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My name is Sue Cook, I’m – my title is currently the specialist teacher teams manager
for Cheshire East authority, which means that I oversee teams of teachers who work with
children who have a visual impairment or a hearing impairment or are autistic or have
complex needs in the early years. So it’s a very, very big multi-disciplinary team.
I’m a trained QTVR myself, so obviously that’s the side I feel most familiar with.
But previously to that I was the team leader for the visual impairment team when we were
the larger authority of Cheshire back previous to 2009. So I, that’s where my background
comes from. And previous to that I was a SENCO in a secondary school. So I’ve been in SEN
really, most of my adult teaching life.
The regional tutors role predominately is the face to face contact with the students,
either at residential weekends or through regional tutorials and we may attend the regional
study days which occur a couple of times a year. Other than that, we are in email contact,
we’re in phone contact with the students to help and advise them through the modules,
to discuss any of the concerns they have got and help them out with their planning of assignments.
Guide them hopefully in the right direction in terms of extending their experience of
the world of visual impairment as wide as we suggest that they can do it.
I think the Birmingham course is quite distinctive in that you still have that face to face contact
with students. The modules that the programme uses are rewritten and revised every year
and they are extremely full. And they do lead a student through, right from knowing nothing
about visual impairment at all, right the way through really, to being very - quite
comprehensive in terms of their knowledge. What it also combines, is the practical side
of them going out on visits and actually meeting with other people within the field of visual
impairment. So they are getting face to face contact with other colleagues who are in the
world of visual impairment. Because it is a very, very small world and so you tend to
meet up with the same people all the time and that’s quite nice because again, they
get to know people, they know who to call and that sort of thing. And if a student calls
you and says ‘I need to know about x’, you can usually find somebody who knows about
x to put them in touch with, so they can have that conversation.
I think becoming a teacher of the visually impaired, I was one of the last full time
people to actually do the course here. And I know I was very lucky to do that, I was
seconded out for a year to do it and I just immersed myself in the world of visual impairment.
And that was over 25 years ago and I’ve never looked back. So, it just opened up a
whole new world and a world that I think is still misunderstood, although the Paralympics
are helping at the moment. But it is a world which is still misunderstood and people just
take sight for granted really and don’t understand. Even now, you say the word ‘blind’
and they just assume that someone can see nothing. So it’s extending that wider knowledge
really and appreciation. And also that people who are visually impaired can still go on
and lead a perfectly normal life and achieve just like the rest of us. And if I can just
be a small part of extending that knowledge and that experience then I am pleased to do
so.