Пълният препис на Cast Member Spotlight: George Stern

say about two and a half years old. 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:10.959 I came to the US in 1993. 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:16.720 And do you have any memories of adapting to your new normal? 00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:20.319 Um, from a visual perspective, no. 00:06:20.319 --> 00:06:26.480 Like I have no clear memory of like one day being able to see and the next day not. 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:38.399 I remember events from that time and people, but I just the transition there's no recollection for me of a transition from seeing to not see. 00:06:39.439 --> 00:06:39.839 Wow. 00:06:40.399 --> 00:06:41.680 This is kind of interesting. 00:06:42.399 --> 00:06:49.759 After the surgery with your eyes, did you start to receive services and assistance for Braille and OM? 00:06:51.279 --> 00:06:53.439 So yes and no. 00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:58.240 Yes, in terms of I was very fortunate. 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:00.079 Well, a couple of things. 00:07:00.079 --> 00:07:07.920 One, you know, for my parents, of course, this was a very difficult thing. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:28.399 Uh culturally, disability is a difficult thing, you know, because my mom and my dad would always tell me that in Jamaica and other cultures around the world, disability is is seen as a, if not a death sentence, then at least a sentence for isolation. 00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:29.600 Right. 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:36.639 And so me being their firstborn kid and going blind was just it was a challenge for them. 00:07:36.639 --> 00:07:41.279 But my dad had grown up as an orphan. 00:07:41.279 --> 00:07:47.279 He had one living parent who died later, but wasn't really in the picture. 00:07:47.279 --> 00:08:13.040 And so he he my dad grew up in at the National Children's Home of Jamaica, which is an orphanage, and that experience left him with a lot of difficult emotions, um, and a conviction that none of his children would ever be raised or be given to a state institution. 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:25.600 And so even though I had gone blind, there was no sense of, there was a refusal to let me be taken away or put in a residential institution for blind people. 00:08:25.600 --> 00:08:39.200 Um, so there was that conviction, and so my parents really kind of muddled through figuring things out before they were connected to any type of services. 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:48.799 So I like my dad was he also taught himself to read at the age of 14, and he was just so determined that his kids would learn how to read, blind or not. 00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:57.039 And so I remember him reading to me before we knew anything about the National Library Service or APH. 00:08:57.039 --> 00:09:03.840 He would read things to me, um, him and my mom, and then he would read things and put them on tape recording. 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:11.200 This was in the days of cassette players, uh, so that I could have independent access to the books that he read. 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:14.960 And so that was my parents' effort. 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:26.960 And then we were very fortunate early on to meet a truly influential and inspiring itinerant teacher for the visually impaired in uh Sandy Edmonds. 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:49.200 She worked with the Broward County School District, and she was the one who really, along with some other team members, came and told my parents, yes, you know, your child can go to school independently, he will be able to leave you, he will because uh I guess kind of looping back to your previous question about my experience of losing vision. 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:55.600 If there was anything probably that showed up, it was a fear. 00:09:55.600 --> 00:10:05.840 So I think at that time I must have been very afraid um because of the change that had happened in my world recently. 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:14.000 And so that fear made me hesitant to leave my parents, who were basically the only safe thing in the world. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:20.480 And so it was Sandy Edmonds and trying to remember some other names, Mike, Michael. 00:10:20.480 --> 00:10:49.919 Quite a few, a whole team of people really, just kind of fortified and buoyed up by, you know, the recently passed or revised IDEA and ADA and all of that stuff, who just flushed with confidence and competence and said, Yes, your son can do this, there are resources for him to do this, there are supports, there are people who will support him, um, there's people who will support you as parents. 00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:53.840 And so, yeah, they they got me to school. 00:10:53.840 --> 00:11:04.480 It was a fight the first time, it was a fight the second time, but soon enough I was enrolled in Head Start at three years old and then four years old in pre-K. 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:12.559 And I've genuinely enjoyed and loved school ever since. 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:16.159 Talk about your life today and what does it look like? 00:11:16.559 --> 00:11:22.799 Well, it looks like you know, early well, not I was gonna say early morning... 00:11:22.649 --> 00:11:26.720 But that's besides being highly educated and extremely intelligent. 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:29.440 Yeah, what's your life look like today? 00:11:29.759 --> 00:11:41.279 Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm and this kind of feeds into the uh when I was answering your questions about services earlier, I said yes and no. 00:11:41.279 --> 00:12:00.720 So I gave you a lot of the yes, uh, the no part is kind of what I have had to figure out because living in South Florida, I I had two three environments. 00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:06.559 I had home, I had school, and I had church. 00:12:06.559 --> 00:12:17.679 And I didn't necessarily at the time, it's probably because I started losing my hearing around four years old as well, and so that became a secondary disability. 00:12:17.679 --> 00:12:28.639 And so I didn't really have services to address either specifically the hearing loss and its impact. 00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:48.639 You know, I got hearing aids and so on, but

there was no, at least until I was about 17, and I got connected with the Deaf Blind, the Florida Deaf Blind Project, and people like Emily Taylor Snell, there was no systematic addressing of the fact that you're not just blind, you're deafblind. 00:12:48.639 --> 00:13:00.080 And you know, a lot of the larger orientation and mobility stuff didn't kick in and kick in until I was older as well. 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:05.759 And by that time, you know, it was like I'm losing my hearing. 00:13:05.759 --> 00:13:18.159 Uh I have my my fixed environments of school, church, and home, and the rest of the world is still kind of scary and foreign. 00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:42.879 And so it really took moving out to Texas as an adult and figuring some of that stuff out on my own and then reconnecting with some of these services as an adult to you know learn, oh, and I'm in a new city, in a city that was more walkable, that had better public transit than Lauderdale, Lauderdale, Florida. 00:13:42.879 --> 00:13:49.679 Uh it took until then for me to really start engaging with those services. 00:13:49.679 --> 00:14:10.000 And through that engagement, developing, I'm I'm getting to your the last question now, engaging with those services enough to develop, you know, the things I have developed, like the fact that I I love doing, I'm a fairly active person. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:18.399 And so my activity sometimes focused on like martial arts and climbing, as I said as a kid. 00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:28.399 Um, but now I'm I'm more of a runway and I do yoga and different different movement practices. 00:14:28.399 --> 00:14:35.440 I love to walk, so I'm very happy that here in Oxford, Mississippi, I get to walk a lot. 00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:40.159 Like this campus is very, it encourages a lot of walking. 00:14:40.159 --> 00:14:51.600 And so all of that feeds into kind of my passion around education, but education for an education that involves the whole person. 00:14:51.600 --> 00:15:05.440 You know, so not education as just a bunch of bodies sitting at desks getting lectured at, education as people moving and learning and experiencing and learning through experience. 00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:28.000 Um and really what's tied to that, of course, is my my lived experience as a disabled person, because so much of the science related to education has an assumption of quote unquote normal sensory capacity or quote unquote normal neurotypicality. 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:28.480 Right? 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:37.679 Like there's lots of the people learn, you know, whether they can see, whether they can't, whether they can hear, whether they can't. 00:15:37.679 --> 00:15:55.360 So it's up to us as educators to then uh you know make sure the science acknowledges uh humanity in its full range instead of just this weirdly narrow perception of what humanity is. 00:15:56.559 --> 00:16:00.159 Share some of the accomplishments and milestones that you're exceptionally proud of. 00:16:00.159 --> 00:16:01.759 I'm sure you have plenty. 00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:04.399 Oh, you know, it's funny. 00:16:04.399 --> 00:16:13.360 I uh was thinking about this recently, could because I I graduated with a master's degree, and that was great. 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:31.759 Um and at about the same time I was graduating with my master's degree, I I I ran a particular half marathon in Texas that I was I had been promising myself that I would run. 00:16:31.759 --> 00:16:34.559 And it's like, which one are you more proud of? 00:16:34.559 --> 00:16:38.879 Are you more proud of the master's degree or are you more proud of running the half marathon? 00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:45.440 And I will say the half marathon was probably more enjoyable than the master's degree. 00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:48.480 And so, you know, but I enjoyed both. 00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:50.240 I definitely enjoyed both. 00:16:50.240 --> 00:17:16.079 Um, my parents were able to come up, and my sisters and nephew and nieces were able to come up for my uh graduation and master's ceremony, and that was great because you know, I'm a first-generation college student, and so that was very great for my parents to experience and for my sisters and nephews and nieces to see that. 00:17:16.079 --> 00:17:37.039 And you know, I am also very happy that I have been accepted into a doctoral program that I was really interested in in in at Boston College and not looking forward to the snow and the winter in the northeast, but you know, life is a series of trade-offs. 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:38.640 You know, you will adapt. 00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:41.519 I'm sure there's there's there's, you know, what is it? 00:17:41.519 --> 00:17:43.039 Is it clam chowder there? 00:17:43.039 --> 00:17:44.079 There you go. 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:44.720 Yeah. 00:17:45.680 --> 00:17:49.759 Now, the whole point of this podcast is to spotlight cast members for The Dot Experience. 00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:52.240 And you are a cast member. 00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:55.359 Do you remember how you first heard about this opportunity? 00:17:55.759 --> 00:17:57.759 Um, Erin reached out to me. 00:17:57.759 --> 00:18:02.000 I hadn't heard anything about it, and then Erin sent me an email. 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:09.039 Erin, I believe, is is she's the coordinator of the project, project manager, whatever the title is. 00:18:09.039 --> 00:18:09.359 Yeah. 00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:19.200 And so, yeah, she reached out to me, and I was just intrigued because of how important Braille has been in my life. 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:24.559 Like it has one of the other things I do in my free time. 00:18:24.559 --> 00:18:35.759 I'm a an amateur theater person, and so I act, I I write plays, I do a lot in the playwriting and and performance space. 00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:40.640 And Braille is an essential part of that, right? 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:50.240 Because being able to read lines and do table reads and all of the important things that we do

in theater space requires that access. 00:18:50.240 --> 00:19:03.759 And, you know, my education would not be anywhere near where it is if I hadn't been introduced to Braille early on and just had that constantly available. 00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:13.440 You know, the access to books and as as electronic books became more available and bookshare became uh is a thing. 00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:19.599 Like it's I just can't, I could not imagine what my life would be like without Braille. 00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:28.960 And so when uh Aaron told me about The Dot Experience and kind of this focus, I I was immediately intrigued. 00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:33.440 What does being a cast member in The Dot Experience mean to you? 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:37.680 And how does it feel to have your story shared with others? 00:19:38.799 --> 00:19:43.039 Um I'm always happy when that happens. 00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:47.759 I know this is probably this is one of your later questions. 00:19:47.759 --> 00:20:08.400 Uh I see The Dot Experience really as a chance to do something that I strive to do whenever I'm just in the way that I live my life, right, is I try to shift people's narratives and shift people's expectations. 00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:21.839 You know, one of the things, one of the other accomplishments I'm really proud of is I worked for a while as a pub uh uh contributor to the food magazine Serious Eats. 00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:39.599 And one of my my first articles for them was basically making the point like, hey, there are disabled, there are blind people out here who love to cook, who enjoy the content you have, but a lot of it is inaccessible if you put pictures up there without image description. 00:20:39.599 --> 00:20:54.799 And I remember the response from the the editors and the readers, just amazed and impressed, and like we didn't realize. 00:20:54.799 --> 00:21:08.799 And now when I go on to so many food websites, not all of them, but so many more, and I see clear, precise, informative image descriptions on their photos. 00:21:08.799 --> 00:21:12.480 I'm like, okay, I I contributed to that. 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:16.880 I helped that be a thing, I helped people realize that that needed to be a thing. 00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:33.279 And so that's that's where I see my role in the in the dot experience is maybe something in the way I've lived my life can shift someone else's narrative around blindness, around disability, uh, can can shift their expectations. 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:39.039 What is something you wish more people understood about blindness or low vision? 00:21:39.680 --> 00:21:43.519 It doesn't change the desire to contribute. 00:21:43.519 --> 00:22:06.799 I think that's that's something that gets missed a lot in you know our our services model and our uh Just even uh just a lot of our narratives around blindness, even around older people who are going blind. 00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:16.000 You know, there's a lot of focus on, okay, we can get them services, or we need to do certain things to make sure they're safe, etc., etc. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:36.480 But less acknowledgement that blind or not, people feel better as human beings when we can contribute to our communities in meaningful ways, and when those contributions can be acknowledged. 00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:48.240 I spent a lot of my undergraduate struggling with finding a community that I felt I could contribute to, and struggling with isolation because of that. 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:55.200 Like just meeting people in class for class time, that that wasn't enough. 00:22:55.200 --> 00:23:10.240 It became I found the communities when I've when I've joined the theater, when I joined the running community, and it wasn't a matter of, oh, you know, we're helping the blind man do XYZ. 00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:27.680 It was we are with a friend, we are with someone whose existence in this community is valuable in and of itself, not just because we are helping him, but it's a mutual exchange of benefit. 00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:40.079 You know, and I think it would be a better place if people realize that blindness doesn't take away that desire to contribute, and it doesn't take away the ability to contribute. 00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:43.680 It just means you have to get more creative about how you do it. 00:23:44.079 --> 00:23:47.599 And before I let you go, is there anything else you would like to share? 00:23:47.599 --> 00:23:53.440 It could be about you, your life, being a cast member, anything else you want to leave our listeners with. 00:23:54.160 --> 00:24:06.079 I just want the listeners to think on what I just said, honestly, because that that's truly the the highest barrier. 00:24:06.079 --> 00:24:25.680 You know, when when blind people try to apply to a job or try to connect with some some aspect or some uh activity in a community, we always run that risk of running into someone's expectations, like why are you here? 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:27.440 Why do you need to be here? 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:30.799 Uh oh, are you here to be helped? 00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:44.799 And if we can overcome those, and we can reach a space where people understand that, yeah, we're just trying to find a way to contribute and participate. 00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:48.160 It's like we're not looking for a participation trophy. 00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:56.480 For us, as I wrote in one of my writings, participation is the trophy, and participating is the prize. 00:24:56.480 --> 00:25:09.599 And so the more people can think about that and engage with that idea, I think the better and more open life life will be. 00:25:10.559 --> 00:25:12.880 All right, George, thank you so much. 00:25:12.880 --> 00:25:20.880 I have loved listening to you talk, and I'm so grateful that you agreed to come on Change Makers and talk to me. 00:25:21.200 --> 00:25:22.720 Thank you for the invitation. 00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:26.799 And thank you so much for listening to this episode of Change Makers. 00:25:26.799 --> 00:25:34.880 If you have a podcast topic or suggestion, please send it my way by sending me an email at changemakers at aph.org. 00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:39.680 And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.