Glenmont fourth-grader competing in national Braille Challenge
Kelly Cusack is the sort of lively, just-turned-10-year-old parents can’t help but be proud of. She’s a Girl Scout, a member of the chess club at Slingerlands Elementary School and plays the piano. She’s also an avid reader, but instead of reaching for a paperback or Kindle, she grabs her BrailleNote device.
That’s because Kelly is blind. She learned to read in the same way as the rest of the children in her class, with flashcards, only her’s had the tiny raised bumps of Braille on them.
Now, her hard work hitting the books is paying off. Kelly and her family will be traveling to Los Angeles soon to visit the national round of the Braille Challenge, an academic contest organized by the Braille Institute of America.
I’m a little nervous, but I know if I set my mind to it I can do it, Kelly said last week.
By the time you read this, Kelly Cusack and her family (parents Jennifer and Michael and her older brother, Carl, 14) will be on the other side of the country. The actual Braille Challenge is the weekend of June 25, but they’ll be making a vacation out of it, including a stop to see family and a trip to Disneyland.
Kelly has had plenty of practice when it comes to the competition itself, having competed in the regional contest the last two years. The Braille Challenge began in 2000 as a regional contest for southern California, and since then has grown to encompass the entire U.S. and Canada. This year, 855 students participated in regional contests, an impressive number considering there are just 6,000 kids nationwide who are registered to receive educational materials in Braille.
The competition is something akin to a spelling bee or other academic contests, but the tests focus on Braille skills. The contest started as a way to make Braille a bit more interesting for students, who usually experience it through textbooks.
`There wasn’t much giving it a positive connotation, so we thought it would be interesting to create a contest to make it fun,` said Nancy Niebrugge, director of the Braille Challenge. `We’re finding that we really hit on something. The kids seek more Braille, they want to learn more … the teachers are telling us the kids are asking for more homework so they can practice their Braille.`
Depending on age, students compete in up to five categories: spelling (which is unique because Braille has a lot of contractions), proofreading, reading comprehension, charts and graphs and speed and accuracy, where students listen to a passage and then must type it into Braille using a Perkins Brailler device.
These contests comprise the vital skills the blind population need to be successful, said Niebrugge.
`All of the contests are meant to reinforce core academic skills and pre-employment skills,` she said. `Blind adults are underemployed, there’s about a 75 percent unemployment rate … of those who are employed, a high percentage of them are Braille readers.`
Top finishers receive savings bonds.
Kelly is spending the few days before the competition brushing up on her proofreading.
`They do some Braille reversals. They sometimes try to mix you up with that,` she said. `They try to find the hardest thing and try to trick you.`
The competition isn’t all books and Braille, though. There’s a social aspect, and organizers make plenty of time for the kids to interact. Blindness is a fairly rare condition among children, and those of school age who are affected often find themselves the only blind child or one of only a few students in the district. Kelly is the only blind student at Slingerlands Elementary.
Jennifer Cusack said interacting with other parents of blind children is also ` a great opportunity,` since they can talk about methods to make the home more accessible to their kids, parenting strategies and other topics that are unique to their children.
She’s also pleased to see Kelly excited about reading.
`We’re thrilled and proud and very excited,` she said. `It’s nice to see her be able to compete on a level playing field.`
For Kelly’s part, her enthusiasm is impossible to miss. She said the Challenge has made her more interested in improving her skills with Braille.
`I don’t know how they do it, they must put something in the air,` she said. `For me, it’s just plain exciting.`
For more information on the Braille Challenge, visit brailleinstitute.org.
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