October is disability awareness month. Recently, kids at one Baltimore County elementary school got to see first hand what it's like to be blind. It's not everyday students at Warren Elementary get to put on a blindfold.
But this isn't all fun and games, it's a lesson on what it's like to be blind. And the kids are catching on quickly.
4th grader Melody Calderon says, "It feels confusing. And it feels kind of scary that I'm going to bump into something." 4th grader Zach Iacoboni says, "It felt kind of scary because I had zero visibility so I had no idea where I was going."
All month long, the students have been learning about disabilities. And on this day, The Maryland School for the blind visited 4th graders to teach them people with disabilities aren't all that different. Taiisha Pinkney says, "We want the children to know that people with all kinds of disabilities are still people. They have lots of common things. Just because someone's different doesn't mean they are unapproachable. You can come up to them and talk to them. They are really, really fun people."
Students learned how to offer sighted guide to a blind person. The teachable moment has students rethinking what to do the next time they see a blind person. Zach says, "Help them cross the street, get up a set of stairs, help them get across the road, whatever they need to do." Melody says, "No one needs to be hard on them. It's just something they can't do."
