Inside/Out: Donna (1973)

[Music] beautiful David um corre all right George your turn last night at the fair George rode the ferris wheel with Jimmy one more time last night at the fair George rode the ferris wheel feris wheel with Jimmy Donna can you tell us one is that right GE yeah Donna your turn now quite quickly Queen qu quarreled on Tuesday what um right the blind students at Conway have a room of their own that is called the Braille room or the resource room from this room they move into their regular classrooms and are mixed with normal students any activity that is involves the use of their site for achievement or terms of involvement themselves in any activity they find out real quickly that can't do that sort of thing but on the other hand they also find out how many wonderful things that they can do the same as the cited child Donna se's light and dark and she sees a shadowy outline of large objects and she can see color quite well if it's close enough the fact she can see the light helps her in getting around because when she comes to an opening of a door it looks much lighter and she knows that's where it is so far Donna's glasses haven't seemed to help her in her learning situation she still learns strictly through touch and through her hearing and I think that she does her learning completely that way because she never seems to hold things up closely to her eyes to look at them as a child with with enough partial fight does our hope is that Donna's glasses will correct the farsighted problem if we can correct the far sidedness the retina may start to develop may we took Donna to M she was in I think it was second grade and they told us that her basic problem is an underdeveloped retina the reason for this is she was BN extremely farsighted B flat fport C7 f [Music] yeah I know stuck with it I can you can play on the um W the H the or the e real good w h r e w h r e help yeah I can spell help the right letter me see see now can put anything ending having e in the middle or beginning so you can make any words you want to got the letters do you have the right letters ah I'm in luck I'm very lucky today what you'll see why what letter do you need I have all my letter what okay pH oh gee that's good hey I don't get these 168 mm8 and then they give you a fraction 16 40th 1640 okay then where's point B that's one point on the M line now where's point B going to be it's going to be 36 8ths mhm 36 8ths all right now you have to decide they say which point is left in other words which which number is smaller oh which number is small 164th or 368th 368th cuz the 8th are only half of what a 40th is well make the 40th 40 into 80th you may be right yep I was right 36 8th okay good now number 12 is your last one on this page about a book how many pages in the book it was like the basement then the handle it was real old and the handle fell off they kept taking me in there and they opened this one door and here are all these things that they used to hang people on oh I saw it you want to go back to the east coast Virginia Yeah well yeah but what kind of resorts do I have back there I know of one of them I know what's wrong with Washington DC okay I'll go I don't want to go that wouldn't be any fun you wouldn't like Washington DC oh good you give us a neat glasses I love these glasses where is the now maybe I add you that mom that was put me in the face not get [Applause] there a chicken you Donna has a friend named Paige and Paige and Donna happen to like very very much the same things so therefore they spend a lot of time together okay ready [Music] she's a very independent person really she's always wanted to run with the children to go out and play with the other children uh we've just uh we have tried to make her independent in functioning and she has made herself self independent in play and her activities uh in that uh when she wants something bad enough she finds a way to do it right here all the way okay okay good thr is that your Sinker or your fast ball what it's part of her world and when she runs down the the yard and runs into a branch of a tree she pushes it away and goes right on by it uh as if well that's going to happen and uh don't let it worry you she she can't get around unlike everybody else can Donna has built her world around the things that she likes and and these are all things that Donna has chosen herself they were not for we didn't make any of these decisions for her these are things that she chose that she wanted to do there here we go all done that's all finished Okay now what's left um M and letter okay [Music] build it up this is your last chance hallelu hallelu Donna has learned to take care of herself and we've tried to raise her that way because she had she will have to someday take care of herself completely Donna has had to learn for instance to clean up a room not the way another child does by watching their mother but by having it explained to her and shown to her she can't learn by watching someone else she has to have it explained and when it's explained even then it isn't clear so she really has to do something to learn it she can't learn by the process of looking at someone else doing it normally she remembers things well and therefore she learns quickly but she still has to go through the actions of whatever she is learning before she can do it from a mental standpoint she has I feel every bit as much Independence as another child uh she thinks for herself and she really doesn't want uh someone else doing it [Music] for inside out is a series of programs and related materials developed and supported by 32 educational agencies in the United States and Canada with additional support from Exxon Corporation this program was produced by KC St provision of nit National instructional television