Determining Appropriate Caseloads for TVIs
Depending on your province or state laws, you may be in charge of determining the caseload and teaching assignment for your school or school district’s teacher of students with visual impairments. Clearly, the percentage of braille-reading students in your school or school district may not be high. While these low numbers may give the impression of low workload, this may not be the case at all. Keeping this point in mind, you may want to consider learning about the student’s needs by observing the student and speaking to their parents and teacher of the visually impaired before making any caseload decisions. In order for your teacher of the visually impaired to have an appropriate caseload, you must first consider the following points.
The needs of the student
As an administrator, you know how important it is to look directly at the specific needs of each child when developing their educational plan. Clearly, some students will need more support than others. To determine the needs of a visually impaired student, consider asking yourself the following questions:
- Has the student been exposed to a tactile learning environment, or will this be the beginning of their learning of braille?
- What is the child’s functional vision?
- Does the student have any additional disabilities?
- What type of school does the student attend? Is it a multi-aged, multi-grade class or a single grade class?
Time needed for teaching and learning
When working with braille-reading students, particularly young students who are beginning braille readers, it will be important to have the teacher of students with visual impairments working with them frequently. Ideally, such students require daily instruction in learning how to read and write using the braille and nemeth (math) codes, along with other types of direct instruction from the expanded core curriculum. Not providing the student with daily braille practice from a qualified teacher is equivalent to only periodically teaching language arts skills or math skills to sighted students. We all know that this would never happen because these subjects require daily learning and practice in order to master skills. Learning to read and write using the braille code or learning to use nemeth code to access math materials takes time to learn. Consider speaking with your teacher of students with visual impairments in order to gain a better understanding of how much TVI time the braille-reading student will need in order to be successful in their learning.
Time used to travel by the itinerant teacher of students with visual impairments
If you are in a province or state that uses the itinerant service delivery model, you will need to consider the amount of time needed for the teacher of students with visual impairments to travel from one school to the next. Take into consideration the environment in which the TVI needs to travel (urban or rural), the type of roads (straight highways versus mountainous passes) and the types of driving conditions (summer versus winter snowy conditions). If the TVI is required to drive long distances to teach their braille-reading students, it may be costly and ineffective if he or she has to drive hundreds of miles or kilometers in order to see them.
Time needed to complete assessments
Most provinces and states are legally required to complete yearly functional vision and learning media assessments by a qualified teacher of students with visual impairments. In order for these assessments to be completed accurately, the teacher of students with visual impairments will need ample time to collect direct and observational data. Thorough information gathered through these assessments help provide school teams with important information about the student’s educational and visual needs.
Time needed to create materials and get resources
The teacher of students with visual impairments may work closely with transcribers or braillists to create accessible tactile materials for their braille-reading students. Creating these materials take time and in most cases, classroom teachers have to provide materials to the TVI at least one week in advance in order for it to be transcribed. Maps and diagrams may take longer to make. Furthermore, the teacher of students with visual impairments is also responsible for ordering alternate format materials from their province of state’s resource centers.
The use of paraprofessionals in the classroom
Paraprofessionals, educational assistants or teaching assistants, are often welcomed as a second set of hands to in the classroom. While these individuals may be valuable for the student’s educational needs, it is vital that they are used appropriately in the classroom setting. It is important to remember that these individuals do not take the place of any type of trained teacher or specialist.
It may seem initially cost effective to hire a full-time paraprofessional and minimal consultation from a teacher of students with visual impairments. However, consider the accountability risk in promoting such a service-delivery model. The teacher of students with visual impairments provides direct instruction in areas of the expanded core curriculum, such as braille reading and writing and learning the nemeth code, because they are trained and qualified to do so. However the paraprofessional can help with the mastery of skill by practicing with the student.
When determining a caseload for the teacher of students with visual impairments, remember that the TVI, not the paraprofessional, has trained expertise and is ultimately accountable for the educational needs and growth of their braille-reading student.
Caseload Assessment
There are many different types of caseload assessments that will help you determine caseload size for your teacher of students with visual impairments. These assessments are based on the needs of the students, the time needed to teach the student, travel considerations and resource and material needs. It would be helpful for you to jointly go over this assessment with the teacher of students with visual impairments that works in your school or school district.