In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

220 • Stones from Educators with Disabilities came down and apologized and she said, "I didn't realize you couldn't see that much." That was after fourteen years. The children didn't know it. What 1did find out, though, was one of my students was a twin of another little guy. 1got Todd and the other kindergarten teacher got Frank. Frank had the visual impairment. 1didn't get Frank. That was interesting. But at the end of the year, his mom came in to me in tears saying , "Please help me. You know what it is like to not be able to see." That was an eye-opener. All those years 1thought 1 was being very cagey, but 1wasn't. The townspeople knew-many people knew. Marcia I'm not sure that [my students] really knew how disabled 1was. 'Cause most of the time when 1 had to do something, 1wouldn't read it in front of them. Maybe 1would be exposing so much of myself that now they would know, so then they might-I had real good discipline and 1didn't want to ruin that. 1had to have control. Other people can have everything and fool around with it. 1 don't need strict control. It's not that. 1 need all of us going in the same direction. What 1did, then, is 1would go home and start at six o'clock at night. 1 would sit down and 1 would rewrite everything if there was something that 1 would have to read. That's why 1 use Flair pens. You can imagine how many hours that took, because a lot of it was advising the kids: Here's where you are at now. This will be expected of you. This is step number one. 1can't remember all of it. Conference day 1 would have to read letters that would go home to the kids first. 1would write it over because there was no way 1could read it. 1remember the principal needed all these policies so that he could impress people. He had little folders where you put your paper. It had all the policies of the school in it in tiny, tiny print. 1thought there is no way 1can do this. 1had to read all of this to my homeroom. So my husband rewrote part and 1rewrote part. 1did it in two or three or four days, whatever it was, instead of one day because there was no way 1could rewrite all of that. But there's no way 1could read it either. 1had to rewrite it to about that big. Then 1would just zip right through it, and then what 1would do is put it inside the folders, and the kids never knew. In a sense it's almost like you were hiding your disability. Yes, in that respect, 1did. 1would ask, "Would you please read this for the class? I'm not a very good reader." Sometimes 1would joke. They would do it. They would just read it. They might have known. My senior high band probably knew. We got along just like that and they were never a problem. They were great. Carol Disability Perspectives • 221 At college someone would audiotape your tests and then you could type the answers. This worked fine, except that there was another blind student who would say she needed note takers for class. She was very much into having people do things for her. I didn't understand it because people started to see her as the more independent person. She may have fit more into their stereotype of a blind person. Chru I never noticed this until probably the last five years, so I don't know if they are making people more aware of disabilities. But I've found that as long as I played the role of a dependent person, that I was accepted much more than when I became independent. Especially if I did something real well. They tended not to like it. I guess I noticed that I am more handicapped now because I really can't see anything so I have to put it up so close. So it is real evident, and I just noticed that people, as long as you play that role the way they want you to play it, it's okay. But when I was really not handicapped, I just think people really resented that. I used to always think it was because I was a...

Share