I just kind of hit a brick wall of not knowing who to ask how to ask and what to ask. So I retreated and began believing that I couldn't do this that a blind person attending a community college was just near impossible. And then my age I'm a little older than most of the people that attended community college, I went home I was angry at myself more than anyone else. after much contemplation and much disappointment in myself and in the opportunities that present itself. I absolutely desired to get my associate degree so I called up Heartland I called up access accommodations. They welcomed me back I began in the spring of 2018.
Student Access and accommodation services at Heartland Community College is fortunate to work with a remarkable individual Wilma Copeland, a non traditional student, starting April 2020. She will be teaching Braille through continuing education. Her journey is inspirational and a live example that is never too late to learn at Heartland Community College, Wilma Copeland experience what it's like to be a student again, and today she is giving back to the community what brought you to Heartland to teach a course.
Well, it is so nice to be here. My journey started when I became legally blind in 2006, and was deemed legally blind. I found out that I could take Braille courses to the Hadley School for the Blind at that time, its Hadley Institute today, I began the basic foundation of kindergarten Braille in that class. I continued on until I had an opportunity to travel to Chicago to the rehabilitation center and the state of Illinois and the Bureau HopeLine services in trusted me to go out there and stay for seven months. And my main concern and main interaction was with Braille, I loved it, and I worked hard at it and I received my three certificates in the different divisions of Braille in 2017, my Braille counselor from Peoria, Walter live, and I did a presentation at my local library, enlightening to start a Braille support group in my home, all of them sighted but myself, this led to thinking that I could teach Braille, I come to Heartland Community College, I'm just blessed and excited to be here. That's my journey.
Thank you for guiding us through that. I was also a little curious about some of the classes that you took here at Heartland before starting this rail class as a teacher, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Well, of course, I took life success. And that just excited me even more. And I attempted to sign up for in 2018 or 101, English class, and I just kind of hit a brick wall of not knowing who to ask how to ask and what to ask. So I retreated and began believing that I couldn't do this that a blind person attending a community college was just near impossible. And then my age, I'm a little older than most of the people that attended community college, and I went home and I was angry at myself more than anyone else. after much contemplation and much disappointment in myself. And in the opportunity that presented itself. I absolutely desired to get my associate degree. And so I called up Heartland I called up access accommodations. They welcomed me back I began in the spring of 2018.
During our conversation before this interview, you mentioned several people who contributed to your personal growth at the college, namely Zach Petrie, who's among us today, and he's been your instructor at Heartland Community College. How would you describe the role of this relationship and other relationships that you've had into maybe pulling you out of the state of disappointment that you were just describing?
Well, Professor Petri was kind of asked by access accommodations if he thought that he would want to take on this opportunity and yet Not curriculum that goes along with most of the instructions that happen here, his talent and his desire to kind of step out and step up just made me so excited and start to think positive that I could do this because I did like confidence. And he created a curriculum that I could adapt to and help. He worked well with the excess accommodations to get me all the accommodations I needed and tutoring was one of them. He's just went above and beyond the call of just a professor instructing one student, he went much further than that, and I am just so excited to be here. And to know that it is possible for older people to go back to school, it is possible for disabled people such as myself to learn and to be a part of the learning process here at Heartland.
It's very exciting to have you and it's also exciting to have sec.
My name is Zack Petrie. I'm professor of English at Heartland in the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Division. I teach English and literature.
Can you tell us a little bit about your perspective of this experience and when you received the phone call for this opportunity?
Well, I was really excited when I first heard about it. As a community college, I do believe that we are here for the community. We should also be here for non traditional students who are returning to school who are putting their toe back into the educational and academic sides to see if it suits them. So we're here specifically to help them. And so my working relationship with the student accommodations office has been really good. A quarry reached out to me and said that we had a non traditional student who had experienced a rough first semester back and so I was very motivated to try to show her that the path was easier and better than her first experience had been.
I was curious to know what it was like for you to meet Wilma for the first time.
Wilma is great. She is without a doubt the hardest working student I've ever met, she is persistently optimistic she approaches everything in a How can I make this work for me attitude, which is really rare for a student and partly it's because she's a non traditional student. So all the challenges that she's had to overcome to get here and then her figuring out how to do the academic environment was exceedingly positive every step of the way. She was very gracious to us as we figured out how to best meet her needs. She led us and taught us a lot from the accommodation side and from an instructor side as far as how we can help students to gain a real life meaning to the content that we teach.
Braille is most commonly used by the scene impaired and it also has applications for others. People can take this class for awareness for personal reasons, or even as a hobby. Can you tell us a little bit about how the Braille course at Heartland can be useful for various people?
Well, I believe that it can be useful for parents of grandparents of children as well as adults, elderly adults losing their sight, family members could learn how to read and write rail to communicate better with their parents who may be in assisted living facility. Plus, I think grandparents should be involved in how their blind children learn how to read and write then I think professionals that may be going in to working with disabled people as well as the blind could learn a lot by just getting to know what the Braille language is like and how it feels to put words and letters and numbers punctuation under their fingertips. I feel like there is a broad awareness out there that people are curious about how do the blind read these bumps and dots that are under their fingers? And so this Braille classes is to provide an introduction into what is possible when it comes to learning a new language and learning how do you read Braille? How do you write Braille? This is kind of the kindergarten or beginning foundation of what Braille is all about. So I think you'll provide answers to curious people about the blind community.
We know that there are different forms of Braille transcribing in English. There's literary mathematics and music. These are just examples among many, so technically speaking, and you talked a little bit about the objectives and the purposes of the class. But what does this specific class include? And how would you describe the learning process as someone who doesn't know much about it, the foundation
is to teach you how to read with the tools that most people have not all people have their fingers to read with. And it will entail learning what is a Braille cell and what hand the predominant hand is usually your reading hand and what part of the finger you will be using to read Braille. And the other part of very important tool is the guiding hand to keep you originated on the page of Braille and identifying what an A through Z dots represent. And those dots or bumps are represented with number system of zero through one hesed number indicators. So the number indicator, the hyphen for a date of birth date, reading everything that you write, and then using a slate and stylus as one of the few instruments you use to write with and how the slate and stylus provides that symbol that you're trying to make. And then you have to know what you wrote. And the only way to know what you wrote is to read what you wrote. So it's kind of a kindergarten base idea of how to read how to write with a slate and stylus and how to put it all together so that it makes sense. It sounds
really fascinating to me, beyond this knowledge aspect of the class, a survey conducted by Louisiana Tech University found that people with a visual impairment who learn to read through Braille have a much higher chance of securing a job, how does this resonate with your personal experience? And maybe even beyond that? How do you see that this would resonate with other people and provide them potentially with more opportunities in the job market?
Well, I think the blind community has always been a mystery. And a lot of myths that go with blindness clear back to biblical days, when if your mother or father sin, that must be why this person is blind. But I see it as a confidence builder, I see it as continuing on with education to be able to find a good job. I think reading braille will enhance jobs such as providing Braille in bill making, providing opportunity for people that are visually impaired to feel confident that there are others out there that can do a job you can do anything outside a person can do except read and drive a car. And I think that the blind community needs to be built up in it not be so shameful, so embarrassing, the myths have got to stop. And I think a blind person can do just about any job if they have the desire and the ability to at least try.
I want to know a little bit about the day she shared with you her willingness to teach a Braille class at Heartland, what did you initially expect?
I honestly didn't expect her to ever do a Braille class. As you mentioned, it was an idea of her own. We asked them to make a proposal to solve a problem that they were familiar with. And her problem was the fact that there's a lot of people out there who could use Braille and need Braille, but they are either scared or they don't know where to go to learn braille. And so I just asked her in complete ignorance myself, how would would we get this information out. And as she was talking about a class, she talked about her experiences giving a Braille class at the library, the public library, and how that didn't reach as many people it connected in my mind to our community, Ed Department, and how they do such a good job. And I put her in touch with the community head people to see if that was something that they might be interested in doing. And they just jumped at the chance. And then all of a sudden, this kind of fictitious proposal became a real life proposal. And so she actually did the community had proposal and she walked through the entire sequence that they do when they get teachers. And she did that all on her own of her own ambition. It was well beyond the constraints of the assignment. So again, just shows she's so motivated and she wanted this to be a real learning thing. I just happened to be in a situation where this class and this assignment kind of mushroomed well beyond my wildest dreams. And so I think this is exactly the value of a community college, having students come in who were unsure or maybe had a bad experience somewhere and then showing them that no, this is something important for you. And now she's hopefully going to be teaching other people.
Thank you for your input about that said, I just wanted to ask you a final question. If you were to provide your old self with one piece of advice, specifically, as a non traditional student, navigating heartland, what would that advice be?
I think the advice would be to start believing in yourself and start dreaming again. It doesn't matter how old you are, or how disabled you are, if you can find transportation, if you can work out the details. Learning is an every hour every day opportunity, how much you learn can be directed at the facility that offers you that great opportunity and will work with you but to do your fair share, not to give up and to always try because if you don't try, you won't know.
Thank you. That's very inspirational. For those of you who are interested in the Braille class through continuing education registration starts February 22 2020, and the course begins on the seventh of April 2020. Random Acts of knowledge is presented by Heartland Community College. If you're interested in hearing more interviews about science, conservation, art, history, or any number of subjects, subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Spotify or audio boom. Thank you for listening
