The Braille Challenger: Volume 3, Issue 1
News and Information from The Braille Challenge®
Volume 3, Issue 1 - May 2011
Teacher's Dedication Equals Success for Braille Challenge Competitor
Q&A with Faye Miller, Coordinator of the Oklahoma Regional Braille Challenge
Five-Time Finals Winner Shares Tips for Success
The Dots Talk: What Are We Learning From The Braille Challenge?
Connect with Braille Challenge Alumni on Braille Institute's New Forum!
Teacher’s Dedication Equals Success for Braille Challenge Competitor
The following is from a Teacher of the Year nomination statement we received recently from the Rockemann family of Lincoln, Nebraska, for their daughter’s teacher, Dee Sawyer. The Rockemanns credit Ms. Sawyer for motivating their daughter to overcome her reluctance to learn braille, build confidence, and ultimately persevere to earn an award at the Nebraska Regional Braille Challenge hosted by Nebraska Center for the Education of Children Who Are Blind and Visually Impaired.
In 2009, Dee Sawyer approached my husband, Mark, and I regarding our daughter, Rachel, participating in “The 2009 Braille Challenge.” We both thought that this would be a great activity to encourage Rachel to embrace learning braille. We also felt that it would be a good experience for Rachel to meet and begin nurturing relationships with other visually impaired students. We arrived at the event and our daughter enjoyed socializing the night before with the other participants. At this date in time, Rachel was a second-grade student and was entered at the Apprentice level in the competition.
Rachel has always worked at her own pace in all her activities. In fact, my husband and I always joke that Rachel has two speeds…slow and stop. She entered the testing area for the first portion of the competition and started the timed spelling test. After receiving the first couple of words, Rachel became very frustrated at how fast they were giving the words and ended up having a breakdown and left the test crying her eyes out. She was so upset that she refused to take the two remaining tests, that is, until we told her that if she wasn’t going to participate that we would have to leave and go home. She did end up going to the remaining two tests. I’m not sure what her final scores were on these tests last year, but I know that she did not make finalist.
This year, when Dee approached me about “The 2010 Braille Challenge,” I knew that Rachel needed to attend, even if it was just to increase her self-confidence levels. And although we met with a lot of resistance from Rachel, she did end up agreeing to go. She was motivated primarily by the opportunity to participate in the fun events that they have planned around the competition.
This year, Rachel stayed in the testing area for the full time for all three of the events. We were extremely proud at how much she had matured in a year’s time. At the end of the day we all gathered back into the auditorium to hear the winning results. My husband and I hoped and prayed that Rachel would get a third-place medal. This would reinforce the process and ensure that we didn’t have to spend the next hour driving home with a highly emotional daughter, like last year.
They announced the third-place winner, and then the second…and Rachel’s name was not called. We sat in our seats cringing at the idea of Rachel’s disappointment. Finally, they announced the first-place winner…Rachel Rockemann. It actually took awhile for it to register that our daughter had actually just won first place! This was a complete turnaround from last year’s performance. This can only be attributed to the patience and dedication that Rachel received during the last year from her teacher, Dee Sawyer.
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Q&A with Faye Miller, Coordinator of the Oklahoma Regional Braille Challenge
Faye Miller is an instructor at the Oklahoma School for the Blind. She has been independently administering the Braille Challenge preliminary contest to her students since 2002, the first year that the Challenge was held as a national event.
This year, Faye organized Oklahoma’s first regional event for students throughout the state. The Braille Challenger sat down with her recently for an informative and inspiring interview.
The Braille Challenger: What motivated you to hold a regional event?
Faye Miller: I felt that in the past the only students I could reach were the students at my own school. I wanted to reach a wider audience and energize the program in my home state. The Braille Challenge is such a great contest and the motivation of getting to travel to California is such a great incentive. My main goal was to reach as many interested students as possible.
BC: What difference did holding the regional event make?
FM: I noticed a definite change with the elementary school kids. They were very excited about it. Unfortunately we had very bad weather the day the test was held, so the turnout wasn’t quite as high as we had hoped, but we were still very pleased with how everything turned out.
BC: Did you find more access to resources in the community such as partnerships with transcribers, teachers and the like?
FM: I did. I had a lot of help, which I appreciated so much. We have a retired teacher who worked at my school for 30 years—and has been volunteering for another 15 years—handling a lot of the transcribing. She’s promised to help again whenever we need her. We held the event at my school, The Oklahoma School for the Blind, which proved to be a great venue. Kitchen workers and other school staff volunteered their time so generously. We held workshops at the school on the day of the event for the parents and the kids. We offered a sensitivity training seminar so the parents could learn how to present things more effectively to their kids, a technology workshop, and an overview of guide dogs, which included the prerequisites to get one. All of these seminars were run by teachers from the school, who came out in droves.
BC: Do you feel that a regional event serves a broader range of skill levels?
FM: I do. I think one of the things I wasn’t prepared for was the questions from parents of students who were not performing on grade level. We want every student to participate even if they are not eligible for nationals. It’s important for everyone to work on their braille skills and the parents and children should know that they are welcome to take an at-grade-level test or a below-grade-level test—whatever makes them most comfortable. It’s all about participating and improving their skills, regardless of how they take the test, or what test they take.
BC: How do you see the Challenge as a motivator?
FM: I think the event is clearly a great motivator for the kids who are really good braille readers. I think it’s my job to make it more attractive to the kids who aren’t great readers. One idea we’re working on is to include all sorts of fun activities between the testing sections to bring in more kids and make the day a really fun outing for everyone. The new digital machines have been great, too. The kids have really enjoyed being able to practice with them and use them on the test.
BC: What kind of parent reactions did you get?
FM: All of the parents had very favorable things to say. One woman in particular told me that her son would never have had the chance to participate if we hadn’t held the regional. The parents really enjoyed seeing their children receive a prize—which we gave to every participant—and loved that we were celebrating their children’s’ braille skills, which is certainly something worthy of celebrating.
BC: What are some of your ideas to make next year’s event even better?
FM: Well, there was a lot of travel involved for some families, which made it difficult for them. Next year we’re going to hold the event on a school day so itinerant VI teachers and other families can attend more easily. We’re going to continue to offer fun activities for the kids between sections—braille-related, but not testing—for example, a braille scavenger hunt. The idea is to turn the event into a statewide celebration of braille and the talents of our visually impaired kids. I’d also like to change the perception that it’s just about making it to nationals. If we qualify, that’s a great bonus, but there’s so much more to it than that. It’s a great contest for the kids and makes them feel really special. There’s nothing like it.
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Five-Time Finals Winner Shares Tips for Success
Adapting to technology is common for many Braille Challenge competitors. This is especially true when you are dealing with an ever-growing competition on an international scale like The Braille Challenge. One trend seen over the past 11 years is how efficiently many repeating finalists have adapted to technology in preparing for this highly anticipated annual event.
The Braille Challenger recently sat down with Kyra Sweeney, a five-time Finals winner from Santa Monica, California, who shared with us her tips and thoughts on how to prepare for Braille Challenge competitions.
The Braille Challenger: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Kyra Sweeney: I’m a 17-year-old junior at Santa Monica High School. I’ve been reading braille since I was two-years-old and I’ve been a Braille Challenge finalist for 11 years and have won five times so far. My favorite subject in school is English and I love music.
BC: What adaptive technology do you use to prepare for The Braille Challenge contests?
KS: There’s not really just one tool that prepares me. Of course the Perkins Brailler is great practice for brailling. The Bookport Plus helps a lot since it’s so portable and allows me to take it anywhere.
And I really love Bookshare. I have so much access to many books. In fact, I don’t have to worry about carrying around a bunch of books with me; everything is accessible using Bookshare. I don’t have a particular genre of books I prefer. I enjoy reading everything, which makes Bookshare so great. And having access to Bookshare allows you to read more and that can help you perform better at The Braille Challenge.
BC: Do you have any other helpful tips to future competitors?
KS: Definitely take full advantage of the sample tests and practice Speed and Accuracy as much as you can. For the new Charts and Graphs, find math textbooks for practice.
But most importantly, The Braille Challenge isn’t something you can just sit down and study for. It’s a test of your skills and the knowledge that you’ve accumulated so far. That being the case, I definitely recommend reading a lot of books—don’t listen to them. Read them in braille and be extremely familiar with the braille code so you’re better prepared for the reading portion of the contest. Also, if you haven’t touched your brailler in a while, definitely get back on it; your fingers need to get used to the workout. Other than that, try to have fun and look forward to meeting new friends.
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The Dots Talk: What Are We Learning From The Braille Challenge?
In the last few years Braille Institute’s staff have been taking a closer look at who takes The Braille Challenge and how well they do. It’s important to us that The Challenge be designed to include braille readers at all levels, as well as be hard enough to truly challenge those with strong skills. We’ve also looked at what motivates students to take The Challenge.
Here’s a snapshot of some of what we’re learning.
First, we see a steady growth in the number of preliminary round contestants who take the Apprentice Contest below their academic grade level, many of them selecting the uncontracted version. In 2007, 30% of all Apprentice contests were given to older students learning braille. By 2010, older students represented 57% of all Apprentice contestants.
We’ve also seen a strong growth in regional events. In 2007, 83 teachers returned proctored contests, with regional events hosted at 17 sites. By 2010, 69 teachers proctored contests, but the number of regional events doubled to 34.
This shift leads us to conclude that making The Challenge as much a local event as a national one appeals to kids from a broader range of skill levels, and gives everyone the same sense of excitement and camaraderie (see related story on Faye Miller).
On the other end of the spectrum, looking at the performance of our 60 finalists, we noted a high proportion of them were achieving perfect scores. In 2009, 6 out of 11 Junior Varsity contestants earned perfect scores at the Finals in Reading Comprehension. Four finalists earned 100% in Charts and Graphs and 3 had perfect scores in Proofreading. Another 4 out of 12 Varsity Finalists earned perfect scores in Reading Comprehension.
Last year we formed a special team of teachers to address this issue of contest difficulty and its relationship to student scores. Together we pulled reports from The Challenge scoring database and began digging deeper.
Even at the preliminary level, we found a high percentage (from 50-60%) of students were scoring in the top third scoring range in Reading Comprehension, based on reports comparing the years 2007, 2009 and 2010. Students were also scoring high on Charts and Graphs. For those contest categories, The Challenge wasn’t challenging enough for older students.
Scores for Spelling and Proofreading were distributed more evenly, with higher percentages in the middle third of the scoring range—which is where the majority of scores would more typically fall.
Why? Our review told us we were relying too much on information recall in Reading Comprehension, and not challenging our students to use higher-level thinking, such as inferring meaning or identifying a theme. For Charts and Graphs, we were using overly simple bar charts, and saw we needed to add more complex graphics with features such as a key.
Much of this review was reflected in changes made to this year’s contest. Further review of scores from the 2011 preliminary contests just completed will tell us if we’re on the right track. After all, if we want to keep motivating kids, we know that we need to keep raising the bar.
To confirm whether or not The Challenge really does motivate students to practice braille, we sent online surveys to parents and teachers. When asked if participation in The Braille Challenge had a positive influence on their child's confidence in their reading and writing abilities, half of parents surveyed “strongly agreed.” The same held true when asked if participation in The Challenge had a positive influence on their child’s actual reading and writing ability. Likewise, half of all teachers agreed it boosted their students’ confidence and strengthened their braille skills.
Taken all together, as we seek to challenge students, we also challenge ourselves as professionals—to make sure this literacy program is broad enough for all levels, but still hard enough to earn its name.
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Connect with Braille Challenge Alumni on Braille Institute’s New Forum!
Hey, Challenge participants! How would you like the opportunity to discuss The Braille Challenge with participants from the past who are now living in the real world? Have you ever wanted to make friends with people who have been in your shoes not so long ago? Do we have something fun for you!
Three of our Braille Challenge alumni—Caitlin Hernandez, Claire Stanley and Tiffany Kim—have agreed to take over our new Braille Challenge forum and lead discussions on everything braille. They will quiz you on your braille skills, offer study tips that worked for them and tell you what it’s like to make it to college and be successful and independent young adults. We invite you to visit our Braille Challenge forum today. Then join the discussions our alumni have started, ask any questions you might have or share your experiences with other forum members. The sky’s the limit!
And as an added bonus, our Finalists will get a chance to meet these three young ladies at the Finals in June. They will be on hand to meet families and Finalists during the weekend and will even be part of a panel workshop for parents during the contest testing time called “The Path to Success.”
So if you haven’t already joined our Braille Challenge Forum, there is no time like the present! Say “hi” to Caitlin, Claire and Tiffany for us!
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