A TSBVI Outreach Tutorial.
An introduction:
Susan Osterhaus,
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Outreach Programs,
Math Consultant.
Hello. I'm Susan Osterhaus, and I have been teaching for 30-plus years
at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
in Secondary Mathematics.
Initially, I taught in what we call the Comprehensive Programs Department
at the secondary level.
What we do in Comprehensive Programs is teach students
who actually come to the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
and reside here for the entire year, going home on weekends and holidays.
So, these are what we would call your regular ed Math classes
taught at the secondary level all the way from approximately 6th grade to 12th grade.
However, I had students that were even lower in level
as far as that, as far as functioning,
probably down all the way to 3rd grade at some times.
And during that time, as I mentioned, I taught various courses
such as Fundamentals of Math,
Informal Geometry, Pre-Algebra,
Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry,
all the way up to Pre-Calculus,
and then, as I mentioned, all the way down to perhaps the 3rd-grade level,
where they were working on Arithmetic skills.
And then I added my teaching in the Special Programs Department,
which in this particular department,
the students come for a shorter period of time,
usually about one week, for intensive instruction.
And in my case, I have a class that I teach
entitled Adaptive Tools and Technology for Accessible Mathematics.
And during this one week, I really, really give them all the tools
that I feel that they need and can handle in that one-week intensive period of time.
We do Mathematics all day long for that entire five days.
I give them a pre-assessment and a post-assessment,
and we see some great benefit from this class.
This is taught once during the regular year and once during the summer.
I then added to this my teaching in the Outreach Department.
In the Outreach Department, we actually teach teachers
how to teach Mathematics to students.
At least, that's my particular emphasis.
We either teach them on the campus, we have conferences and workshops here on campus,
or we go out to the various cities around the State of Texas,
giving, again, workshops and presentations and also sometimes teaching one-on-one.
We have school consultations
where we work one-on-one with the students and their teachers.
As of last year, I now have a new position
which is Statewide Mathematics Consultant for the Outreach Department,
which means that is my primary duty
is to cover all those students who are not coming here
to Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
on a regular basis.
And I no longer teach in the Comprehensive Programs Department.
However, I still teach the one-week intensive class
both during the regular year and in the summer.
And in addition to that,
since my Outreach duties only take up about 60 percent of my time,
I also do international consulting in the Mathematics area.
And basically, my time is very well spent,
and I do really enjoy what I do,
so I'm pretty busy.
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