A website for teachers who are blind or visually impaired.

Volunteering in Classrooms

Before applying to a teacher education program, or even perhaps considering teaching as a career you may enjoy, it is vital to get some experience in a classroom to determine if it is an environment you enjoy and whteher you possess or can develop the skills necessary to teach successfully. Volunteering is one of the ways you can explore teaching and whether this would be a career you would enjoy without having to commit to anything. Volunteering in a classroom is often a pre-requisite to teacher-education programs, but it is suggested for anyone interested in teaching. Volunteering can help you with some of the following:

  • Determining whether you like being in a classroom, and what age group you enjoy working with. If you do not enjoy being in a classroom or being around the type of students you would like to teach, you likely won't enjoy teaching! Furthermore, determinging what age group you like working with (children, teenagers, or adults) can guide you to applying to an appropriate teacher-education program and save you from making costly mistakes if you enter a program and then decide later that you would prefer to teach a different age group.
  • Gaining self-confidence in dealing with students and teachers and answering questions about your visual impairment. Gaining volunteer experience as a tutor, reading with children, making public presentations to classrooms, or assisting a classroom teacher in delivering a lesson can help you develop some basic self-confidence about being in a classroom and interacting with students, including dealing with basic situations where your visual impairment may present a problem or where questions about your vision may arise. If a child asks how a word is spelled that you are unable to see, how do you respond? How do you keep track of what is happening around you in a classroom? How do you explain to the teacher you are volunteering with how they can best accomodate your visual impairment? What do you do when a student asks, "Are you blind?" These are all basic situations that you will likely encounter as a volunteer, and will certainly encounter as a student teacher and, later, practicing teacher.
  • Determining some starting points for thinking about or making accomodations. When you volunteer in a classroom or education-related program you will be able to find out the tasks a teacher engages in on a regular basis. With this knowledge, you can begin to think about areas you may need to make accomodations in to compensate for your visual impairment. If you cannot read print, you may think about how to access student work both while in the classroom and for marking purposes. If you are interested in teaching an age group or subject that requires you to present information on the board, you may begin to think about how you could use technology to present this information rather than writing, and determine whether you will need to learn any new computer skills. If you will need to read aloud to a class, you may think about how you can access materials in an appropriate format or learn any additional skills, such as braille, that would enable you to perform this task more easily. You can also think about how you will learn the layout of a school or university and how you will handle things such as fire drills and field trips.
  • Put you in contact with teachers and principals who know about your capabilities. In a situation where university faculty, administrators, or employers may be hesitant about putting someone with a visual impairment in a classroom where they are responsible for dozens of students, it can be very helpful to be able to refer them to a teacher who has worked with you in the past and can testify to your abilities. A teacher you have volunteered with in the past can also be a useful mentor or reference person for you in your teacher-education and early teaching years. Furthermore, this person may be able to provide you with reference letters which you can use when applying to teacher-education programs or future employment.

Although gaining at least some volunteer experience in an actual classroom setting is often essential to those interested in teaching as a career, it is not the only place to find valuable volunteer experience. Summer camps, after-school programs, tutoring, community youth programs, and presenting to classrooms or schools about a topic you have experience in can all be useful. In fact, the more volunteer experience you get with children (or adults, if that's the age group you would like to teach), the more you will be prepared for the rigors of a teacher-education program when the time to apply comes.