-aged kids in school, who would ask me lots of questions about, how did I do things? How do I get dressed?

I would say to them, "One night, when you have to put on your pajamas, don't turn on any lights and just... You can do it. It's not so hard." How do you figure out which clothes you're putting on? Well, I mean, if you have the same thing in several colors, it's a little tricky. You have to figure out ways to mark them. Otherwise, you sort of know what it feels like. You know which sweatshirt is soft and cozy, and which one is a little stiffer. You know which pants feel like which.

Just try it. Just try going into your dresser in the dark, those kinds of things. I mean, I've had kids say to me, "Well, how do you cook?" I would say, "Well, the same as anybody else. I'm careful about using a knife. I can feel where things are, and I know what they are." It's a lot of questions about, how do you do things?

David Gonzalez: She realized that this advocacy work helped to demystify how a blind person lives and works. Through this work, she strives to show that with a little extra planning and adaptation, a blind person can accomplish any task that their sighted peers are able to do.

Barbara Black: It's a little bit hard to sort out what I needed to do to learn new skills, not related to my disability, and what's related to being blind. I mean, it's sort of wrapped up together, I think. Well, I guess the two areas that I... I don't know. One area that I grew a lot in was around advocacy and sort of around advocacy or early childhood issues, and learning to not be shy about speaking up, even if I wasn't agreeing with everybody.

Well, maybe in terms of adapting, I mean, I think... I'm obviously an auditory learner. I can remember things that I hear pretty well. I guess one thing I did learn to do was take notes, even if I never looked at them. Shut JAWS up and just take notes because... I know this was true when I was sighted and would write, would take notes by writing, by longhand. It imprinted things on my brain more. If I write it down, I'm more likely to remember it.

I get teased a lot for remembering a lot of details. I always joke that the reason I can remember details is that it's easier than having to look something up. I remember hundreds of kids' names, and their parents, and where I met them, and what their story was, just because it's easier than, oh my God, I have to go look up who this is and what their story is. I'm sure that's true of lots of people, of lots of people who are blind, that we... I sometimes say it's because I don't have to junk my head up with visual images.

David Gonzalez: We'd like to thank Barbara Black for being here with us today. Thank you for tuning into Vision Towards Success with your host, David Gonzalez, and our guest, Barbara Black. You can reach Barbara Black at Barbarablack413 [at] Gmail.com, which is spelled B-A-R-B-A-R-A, B-L-A-C-K, 4-1-3 at Gmail dot com. Now, a blindness tip from Barbara Black.

Barbara Black: I guess I would say you never know exactly where you're going to land, so just don't worry too much about it. I would never have expected that I would have this career that I've had, and be so passionate about it, and become an outspoken advocate who does stuff on the state level. You just don't know. You have to just take things... I don't know. I guess I would say I should be open to what comes.

Speaker 3: Thank you for tuning into Vision Towards Success. This program has been recorded and produced by Elena Regan and David Gonzalez from the Trades Win audio podcast team in association with the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development. Funding for this program has been provided by the Libby Douvan Award from the Fielding Institute, the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and the Barry Savings Foundation. Additional episodes of this podcast can be found at www.poluscenter.org/tradeswin or wherever you get your podcasts.

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