"The College of Education faculty is collaborative, supportive and willing to help one another and do what they can to help the students be successful. The College of Education's values and motivated students make the environment a pleasurable place to learn and teach. I feel that I have learned as much or more from the students as they have learned from me."
—Chris Clark, Assistant Professor, Department of Special Education, Illinois State University
(December 18, 2007) Chris Clark entered the field of low vision and blindness at the University of Utah with broad and personal motivations. She coupled the need for educators in the field with her father's diagnosis of diabetes and consequent blindness in determining this career path. "I decided if I could help my dad as well as other students with disabilities that would be ideal," said Clark. Yet, even after Clark earned a M.Ed. in Visual Impairments at Utah she did not seriously consider a Ph.D. until pulled aside by Dr. Marshall Welch, the head of the University's Special Education department. "He got the process going and I have never looked back," said Clark.
Before coming to Illinois State University, Clark taught students with visual impairments (PreK-12) for six years with Jordan School District in Salt Lake City. "I had the opportunity to work with students, classroom teachers, administrators, and parents; I was able to collaborate with the team members on each student's Individualized Education Plan (IEP)." Clark describes those experiences, especially contact with a student's family, as wonderful and lasting. As a result, throughout her work and education, Clark has kept a strong focus on looking for opportunities to evaluate which collaborative strategies work best and discovering what parents would most like to be accomplished in their children's education.
In addition to keeping a family-centered perspective, Clark puts an emphasis on the value of hands-on learning and development. She found Illinois State the better environment for continuing her personal teaching and learning philosophy. "Utah is a research school while I was more interested in hands-on teaching work and live observation—two things Illinois State puts at the forefront," Clark said. In fact, only a year before Clark's arrival, ISU bumped-up the field-based requirements to four days a week all day, a much more intensive approach to hands-on learning than most low vision and blindness programs. "In the program, students are in an itinerant placement and a residential placement. This program maximizes the amount of opportunities to learn how the students and teachers function in different environments," said Clark.
Illinois State's Low Vision and Blindness program graduates approximately 12 students yearly—an intimate class size Clark sees as a benefit for allowing students to value collaboration. The students, described by Clark as a tightly-knit group, are able to learn and grow from each other's problems and successes through group discussion and brainstorming.
Clark thoroughly enjoys the ability to monitor each student's progress through the undergraduate sequence, but finds the experience students gain from collaboration with teachers in public and residential school settings invaluable. This is especially the case when students need help in core curriculum areas such as Braille reading or adaptive day-to-day living. For Clark, "The field of low vision and blindness is small but this multi-dimensional support gives them a strong peer group and reference. We want them to continue collaborating long after they graduate."
Clark hopes instructional strategies for working with students with multiple disabilities will increase in the field of low vision and blindness in the next several years. Clark's first hand experience with multiple disabilities prompted her attention to include the issue in her dissertation. When starting her teaching caseload in Utah, she had six students with multiple disabilities. In three years that number had jumped to 21. "This instruction is often pushed aside to focus more on behaviors or academic achievement," said Clark. Clark works to avoid that pitfall, especially at Illinois State.
Many of the current placements, whether they are practicum, field-based, or student teaching, are geared toward working with students with multiple disabilities, enabling their cooperating teachers to help the ISU students in this area as well," said Clark. She also praises the invaluable experience gained for pre-service students in the area of multiple disabilities through ISU's laboratory schools. "I find Metcalf and U-High exemplary in their integration of children with special needs into their schools instead of segregating the students. It is proof that IDEA inclusion can work," said Clark.
More than anything, Clark wants her students to learn, replenish the underemployed field with capable and forward-thinking minds, to pass their knowledge onto future teachers. Clark's experience and research has led her to believe that, "Within the next 20 years the field of low vision and blindness will undergo serious personnel changes as many individuals within the field will be retiring. The loss there is a concern." Clark instills this awareness in her students and encourages them to continue their education as her former professor, Dr. Welch, once did for her.
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