Teacher reaches out to blind kids
Published: August 20, 2005
In 1972, Julie Urban applied for a job working with visually impaired children for one reason: She wanted to work close to her hometown, Boston.
“I answered an ad in the paper to work at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, as a child-care worker,” the Glendale resident says. “I wanted to work in the Boston area.”
Little did Urban know that the job would lead to a rewarding career spanning more than three decades.
“Child-care workers are the people who live in the dorms with the visually impaired kiddos and take care of the kids,” she says. “I worked with a 16-year-old deaf-blind girl.”
Now, more than 30 years later, Urban is still working with visually impaired children and loving every minute of it.
For 19 years, Urban, 56, has worked as an itinerant teacher of visually impaired children for the Foundation for Blind Children. She spends her days traveling to seven schools in the Cave Creek and Glendale districts working with 15 to 20 children.
“I love working with the kids. I work one-on-one with most of them, and sometimes in small groups,” Urban says. “I explain things to the teachers. I’m just there to adapt projects and books for them and explaining to the regular teachers what vision means and how we have to adapt materials for them.”
Several years into her career, Urban’s interest in working with visually impaired children became very personal. Her daughter, Rebecca, was born blind.
“She was born without eyes and has additional disabilities,” Urban says, adding that Rebecca, now 29, worked with itinerant teachers throughout her years in school.
“My daughter experienced all the different programs you could have,” she says. “She’s a neat kid.”
Urban says her experiences with her daughter inspire her every day on the job.
“Because of her, I became really involved with the kids with additional disabilities and in encouraging the parents. I tend to talk to parents about the law,” she says.
“The diagnosis can be devastating, and parents need to be able to say, ‘Now what?’ We’re there to show them ‘what now.’ They can have a nice life.”
Urban, who is also vice president of the National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments, enjoys her job so much that she spent four weeks of her summer vacation teaching cooking and art to visually impaired children.
She says she gets a kick out of spending time with the kids, some of whom she met as young children and are now teenagers.
“Some of my babies are now in high school,” she says, laughing.
Urban says she had a lot of fun teaching visually impaired students the basics of cooking.
“Each group decided on a country they were going to explore,” she says, adding that her group chose to learn about the artwork and traditional foods of Australia. “They were really good about trying the food.”
By using regular measuring cups and spoons marked with special raised numbers, or by teaching the kids to learn the size of the different equipment by feel, Urban helped her students quickly become handy in the kitchen.
“I showed kids the easy way to do things,” she says. “Like the shredded cheese. I said, ‘You’ll see bags of cheese hanging up - that’s the cheese you want to buy.’ ”
Elaine Baldridge, director of program services for the Foundation for Blind Children, met Urban over 25 years ago while visiting in Massachusetts, and encouraged her to make the move to the Valley to teach at the facility.
“I met her when she was teaching in Boston,” Baldridge says. “We were at a meeting together and visiting about things. She said she would love to come out and see what we did in Phoenix. She came to our summer program and loved it, even though it was summertime.”
Baldridge says Urban is a true asset to the foundation.
“She’s a very very committed and knowledgeable teacher. She stays up on new information and is involved in contributing back to the field,” Baldridge says. “She never stops learning - she always wants to know more to help the kids.”
Urban says she loves watching her students blossom.
“I really believe these kids have a lot to offer. These kids can really do so much more than people think,” she says. “It’s just a really neat population to be working with.”
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