How Was School Today: Part One of the History of Education for Canadians who are Blind, Deafblind and Partially Sighted

Today the Triple Vision team starts a series on education. In this series we will be tracing the history of Canada’s schools for the blind and exploring some key themes around how effective these schools, as well as Canadian schools which undertook the integration of students who were blind and partially sighted, prepared these students for post-secondary study and beyond. In this first episode we talk to two past students of two of Canada’s oldest schools for the blind in Quebec. Chantal Oakes attended the Nazareth School for the Blind in Montreal, and then Jerico Hill school in Vancouver, before completing her education at an integrated school in Surry British Columbia. Leo Bissonnette began his education at the Montreal Association School for the blind, later renamed the Phillip E. Layton School. Leo then went on to Loyola College and eventually completed a master’s and a PhD. “Certainly, I would hope that what we are getting today is the student who has been supported in recent years with a teacher for the visually impaired who is layering on in stages what is needed as a student goes through the school so that it is not just one big shock thrown at them at once. It has to be an evolutionary development of a skill set that goes along with what is happening at the school at the level that the student is at.” Listen in as these individuals relate their stories about their experiences in the education system and what worked well, and what they may have left behind.