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In a classroom punctuated by the steady rhythm of braillers, secondary students in Eva P.’s class stepped into the world of Of Mice and Men—not as readers alone, but as voices living inside John Steinbeck’s characters.

The lesson, titled “Voices from the Ranch,” invited students to choose from a set of character-based prompts designed to deepen analysis and sharpen written expression. Using braillers, students wrote first-person essays from the perspectives of figures they had met in Chapter 2 of the novel, examining motivation, power dynamics, and relationships that define life on the ranch.

Some imagined Curley’s guarded first impressions. Others explored a private exchange between George and Lennie, revealing loyalty and tension beneath their bond. Slim’s quiet authority and Candy’s fear of aging and usefulness also emerged as focal points. Across all responses, students were asked to stay true to each character’s voice while grounding their ideas in specific textual details—a balance of creativity and close reading.

Essays ranged from one to two pages in braille and were written independently, reinforcing essential literacy skills alongside literary analysis. The tactile, hands-on nature of the brailler supported focus and ownership of the work. As keys pressed and lines formed, comprehension was translated into thoughtful, analytical writing.

"Students enjoy the opportunity to be creative while demonstrating their understanding of the text, making this type of activity a true win-win for us," Eva P. said. "By getting into the mind of a character, they move beyond simply identifying what happens in the story to analyzing why it happens. They must return to the text for evidence to support their interpretations of a character’s thoughts and feelings. Many shared that their favorite part was presenting their pieces to peers and the thoughtful conversations that followed."

The approach also underscored accessibility without sacrificing rigor. By pairing a classic novel with an inclusive writing task, the lesson demonstrated what visually impaired students can accomplish when given the right tools and clear expectations. The brailler became both a means of access and an instrument of independence.

More than an exercise in creative writing, “Voices from the Ranch” offered students a way to inhabit complex characters and confront enduring themes—power, vulnerability, and belonging—on their own terms. In doing so, the class showed that deep engagement with literature isn’t limited by format, but expanded by thoughtful design.

Long before the first guest ever crosses the threshold of the Woodbine House, the work has already begun.

Inside a classroom reimagined as a “lab,” students at Overbrook School for the Blind are not simply attending another period on their schedules—they are reporting for work. Twenty-nine students are currently enrolled in the program, with seven already demonstrating the readiness required to work inside the Woodbine House, OSB's Bed and Breakfast project that when opened, will offer overnight stays for visitors.

Student eligibility includes age requirements and working papers, reinforcing that this is not a simulation—it is preparation for employment. 

The OSB Bed and Breakfast project opens with an application process that mirrors the real world. Some students complete their forms independently; others collaborate with teachers, each step reflecting the program’s core belief that independence exists on a spectrum and can always grow.

Interviews follow. Skills are assessed. Teachers compare notes. For some students, the lab is a place to refine abilities they already possess. For others, it is the starting line.

Amare, once reliant on hand-over-hand guidance to make a bed, now moves through the task with increasing confidence. Janie, familiar with washing dishes at home, has progressed to working with minimal prompting. Across the lab, routines that once required reminders—clocking in through a digital time sheet, putting on a smock, washing hands, preparing for the day—have become habits.

Boudwin uses a progress monitoring checklist to keep track of the levels of independence for each task we complete. The goal is to keep track of each student’s improvement or development individually. Among those leading the way is Ghina, whose willingness to try any task before asking for help has made her indispensable. Whether ironing curtains or assisting with setup, she approaches each responsibility with determination, embodying the program’s spirit.

Though the Bed and Breakfast has not yet opened to guests, the house is alive with purposeful motion. Students rotate through authentic hospitality tasks: stripping and laundering sheets, remaking beds, vacuuming, wet mopping floors, and maintaining the property as if visitors might arrive at any moment.

That readiness is intentional.

The goal is larger than a single building. These are transferable skills—ones that could lead to jobs in hotels, cleaning services, or simply the confidence to manage one’s own home. More importantly, they are tools for adulthood.

When OSB students leave at age 22, the question is no longer whether they were taught—it is whether they are prepared to live as independently as possible. In the lab and at the Woodbine House, preparation is happening every day, one task at a time.

For Secondary and STRIDE students like Conner H., the OSB snack bar serves as a hands-on training ground where classroom lessons meet real responsibility.

A high school student, Conner counts money, calculates totals, and makes changes while practicing the social skills that come with serving customers. Students answer phones, manage email orders using assistive technology, and complete deliveries that strengthen orientation and mobility skills. Every shift reinforces communication, problem-solving, and the confidence that comes from doing the job yourself.

The program has expanded steadily, with cooking tasks like preparing bagels and toast returning after a pandemic pause. Students operate the toaster and coffee maker, serve hot and iced coffee, and help keep the five-day-a-week operation moving. 

Fridays bring the heaviest traffic, but the focus remains the same: Building independence through real work experience. Staffed by multiple classes, the snack bar touches nearly every area of instruction — vocational, social, academic, and travel skills — preparing students for greater autonomy beyond school.

At Overbrook School for the Blind, every lesson in O&M is a step toward empowerment—whether that means taking a first independent stride down the hallway or navigating the community with a white cane in hand.

Throughout the school year, students like Carly and Journey put their mobility skills to the test with O&M Specialists like Tevis Weir. Their assignment? To plan and complete a trip as independently as possible to a local store or restaurant -- such as a McDonald’s or a Giant Supermarket. (See Photos).

Together, they selected their destinations, researched routes using public transportation and phone maps, and safely navigated there and back—all while applying the white cane techniques they’ve practiced at school. Both skilled cane users, Carly and Journey demonstrated not just technical ability, but also the confidence and problem-solving that define true independence.

These experiences highlight the essence of O&M instruction: empowering students to move through the world safely, thoughtfully, and proudly.

Starting Early: Building Foundations for Mobility

For our youngest students, mobility training begins with creativity and play. Lightweight, custom-made PVC mobility devices are helping children who are visually impaired learn to explore their surroundings safely and confidently.

These innovative push devices, tailored for each child, allow young learners to practice movement and spatial awareness long before they are ready for a traditional white cane. Designed to be met with enthusiasm, the devices turn each journey into a joyful learning experience, nurturing both confidence and curiosity.

It’s a powerful reminder that accessibility doesn’t always mean high-tech—it can come from heart, imagination, and a shared commitment to inclusion.

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!

Katie Davis starts her day with three- to six-year-olds at Overbrook School for the Blind. Some mornings it’s braille practice—showing kids how to slide paper into the braillewriter and pound out dots. Other mornings it’s obstacle courses, story time, or whatever keeps young attention spans locked in. With as few as four students in a class, Davis can shape everything to the child in front of her.

“Every year is different,” she says. “The skill sets vary, the personalities vary, and you learn right alongside the kids.”

Mornings, she says, are the sweet spot. From nine to eleven, kids are sharp. After that? Even her most eager preschoolers are at the end of their wicks. This is the best time to practice skills they already know. Knowing each student's threshold is why continuity matters. Staying with the same group of children for multiple years often accelerates progress. Parents notice it, too, sometimes requesting that nothing be changed.

“Consistency,” she says, “is powerful.”

Finding Purpose on a Playground

Katie didn’t find braille in a textbook. She found it on a playground. As a fourth-grade student at St. Alice in Upper Darby, she shared some classes with students from St. Lucy’s, the attached school for blind and low-vision children. One of them, Rosemary, had a braillewriter. During recess, while other kids ran around, Katie sat with her friend Rosemary, punching keys.

“She’d have me write words in braille, even though I barely knew what I was doing,” Davis says. “We’d laugh when I messed up the dots. It felt like a game.”

Turns out it was the start of a career. Today, as an Early Childhood teacher at OSB, Davis often introduces her three-to six-year-old students to braille for the first time. She sees a bit of herself in their trial and error, their curiosity, their delight when the dots make sense.

“It’s come full circle,” she says. “What Rosemary shared with me, I get to share with my students every day.”

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.