‘Everyone belongs here’: Visually impaired student teaching her classmates braille

By Taylor Epps

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    TOWN OF TONAWANDA, New York (WKBW) — This week at Hoover Middle School, one student has become the teacher.

Madison McCombs is helping her classmates understand what it’s like to have different abilities.

“So I helped every one of my classmates braille their name,” said McCombs, a 6th grader in the Ken-Ton School District.

She has limited vision in one eye and no sight in the other, so she uses braille, technology and other tactile methods to learn each day.

This week, the lesson is all about braille and her classmates are learning to live in her world.

“It’s like a different kind of language that you can feel with your fingers,” said Jorge Torres, one of her classmates. “So we can understand what Maddie’s going through.”

“We always want to make sure everything we do in here, Maddie is doing as well,” said Joanne Rice, Maddie’s 6th grade teacher. “We talk about kindness, we talk about including everyone, that everyone’s different and everyone belongs here.”

“People tend to fear what they don’t know and understand and that’s always been my biggest thing is getting students to advocate for themselves,” said Alicia Schwock, teacher of the visually impaired. “It really is a community and it’s not just one student.”

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