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Mister Brown
By SARAH SCHWEITZER © St. Petersburg Times, published January 7, 2001 TAMPA -- The teacher stands at the front of a classroom, a bulky blue binder filled with fibrous ivory paper propped on his waist. His fingertips glide across the pages, absorbing what his eyes can't. Days before the end of the first semester, his students still marvel that he reads dots. "How many dots are there in Braille?" one asks, interrupting another student's oral reading of a passage from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Whoops of laughter fill the room. Matthew Brown joins in the frivolity with a smile before returning his charges' attention to Robert Louis Stevenson. Jokes, even barbed ones, are fair game in his classroom. They are a form of expression for his high school students, all of whom struggle with behavior problems. And besides, he has a thick skin. But what Brown describes as healthy give-and-take, administrators call chaos. In 1999, King High School opted to not renew his contract, citing poor classroom management. Brown claimed that the district had allowed his blindness, not his teaching skills, to drive the decision. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency investigating the claim, recently found in his favor and ordered the district to negotiate with Brown, who is seeking punitive damages, training for district employees in the hiring and retention of disabled employees and the creation of a three-person panel to review all employment decisions regarding the disabled. Brown, 30, is also seeking back pay for the year he spent without working for the district. Hillsborough High School hired him to teach in the fall of 2000, a decision district officials declined to explain, citing ongoing settlement negotiations. Brown's case, advocates for the blind say, is but one in a long string of battles that blind teachers have fought to stay in the classroom. But they say it also reflects a new strain of cases driven by the scourge of school violence. Where administrators once worried that a blind teacher couldn't keep students from wandering out of a classroom, today there is added fear that a non-sighted teacher could be blamed for failing to avert a school shooting. "School districts would just rather not take the risk," said Mary Willows, a California teacher and president of the National Organization of Blind Educators. The 21st century was supposed to be, comparatively speaking, the golden age for blind educators, advocates such as Willows say. State laws that once required teachers to have driver's licenses are gone. The Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990, offers legal recourse to those who think discrimination played a factor in employment decisions. But removing legal hurdles does not eliminate stigma, advocates say. "School administrators still do not believe that a blind person is competent and that a blind person is not endangering the safety of children in the classroom," said Peggy Elliott, the second vice president for the National Federation of the Blind and an Iowa-based attorney who has represented teachers in discrimination claims. "But the safety issue is a red herring. A responsible adult who happens to be blind is capable of protecting the safety of children." There is no official tally of blind teachers across the country. Advocates estimate there could be as many as 1,000. But many districts keep no records. Pinellas County does not, nor does Hillsborough. Usually, the names of blind teachers surface after a legal wrangle. Such is the case in Hillsborough, where officials say they know of only two blind educators, a woman considering legal action and Brown. District officials deny discriminating against Brown. "The principal hired according to what was best for the position," said Richard Martinez, the district's general director of employee relations, referring to King's decision in 1999 to hire someone else into Brown's position. Moreover, Martinez says, the ultimate evidence that the district did not hold his disability against Brown lies in its willingness to hire him at Hillsborough High. Brown, citing the negotiations, declined to comment on his discrimination claim. But he allowed a reporter to spend two days in the windowless, cavernous classroom in a side wing of Hillsborough High School where a photograph of Brown with Stevie Wonder is perched on his desk.
Brown is the first to admit military order has no place in his classroom. Students tend to mill about. Many are hyperactive and find it difficult to sit in their seats for more than five minutes without jumping up, dragging chairs across the room, requesting to pet Brown's guide dog, Lynn. Minor, hair-messing tussles with students are part of the hurly-burly and ultimately, Brown says, his teaching method. "Some people think control is quiet and kids in their seat. That is not mine," he said. "Just because they are walking around, that does not mean there is a lack of control." His blindness, Brown maintains, plays no role in the freedom he allows his students. "These kids are too expressive for their own good. And a lot of people just aren't as comfortable with their expression. They need to be able to get out their expression," Brown said. "I make it safe for them to do that." Brown, with close-cropped brown hair and a boyish face with goatee and metal rim glasses, was born without sight in his right eye and a sliver of vision in his left, the result of a genetic condition called Leber's Congenital Amaurosis that results in underdevelopment of the retina. A native of New York, he came to Tampa seeking warmer climes when he was 23. For four years, he counseled kids with vision problems while earning his master's degree in teaching emotionally handicapped children at the University of South Florida. In 1998, he landed a temporary teaching position at King High School, and in 2000, his position at Hillsborough High School. Starting out, he says, his students tested the boundaries. There were times students slipped out of class, made obscene hand gestures, turned on the television with the sound muted. But with his left eye's narrow band of vision and his keen hearing, the provocateurs were soon caught. Even when they wised up and began using sneakier methods, like taking off their shoes so they could pad around in socks unheard, Brown listened more carefully. He also began memorizing the color of clothes students wore each day so he could sense who was where in the room without having to recognize faces. Soon the antics died down. "It just got so that (pranks) weren't fun anymore," said Richard Stribling, 17, one of Brown's students at Hillsborough. "The respect just kind of set in."
Classroom control, Brown says, is challenging for a blind teacher, but can be built with cunning, and more importantly, with trust. There are times Brown must rely on his students. Attendance cards are not Brailled, so students must read them to him. "My whole thing is building a net with the kids so they aren't volatile," he said. His students roundly proclaim Brown among the best teachers at Hillsborough High School. "He really cares, which makes me want to do my work and try harder," said Justin Allan, a 15-year-old 10th-grader in his class. Richard said, "He's my idol. Since he has an impairment, he's like me in a lot of ways, and you just click with him." The fact that Brown disavows the restrictions society imposes on the disabled, the students said, is empowering, a lesson that the labels attached to their own behavioral difficulties -- labels they asked not be printed -- have little long-term meaning. "We both don't believe in labels. He says, 'Labels are stupid because all of youare normal to me.' It's amazing to see how someone like him can have so much success in the world," said Justen Estep, a 14-year-old in the ninth grade who regularly lends compact discs to Brown and seeks his advice on music. And yet, the students say, if there was one thing they would change about Brown, it would be his willingness to forgive infractions. "He lets things go that should be written up," said Justen. Justin agreed. "Sometimes they take his generosity and turn it on him." Tom Rao, the principal of Hillsborough High School, said he has been pleased with Brown's performance, but worries he hasn't drawn sufficient boundaries with his students. "It's something we need to work on," Rao said. Brown says he recently tightened policies. He has restricted students' use of profanity with the threat of forced laps around the track. When a student erased files from his hard drive shortly before Christmas, he restricted his students' use of his computer until the culprit confessed. And yet when he told students about the new computer policy, he seemed pained. "I've had to clamp down, but that's just not my nature," Brown said. "My nature is to nurture."
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