If you spend enough time at Overbrook School for the Blind, you begin to notice certain fixtures— people who seem woven into the fabric of the place. Rebecca Ilniski (pictured to the left with her guide dog Marvin) is one of them. She moves through the hallways with a quiet steadiness, her guide dog — ``Marvin the Marvelous" — by her side and a stack of braille materials in her hands, doing the kind of work that keeps a school humming even when no one notices.

But her journey here didn’t start with a job application. It started with a phone call

She was in the middle of a sewing class in Arkansas— yes, sewing — when she was pulled aside to take a long-distance call. “I thought something was wrong at home,” she said. Instead, it was Dr. Bernadette Kappen, the school's former director, asking if she wanted to teach Spanish at Overbrook. It was the kind of chance you don’t expect but instantly understand. She was already rooted in Pennsylvania. And Overbrook? That was home long before it was work

Rebecca first arrived at Overbrook as a 14-year-old in 1989, a kid who had already spent a decade at the Pittsburgh School for the Blind. Leaving her friends was painful. The academics in Philadelphia were tougher. She didn’t go home on weekends anymore. But Overbrook gave her something rare: a place that pushed her, challenged her, expanded her world. She joined student council, track, swimming, choir, bell choir. She memorized and performed speeches for something called the Declamation contest. She learned technology, typing, independent living—skills that quietly built a life.

By 1994, she was valedictorian.

For 15 years she taught Spanish, shepherding small groups of students through vocabulary lists and verb conjugations. And then, as the school’s needs changed, so did Rebecca. She shifted into braille transcription—a meticulous craft requiring patience, precision, and a great deal of love. She learned Unified English Braille, took online courses, passed certifications, and before long she was the person everyone called for worksheets, stories, tactile overlays, Achievement Day certificates, and all manner of “Rebecca, can you braille this for me?”

These days she splits her time between transcription and sitting elbow-to-elbow with students like Jacob and Rihanna, adapting books, labeling snack bar items, or reinforcing the tiny skills that one day turn into big independence.

Oh, and giving Marvin his campus walks of course.

She laughs when people call her Overbrook’s Swiss Army knife—but it’s not wrong. On any given day, at any given hour, she might be teaching, mentoring, converting words to braille, recording alumni minutes -- stitching her essence into the same community that once shaped her.
  

Among the challenges facing educators at Overbrook School for the Blind is finding ways to connect students across ages and abilities without carving away the precious minutes needed for instruction. Recently, a small team of teachers solved both problems at once: They launched a reading partnership that lets older students practice literacy, braille communications and social skills — while giving younger classmates something even better than a storybook.

They get storytellers. Real ones. Ones who enter their classrooms holding books they adapted themselves.

"This started with one student volunteering in an early childhood class,” Secondary teacher Stephanie Hays-Dwyer said. “Then I asked the others if they wanted to try it too. Every hand went up.”

And just like that, a program was born. But in her classroom, nothing happens halfway. Instead of simply reading a book aloud, her students set out to adapt it — page by page, dot by dot — until it felt like something they had made themselves.

Seventeen-year-old Jake (pictured above) took the Braille work. Every word of it. Sitting with Rebecca Ilniski, the school’s Braille teacher, he brailed the text of Little Pumpkins using uncontracted Braille. “He did it independently,” Stephanie says. “We helped with spelling when he needed it, but the Braille is all his.” Around him, Dayiana, Haley, Connor, and Malikah added the labels, smoothing them onto the pages with a concentration you only see when kids know their work matters. They practiced for weeks. Reading aloud. Feeling the patterns beneath their fingers. Memorizing the rhythms of the story until they could deliver the lines without looking.

And when they finally walked into the early childhood classroom, carrying their books and a bag full of tactile props — 5 tiny pumpkins — the room warmed instantly. “We wanted it to be multisensory,” Stephanie says. “If you couldn’t see the pictures, you could hold a pumpkin. If the Braille was new to you, you could follow along by listening.” 

The moment did what good moments do: it made everyone feel like they belonged there.

“It’s not just reading practice,” Stephanie says. “It’s confidence. Communication. It’s them realizing they have something to offer and someone who wants to hear it.”

The plan now is to continue through the year — a new story each month, a new set of props, a new chance for these students to lead. November brought I Love Fall, a book that calls for leaves, fabric, maybe even more sound effects.

Jake put braille on that one, too. He meets with Ms. Rebecca twice a week, strengthening skills that no longer feel abstract or theoretical. They have purpose now. Someone is waiting on the other end of every dot he writes.

And that, really, is the point. In a school built on independence, these shared readings have created something more — a bridge. Older students offering their emerging skills. Younger ones opening their hands to receive them. No score, charts or tests needed.

Just the steady effort from kids connecting the, well... dots!