Banking on KC – Alex Olson of Children's Center for the Visually Impaired
Listen Now, or read the transcript below:
Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Alex Olson, the Director of Vision Services at Children's Center for the Visually Impaired. Welcome, Alex.
Alex Olson:
Thank you so much for having me.
Kelly Scanlon:
What is the mission of CCVI, the overall mission?
Alex Olson:
Our mission is to serve students with visual impairments, including those with multiple disabilities to ensure that they are able to reach their highest potential in a sighted world. We want to ensure that all of the students that we serve, any student that walks through our door, any student that we are able to evaluate, that they are able to reach their highest level of success by any of the services that they receive from us.
Kelly Scanlon:
What do you consider to be a visual impairment?
Alex Olson:
Visual impairments can be a large range. It's not just being totally blind. You can have what's considered low vision, or you can have all the way up to total blindness. There's also a very large population now that have neurological or brain-based visual impairments. You can anywhere from very low vision or a field reduction, so your peripheral fields might be affected, or no light perception. Or your eyes could work perfectly fine and your visual impairment could actually be just how visual images are processed within your brain. There are many different ways that you can be considered visually impaired. Really what it boils down to is how it affects your ability to access everything that sighted people are able to access.
Kelly Scanlon:
That's great clarification because as you say, it's so far-ranging. When you talked about your eyes might be perfectly fine, but it's the way your brain processes the images that you're receiving, and I think a lot of times we forget about that part of it. How many students do you serve and what are their age ranges?
Alex Olson:
In a typical year, Children's Center for the Visually Impaired serves around 300 students. The age ranges that we serve can be anywhere from birth diagnosis, all the way up to age 21. That's across three different programs. Most people are familiar with our Early Learning Academy that's on-site right there at 31st and Main. That's our most visible program if you will. Our two other programs are Early Intervention program. We're in the homes. We're serving children in their natural environment.
Then we have our MOVE program, which is our Mobile Outreach Vision Education program. That is itinerate services for students who are blind and visually impaired. That is anywhere from school-age all the way up to 21 when they can graduate high school, and we serve all children. Any age range from birth diagnoses, all the way up to 21.
Kelly Scanlon:
You serve the entire Kansas City area?
Alex Olson:
Correct.
Kelly Scanlon:
When you refer to the Itinerate program, that's where you go to another organization, say a school or even perhaps a hospital or medical office?
Alex Olson:
We would have a contract or a partnership with a local school district or a charter school, or a hospital, or some other type of program where we would provide a teacher of the visually impaired to go in and serve a child or a group of children that require vision services or orientation and mobility services, and make sure that they are receiving their appropriate services.
Kelly Scanlon:
Just to be clear, when you talk about these services and helping to enhance the lives of these children, are you talking about actually improving eyesight, or are you talking about helping them with adaptive measures so that they can function better?
Alex Olson:
That actually depends on the type of visual impairment. When we are talking about an ocular impairment, we really are talking about the adaptations and modifications to the materials and the environment itself so that they have that equal access that is same as their sighted peers. When we're talking about a child that has that neurological visual impairment, you can actually see progress with their vision because with repeated strategic interventions, you can rewire brain pathways and see progress with vision which is so cool to see. It's such an interesting thing within the brain, and it gives parents hope. It gives students hope. To be able to see a student regain visual skills is such an amazing feat for anyone to be able to do, and it's just an amazing thing.
Kelly Scanlon:
Tell us about your approach to working with the children that you serve.
Alex Olson:
At CCVI, we like to take a very wholistic approach to serving children. We are very fortunate to have occupational therapists, physical therapists, orientation mobility specialists, speech therapists on our team, as well as teachers of the visually impaired. We like to ensure that our children are receiving all of the services that they require to be successful. It's not just that we're providing vision services or orientation mobility services. We're ensuring that they're receiving everything that they would need to be successful in that sighted world.
When we're sending them out to their home school and their public school, we're ensuring that they're ready to go, they're on the same level as their sighted peers. If they're already in their home school, that orientation mobility specialist and that teacher of the visually impaired, that TVI, is there to help maintain those skills and help not only create a successful environment for that child, but also help educate that community partner, that teacher, that administrator, that family what that child needs to be successful and how to advocate for what that child needs.
Kelly Scanlon:
A lot of your work isn't just focused on the child. It's focused on everyone who interacts with that child and can help make a difference in that child's life so that they're better educated and know how to communicate, and know how to create an environment in which they can thrive.
Alex Olson:
Right. A lot of what we can do is not just direct services to the kids. It's community partnerships. It's community outreach, community education because those more that people that people know about what CCVI does, who we serve and how we serve them, and how to advocate for that population, the better off these children are going to be.
Kelly Scanlon:
How about your peers nationwide? Are there similar kinds of centers across the country?
Alex Olson:
There are a few other centers. It's a dying art, unfortunately. The field of teachers of the visually impaired is shrinking.
Kelly Scanlon:
Why is that?
Alex Olson:
Its just not a very popular field.
Kelly Scanlon:
I was going to say, is it lack of awareness? Is it that the district requires such a specialized skill?
Alex Olson:
It is a very, very specialized skill. Braille can be pretty intimidating for people. It's fun to look at the dots in the elevator or when you check into the hotel, looking at the dots on number of your hotel room or something like that, but it can be very intimidating. There's only 15 programs across the nation that offer programming specifically for teachers of visually impaired or orientation mobility specialists. That's very limiting in itself, and the field of teachers of the visually impaired is very, very small. There's a nationwide shortage.
Kelly Scanlon:
How are you compensating for that? Are you using technology to help supplement? The number of children who have visual impairments is not decreasing, and so if the teachers and the experts are decreasing, how are you making up that gap?
Alex Olson:
We work really hard. We are very, very creative. We have a lot of very, very talented staff. We partner with a lot of really great school districts that have a lot of resources. We do use technology. We have some students that we see across the state that we utilize telehealth for. We just try to get as creative as possible with our services. We try to ensure that we are providing what is considered best practice for all of our students. We never want to be doing subpar services for any child that we're serving.
I had to start practicing the art of saying no. We don't have the capacity to serve that right now, but fortunately for us, right now we have a large team of teachers of the visually impaired. We are able to say yes to a lot, and we are able to expand where we are serving right now.
Kelly Scanlon:
In addition to advocating for the children themselves, do you do any advocating for the industry to try to encourage more young people to take up this as a career path?
Alex Olson:
We do. Delta Gamma was actually one of the founding partners of Children's Center for the Visually Impaired, and they were one of the five founding partners for five different schools across the nation. We speak to different chapters of Delta Gammas across the nation to try to recruit them shamelessly into the field. We just try to speak at local career fairs. We try to speak early childhood special education teachers around UMKC, at KU, just to try to get them into the field because it is an exciting field be a part of. It's a very rewarding field to be a part of. Once you get your toes into it, people don't want to leave the field. It just is a beautiful place to be.
Kelly Scanlon:
How did you get into the field?
Alex Olson:
I feel into the field in college. I was in a special education major at Florida State University, and I just kind of fell into it. I took Braille as a foreign language.
Kelly Scanlon:
Was that just something you were curious about?
Alex Olson:
Kind of, yeah. I just fell into it and I never turned back. Part of my master's degree is foreign language Braille. I'm a Braille nerd.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, it sounds like we need more people like you. As a Director of Vision Services there at CCVI, what do you do on a daily basis? What are your responsibilities?
Alex Olson:
I help with the intake of all of the referrals that we receive. Through our partnerships with local hospitals, physicians, first steps, school districts, we receive referrals for new patients or new evaluations. I am kind of the first call for families, which is really powerful because I am able to give these parents an answer and a little bit of hope that we're going to give you some answers about how your child is using their vision. Then we get them scheduled for an evaluation with our very talented evaluation team, and then we talk about services and what that might look like within one of our three programs, and how we can set their child up for success. That is a part of my job, but I also go out and do a lot of outreach and a lot of advocacy for our children, but also our programming. I come and talk to local professionals. I'm a centurion, so I'm out networking a lot. I also mentor our teachers of the visually impaired. If they're stuck or if they need help with a vision problem or a vision issue, or need help with a child down the hall or something like that, I get to go and play and be a teacher again, which is always my favorite. Sometimes they let me go in and teach, and those are my very, very favorite days.
Kelly Scanlon:
You mentioned referrals. Do you have to have a referral from a medical professional in order to take advantage of the services you provide?
Alex Olson:
No, we don't have to have a visual diagnosis to do an evaluation. If there is a suspected visual impairment, we can do an evaluation and follow up to get an eye report or a visual diagnosis later, which is very, very powerful for families because a lot of times they suspect something might not be right and they want answers prior to being able to get in with a doctor or an ophthalmologist. If they can get in with us a little bit faster and we can give them answers and strategies to help set up their home, or help make a difference within their natural environment or their school, and help make a difference, that's what we want to do. We want to give them the opportunity to show progress and show what their child can do. Give them something.
Kelly Scanlon:
Unleash all of that potential within that child.
Alex Olson:
Yes.
Kelly Scanlon:
How can our listeners get involved?
Alex Olson:
There's many different ways that listeners can be involved. We have the Trolley Run every April. It's always the last Sunday of April, so by signing up being a runner or a walker in the Trolley Run, creating a team, fundraising for the Trolley Run, that's a wonderful way to be involved. Following us on social media, becoming a donor. We have monthly donor opportunities. We have donor advice fund opportunities. We always are accepting donations. There's many, many ways to get involved. We always accept people coming down to take a tour. We've got some really cute kids on our site, so any time anyone wants to come and take a tour or even if you just have questions, just give us a call.
Kelly Scanlon:
You can visit the website that a lot of your programs are on there, and information about the donor opportunities and so forth, and that's at CCVI, V as in visual, CCVI.org. Alex, thank you so much for being our guest today. We really appreciate all the work that you're doing in the community, and for making a career in an industry that so needs people like you. We appreciate that so much.
Alex Olson:
Thank you so much for having me.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, President of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Alex Olson for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. Through skillful guidance and essential tools, CCVI empowers visually impaired students to reach their highest potential. In addition, Alex's advocacy and mentoring play a crucial role so others can see that teaching students with visual impairments is a viable and rewarding career path. By shedding light on this underserved field, Alex is shaping a future in which both students and educators can experience fulfillment.
Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.