I was recently reading a story about a little girl who goes blind and it made me wonder how the journey from seeing to blindness is similar to a student or faculty journey from a face to face classroom to completely online. She talks about how drawers are never where they should be and a glass of water is always too near or too far. What is blindness? “Where there should be a wall her hands find nothing. Where there should be nothing a table leg gouges her shin” p. 27 .She goes through months of bruises and despair, but what keeps her going? The patience and support of her father. Instead of doing everything for her he creates the opportunities for her to figure things out. Her father is a locksmith who works in a museum. Every morning he quizzes her on types of keys. Her hands gather, probe and test. He has her guess how many pages in a book by the length of her fingernail. One day he says “take us home” and her response is “I can’t possibly do that” p.36. His response is, “I won’t let anything happen to you…you know where you are”. Time after time she fails and each time her father tells her you can do this until eventually she does. Isn’t that what it means to truly learning something?

In what ways can we, as faculty developers/educators, provide that patience and support and help learners get over the hurdle of, “I can’t possibly do that”?