K Banks But if you're uncomfortable with being recorded, please log off now, and the recording will be available on our website for you to view. Sometime later today, we're going to have ever all the participants muted at the start of the session, there will be a question and answers portion at the end of the workshop. If you have any questions that come up during the workshop, feel free to use the chat box. And we can get to those questions at the end or during the question and answer time. We'd also like you to raise your hand if you do have a question you can raise your hand on the phone by pressing star nine. You can use there's a there's a button on your name, I believe to raise your hand if you're in the zoom app. Under participants, if you go to participants, you can raise your hand now that way to unmute yourself a star six, if you're calling in, and you can unmute yourself by just hitting the little microphone next to your name on the app, I'd like to introduce Karen Anderson. She's the Education Programs Coordinator and FB and she is an awesome lady. We love her. So she's here to talk to you about growing up and making mistakes and living to tell the tell. Unknown Speaker Well, thanks, Kimberly, I'm excited to be here. I like getting to spend some time with the parents especially because a lot of times I get to spend more time with your kids, which I love. But you guys are your kids first and best teachers. So getting to spend some time with you guys is awesome. So failing out of college is the best thing that ever happened to me. I get that that's a really weird statement. And I'm going to get back to why I grew up as a blind kid with a blind mom. So I had a lot of advantages. I learned Braille. Very early, my mom knew that that was going to be important. My mom knew. And both of my parents understood that I could be successful. And I did pretty much all the things that sighted kids do. Sometimes, to my parents dismay, there was the particularly memorable time when my dad looked out the living room window and found me climbing the porch railing up to our garage roof. He came and got me down and we had a discussion of why that wasn't a good idea. Not sure my three year old mind grasped it. Then there was also the time when we had recently been over to our friend's house. And my friend Nikki had just gotten a new gymnastics bar that was mounted like in her room. And I thought this looks super fun. And I wanted to play too. And so when we got home the next afternoon, I decided that I was going to do some of those gymnastics bar things. But I was going to do them on our back porch railing, which you know, lead out onto a concrete patio. I ended up at the hospital getting x rays to make sure that I hadn't damaged myself ridiculously. So I was definitely a typical kid with typical opportunities to have fun, and get hurt and play. But I also still soaked up this message that I shouldn't fail, shouldn't really make mistakes. Sometimes that was because it was inconvenient for other people. At one point, I was trying to learn to ride a two wheel bike. I was out on my grandparents farm because I grew up in Nebraska and my grandparents had a farm. And I was on this bike that we were considering buying and I was riding down the hill. And I wasn't moving very fast. But my the front wheel of my bike bumped into one of the poles of my aunt's tent. And she was really frustrated that Ted was fine. The poll was fine. I didn't break it. But she was really frustrated. And what I took from that was when you're learning and you make mistakes, it's inconvenient and frustrating for other people. So don't do that. For what it's worth, I still can't ride a two wheel bike. So Unknown Speaker there you go. Unknown Speaker Sometimes I understood that learning or that making mistakes was inconvenient or concerning to others and could be problematic for me. I remember being a kid, I was probably 12. And I had om class or travel class game travel class every week, which was super fun, because my travel teacher was showing me how to get places like the Texaco gas station by my house or the new shopping center where the Naira was. And that was, that was super cool. Unknown Speaker But Unknown Speaker I remember being really proud. When she would say, Okay, I think you got it. This is probably the last week we're going to be doing this. And then I remember, so many times, I would make one mistake, I would cross the street just a little bit crooked. Or I would make maybe one wrong turn. And she would say, Okay, I guess we need to do it again next week. Now, in some ways, this was fine, because it meant I got to go to the Texaco more often, I'm pretty sure that the year I was 12. I kept bubble yum and bubblicious in business, because every time I went, I could buy more watermelon bubblegum. But it wasn't teaching me how to make mistakes. It was teaching me that failure was bad, was something that instead of working through, you just had to do it over. Wasn't teaching me how to get lost and work through things it was teaching me how to give up and start over. And if you couldn't start over, well, then you just failed. Unknown Speaker I was good at a lot of things. Or at least that's what I was told. I like to think that it was true, at least in some respects. I was pretty good at school, I got pretty good grades. I was a singer and I sang in my dad's band, which was a lot of fun. But a lot of people's response to the things that I did was, she's amazing. She's amazing, she's blind. I couldn't do that. She's amazing. I felt like if I failed, if I made mistakes, I would end up letting people down. The summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I went to the wages program, which stands for work and gain experience in the summer. Basically, my counselor with the Nebraska Commission for the blind, visually impaired had been trying to get me to go to this program for several years. And she finally convinced me by explaining that if I went I would get a job. And I could earn money. Who doesn't want money. Plus I was a teenager and old enough by then to find some appeal and getting to spend some time on a college campus. Away from my dad getting to eat at the dining hall. That was sweet. So I went I really wasn't sure what I was in for other than hopefully making enough to keep me in my bubble gum and by then Starbucks addiction. What I didn't realize was that I was going to have counselors who were also blind. I knew that we're going to be blind participants. That was the whole point, right? We were supposed to be gaining work experiences blind teams. I didn't know the counselors were going to be blind. These were college age kids. So a few years older than me. And a lot of ways they had it way more together than I did or in some ways than I thought was possible. Two of them had just gotten married and they walked from their apartment to the campus. And they walked other places and it was just normal for them. These were some of the coolest people I had ever met and they wanted to be my friends. Actually Friends, the kind of friends that keep in touch with you, even after the summer programs over, and that blew my mind. These guys weren't just blind people, they were members of the Federation. And I was a little bit hesitant about the Federation. Um, but I mean, these guys were cool. These were my friends, and they were cool. And they were in the Federation. So I figured it was worth checking it out. My friends pushed me to apply for the scholarships through the NFB of Nebraska, which I won. That was pretty exciting to me. And during that first state convention, which I attended, because I was a scholarship winner, one of my friends asked me to consider running to be the secretary of the Nebraska association of blind students, which was a division of the National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska. And just friend was on the scholarship committee. So what am I going to say? No, like? You have some say on how much money I'm going to get here? Yes, yes, I will definitely consider applying. I figured what the heck, it's Unknown Speaker a year. Unknown Speaker I do it for if I if I get elected, I do it for a year. And then I can leave. Well, I was elected and started attending things. started thinking maybe, maybe this Federation had something for me. My friends also pushed me to apply for a National Federation of the Blind scholarship, which I also won, which meant that I got to attend my first national convention in 2007. And what I realized was that I had found people who believed in me, who thought that I had potential and not potential, because I was blind. And not potential, in spite of the fact that I was blind. blindness was just part of the equation. for them. It was just a characteristic was part of who I was, but it didn't define what I could do. Unknown Speaker And Unknown Speaker they saw that I could be something. And that was terrifying. I was terrified of letting them down. I was terrified of making mistakes. And letting down these people who thought that I could be something. No, now for as long as I could remember, I had a plan. I'm somebody who likes plans. There's a couple of you on here who know me and you know that I like things to go according to plan. And my plan was, I was going to graduate from high school. I was going to go to college, I was going to get a job. At some point, hopefully I'd find somebody we get married. I'd have 2.5 kids and a picket fence. There wasn't room in my plan for any kind of detours. My new blind friends, these members of the Federation, kind of encouraged me to consider going to get some blindness skills training, after high school between high school and college. But I didn't think I needed it. I had been told pretty much my whole life that I was good. I had the skills I needed. Everybody thought I was ready for college. And besides that was the plan. I was going to college. I deviated from that plan then that meant that I failed. Unknown Speaker couldn't do that. Unknown Speaker So I got accepted and I attended the University of Nebraska Lincoln, go big red. Unknown Speaker And Unknown Speaker right before my first semester of college, my high school omm instructor showed up and took me and showed me around the campus. Now you got a pretty big campus. But she showed me how to get from my dorm, to my classes and we ran through my schedule. So I could get Get from my dorm, to my English class. And back to my dorm, I could get from my dorm, to my sociology class and back to my dorm. And I could find the cafeteria. Unknown Speaker That was good. Unknown Speaker I figured I was set. I didn't really think through what would happen if I maybe wanted to go somewhere else after my English class besides my dorm. But it was fine. Worked out. I did really well my first semester of college. I think I got all A's though that was longer, though than I would like to think about. So there you go. My second semester of college, I ended up having classes and all of the same buildings that I already knew how to get to. One could say that that was incredibly lucky. One could also say that possibly, I looked at the classes that were offered, and tried to find both the ones that would actually fit within my major, and the ones that I knew I could find. You can choose which one you actually believe. This summer after my freshman year of college, I was asked to come and teach blind teenagers blindness skills in a program similar to the one that I had attended in Nebraska. Though this one was out in Baltimore. These were kids who weren't that much younger than me. And it was sort of this awesome responsibility to recognize that I could have the same level of impact on somebody that my friends had had on me. Being out here working with other blind people, I started to recognize that maybe, maybe I didn't have all the skills that I thought I had. Maybe I should consider training. Unknown Speaker Nah, nah, I had a plan. Unknown Speaker Letting go with a plan would be failing. And do that. I went back to Nebraska for my third semester of college. Most of my classes were in the same buildings that I knew how to get to. And I was in the same dorm, which was great. That dorm also had the best cafeteria food, which certainly played into my requesting to stay there. But I did have one new class in a new building. A friend and I had decided to take Chinese together. But fortunately, we were in the same class, my friend and I and a lot of times we would study together before class, which meant she would meet me at my dorm. And then we walked to class together was really interesting that most of the time if she was too sick to go to class, so as I have never before or since had a friend that I was sick at exactly the same times exactly the same days. certainly couldn't have been that I didn't know how to get to class by myself and didn't want to admit it. Unknown Speaker Because that would be failing. Are you pretty well, that third semester of college. And then I got to my fourth semester of college. Unknown Speaker Every single class was in a new and unfamiliar building. I had no idea what to do. I've been around blind people enough to know that sure, blind people can get wherever they want to go. They can figure it out. I didn't know how to figure it out. I felt really really stupid. Asking other college classmates for directions. I felt really stupid. Not knowing how to do this by myself. Unknown Speaker I Unknown Speaker felt like I was going to be letting people down. If I didn't do this perfectly. I was out in the world and looked like I didn't know exactly what I was doing. Was it out in the world making mistakes then I was going to be letting people down. I was going to be failing. So I went to a couple classes and then one day we were watching a video on one of my classes. And I really didn't care about this video and nobody was going to notice if I skipped one day of class and Then I skipped another day of class. Then I skipped a week of class and then I skipped a month of class and then I had failed out of my sophomore year of college. My dad was less than pleased. My rehabilitation counselor asked me what was next. Okay, you did college, you didn't succeed. Now what? Well, maybe it's time to try this training thing. What do I have to lose? I knew where I wanted to go. I sort of know where I wanted to go. Since I heard about it, all the people who I knew at the time who had these awesome skills, they'd been to the Louisiana Center for the Blind. So I submitted my application. And I did the work that I needed to do to get accepted and to get my state rehab agency to pay for it. And that August, my dad drove me down to Ruston, Louisiana. He was not happy about doing this. It was pretty much a silent drive to Louisiana, which is really impressive considering that it's a 12 hour drive, at least, if you don't get lost, which don't tell him I said this, but we did. And I like to talk so 12 hours in a car with one other person not saying a word. I figured training would teach me the skills that I needed so that I didn't fail again or make mistakes. That is not what happened not even a little bit. I'm pretty sure I made more mistakes in training than I had made in the entire time before. I remember getting lost on travel routes, and coming in so incredibly soaked from the rain, that I had to borrow another student's extra clothes and put mine in the dryer. It was really bad. I remember another time getting super lost on bus travel and having to buy new clothes at the mall because mine were still soaked. There was a lot of rain that year in Reston. Already, I remember a pie. It was supposed to be a pie, it wasn't a pie. I don't make a lot of inedible things. But that was really bad. I made a lot of mistakes in training. And my instructors didn't ridicule me or laugh at me. They helped me figure out that making mistakes. Unknown Speaker That failing Unknown Speaker was okay. It was part of learning. I was allowed to make mistakes. And in fact, I was pushed to make mistakes. If I did something perfectly, then my travel instructor would flat out Tell me Well, obviously that wasn't hard enough for you. So tomorrow, we're going to give you something more challenging. Making mistakes, didn't mean that I'd let people down was a completely novel concept to me. I finished training, and I went back to Nebraska, where I used my new skills. I went back to college. I still made mistakes, I still got very, very lost. But now making those mistakes didn't paralyze me. I could keep moving. I could work through them. I didn't feel like because I made a mistake. Everything else I did was worthless. I finished college started applying for jobs and I moved to Baltimore where I still made mistakes. I still get lost. I spent a lot of time learning a new city and that meant getting lost more than I like to remember. I still make plenty of mistakes. In fact, I have a friend who reminds me on a fairly regular basis that if I'm not failing At least sometimes, then that means we're not trying new enough new things. I'm not pushing myself hard enough. That's so really, really hard for me to wrap my head around. I still feel like sometimes failing is letting people down. And I have to remind myself that Unknown Speaker it's not. Unknown Speaker Sometimes the things that come after failure are better. Because of the things that you learn. It's really hard for me. But it would have been absolutely impossible for me to understand that if I hadn't failed out of college. Not necessarily proud of the fact that I failed out of college, I wouldn't go up and tell your kids that it's the best way to, you know, fulfill your future. But I am grateful that it happened. I'm grateful that I had the opportunities, the failing out of college presented to me. So, what I want to leave you with before we start with questions, and I really hope you have questions Unknown Speaker is Unknown Speaker give your kids room to fail. Let them spill the milk, even though it's I understand frustrating. Let them get lost occasionally. Let them have to work it out. Let them get a bad grade. If they're not doing their homework, they'll figure it out eventually. Let them run into things. Let them do all of the things that kids do. Because we don't learn best by our successes, we learn best by failing and then getting back up and trying again. So I hope you guys have questions. Unknown Speaker And yeah. K Banks Do we have any questions from the audience? For Karen? We have a hand raised Penny Duffy has a question. Go ahead, Penny. P Duffy Hello, Karen. Um, my question is, my daughter has has mentioned that she sometimes she feels like she has to be the best blind person in the room. Like she's, she has to represent all blind people, and she can make mistakes. And I keep telling her how you learn. I let her make mistakes all the time. But I I wonder if you have any advice on how to work off that really bad that that feeling that obviously is not a healthy feeling? I mean, she's just a kid. So yeah, to make mistakes. Unknown Speaker It's really hard. It's really, really hard. I think one thing that was helpful for me is recognizing that sighted people make mistakes to sighted people get lost and sighted people drop things and sighted people feel things. And I think as a blind person, I well I know that as a blind person, I can't look around and see like, oh man, so and so just totally face planted into that pole over there. So I think as awkward as it is sometimes pointing out some of those things can make us feel less awkward about when we do make mistakes. And some of it is just being connected with other blind people, which I know she is. But being able to, I don't know, being able to talk about some of that pressure is helpful. I wish that I had an easy answer because it is really, really hard. It's also something that I still struggle with sometimes too. But recognizing that other people make mistakes, and that we all bring different skills to the table has been really helpful for me. And I guess sort of having that real realization in the moment of when someone sighted makes a mistake. I'm not saying you have to like scream it out in a theater or something like oh my gosh, they just dropped their popcorn all over the floor, but maybe leaning over and be like oh man, that just happened and might make her feel a little bit less Like she's got to be on display because everybody makes mistakes. And if you come up with a better answer, I hope you'll share it with me. Karen, P Duffy I have a question. This K Banks is Kimberly. Um, I think one of the things that parents get hung up on a lot when raising any child is that, you know, sometimes it's that we make mistakes, too. And then we can get hung up on that is, is there anything you wish that your parents had have known? Or done differently that could have supported you while you were making mistakes? That you wish? Sorry? Oh, Unknown Speaker that's a good question. Um, I wish my parents had been involved in the Federation, partly because there's just such a wide variety of people here. And I think it would have been helpful for me to see other blind kids struggling sometimes. I wish that. So my parents always made it as okay as possible to make mistakes. But sometimes extended family was way less okay with it. And I wish that my parents had been able to sort of stand up to that and say, like, hey, like, yeah, sorry, she just ran into the tent pole, like, nothing's broken. It's okay. Yeah, instead of instead of just sort of, like cowering, and making me feel like I'd done something terrible. Um, and family is incredibly complicated. But I do, I do think that if, as a parent, you can stand up when your kid makes a mistake and say, hey, that's okay. Especially to other people. I think that's really helpful. K Banks Awesome, thank you. And I, I have one more question, but I think you partially answered it. What advice do you have for parents who are supporting their kids after their kids have made mistakes that they may be having a hard time working through themselves? Unknown Speaker Ah, Unknown Speaker I think it really depends on the parent. I know, for me, I felt bad enough about particularly about failing out of college, I felt horrible. So I didn't, I didn't need my family's disappointment. Because I already feel bad enough. I recognize that not every kid is like me, and some kids just aren't going to care. But I think most kids are going to feel our mistakes, I think most people are going to feel our mistakes pretty deeply. So I think as much as you can sort of try and keep your own. This is where I thought you would be out of that, the better, which I recognize is super hard. And I think as much as you can, supporting the decisions that they make after the fact, I'm not saying that if I had chosen to drop out of college and go join the circus and become a trapeze artist, my dad necessarily should have supported that, though. I don't know I'd be kind of cool. K Banks You probably would have been awesome. I don't know Unknown Speaker I'm not that flexible. So, and I'm terrible at dancing. In fact, I was just over at some friends house and song came on. I don't remember what song and I started dancing on the couch. And their little girl was like, What are you doing this Karen. So I think probably trapeze artist would not have been the best life choice for me. Unknown Speaker But um, Unknown Speaker I think supporting the choices that they make as much as you can, is helpful, especially if they are trying to make new choices and to do things that are going to Improve where they are. That doesn't mean that you have to settle for it if they're like, sleeping on your couch and eating all of your Oreos. Unknown Speaker But Unknown Speaker if they are legitimately trying to do something, even if it's not necessarily something you understand, I recognize that my dad didn't understand training, and I didn't really have the words to explain it. So I'm not faulting him at all, but I think supporting your kids decisions as much as you can, is really helpful. K Banks Thank you. Penny Duffy has a question. P Duffy Um, it's more of a statement. So when did were you saying when you were at the center, and you were learning you were in the cooking part portion that you weren't a you weren't as good as a cook as you are? Now? Unknown Speaker I talking? P Duffy I know. See, I've heard so much about how you are amazing. And I think it's actually a really good example about keep trying, and you can actually get better. And I just, I was shocked. I thought you must have been like, when you came out at birth, you were like baking and I was really impressed to hear how you grow in that area. Oh, man, that pie was Unknown Speaker horrible. I definitely had to redo that. And I don't know, even even now. You know, we still make mistakes. And we still learn the last loaf of sourdough bread that I made was like, it was fine. people ate it, but it was like flat and P Duffy chewy. And I don't know, I don't know what happened there. But, Unknown Speaker you know, shockingly, I continue to make mistakes and grow. So and I think that's the goal. K Banks Thank you, Karen. Do we have any more questions for Karen? Um, we've got a few more minutes. I see we have some really awesome blind adult mentors on the call. Are there any other? Would anybody like to add anything to what Karen shared today? P Duffy Okay. K Banks Well, Karen, we really appreciate having you and thank you so much for sharing everything. It's, it's it's definitely helped me a lot as a parent. Unknown Speaker Well, thanks for asking me. And if you guys have questions or whatever, feel free to reach out and get in touch with me. You can certainly find me here at the NFB. And I like getting to talk to kids. And I like any talk to parents because I know that having that team and having people support you, is super helpful. So please feel free to reach out anytime. K Banks And would you like to share email so parents can reach out if they'd like? Unknown Speaker Yeah, definitely. Um, so my email is K. Anderson. A nd er s o n@nfb.org. K Banks Awesome. Thank you so much, Karen. P Duffy We're solid. Thanks. Thanks for having me. K Banks So, P Duffy um, K Banks I think we've got another round of workshops coming up for the people that are in the room that start at one o'clock um, I can go ahead and read them off with the P Duffy with the zoom. K Banks Meeting Room numbers, see if I can find those. Oh, no. Well, I lost my no BBC agenda. Unknown Speaker Don't me to read it. Kimberly. Yeah, if K Banks you have it on hand, that would be great. Unknown Speaker All right. Unknown Speaker So one o'clock to 145 it's all about that Braille making Braille fun. Unknown Speaker And that Oops. Sorry. Unknown Speaker That zoom meeting ID is 471-527-4444 then you've got Tech Talk, choosing a Braille embosser and that is 97414855737. Singing for my suburb blind adults in their first jobs. 92768207345 Let's see. Transcribed by https://otter.ai