NFB BELL Camp Visits the JMM

A blog post by Museum Docent Robyn Hughes, MA, CNIB UEB Certified Educator and Braille Consultant. To read more posts by and about JMM volunteers click HERE.

This summer my JMM colleagues and I had a fantastic time welcoming the NFB BELL (National Federation of the Blind, Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning) Camp students back to the Museum. We have had the pleasure of working with them for the past three summers. They are a group of approximately eleven students who attend mainstream classes during the school year in their local public school districts, where they are typically the only braille readers in their schools. The students range in age from five to twelve years old. The goal of the Camp is to promote Braille Literacy. We help them achieve this goal by creating developmentally appropriate, innovative educational programs for them at the Museum that utilize Braille Literacy to teach History and Social Studies in support of the History, Social Studies and Braille Literacy Common Core Curriculum Standards in the State of Maryland.

Over the past three summers we have explored the themes of hero and explorer as well as the subjects of Jewish History, American History, Social Studies, Architecture, Archaeology and Community Planning. Our heroes program drew upon our Superheroes Exhibit, which included a comic book that we transcribed in braille, to set the stage for our conversation regarding how heroes are defined and depicted in American literature and in American society. Last summer we invoked the great explorers Columbus and Armstrong when we taught the students to read a braille map and navigate their way across our Campus to an archaeological project that we constructed to help them understand what an Archaeologist does. Then, this year we discussed examples of community institutions and the ways in which neighborhoods have changed over the last two-hundred years as a result of technological invention. After the discussion, the students designed their own neighborhoods with construction paper and braille labels. As they worked on these projects, it was wonderful to watch them teach the adults (my colleagues) to read braille. I believe that it is a powerful reminder that children too, have the capacity to be teachers. My colleagues and I have also immensely enjoyed the opportunity to watch these children grow up over the last three summers. We look forward to future visits with them at the Museum.

If you would like to learn more about braille, please visit the Braille Authority of North America Website  and please read The Rules of Unified English Braille (the explanations are in print).