room changes accordingly. The children soon recognize the particular things they enjoy or do not enjoy in the personality of each volunteer. The developing of this ability in each child and the ways in which the child relates to various individuals reveal a great deal; the teacher should be particularly aware of what is happening in these relationships. Volunteers may have much of the parents' attitudes with or without the parents' emotional involvement.

There are various groups of volunteers such as those who help on the outside, those who come for the school day, and those who come in for a specific time and reason, i.e., for music only.

It is well known that a parent often tells the volunteer things not told to the teacher. This volunteer should be as noncommittal to parents as possible and extremely frank with the teacher as to what have been said or heard.

may

Communication between teacher and volunteer, when the children are participating in various activities, should be clearly evident though not necessarily verbal.

The volunteer has definite responsibilities:

1. To know the program.

2. To share with the teacher ideas and questions,

(There should be both.)

3. To be willing to carry out the philosophy of the program or withdraw.

4. To report as accurately as possible observations whether in the classroom or outside. It is desirable that these observations be in written form.

Volunteers do not need to be praised but they do need to be encouraged by recognition of what they are trying to do and of the sacrifices they often make in order to help. They also need to feel important to the program, not only as individuals, but as belonging to a group representing one phase of service.

The teacher should recognize that volunteers present some of the same personnel problems that may exist with a regular staff. They need to know each other and to share their individual ideas.

They need to know what happens on days when they are not there. They need to work out procedures which are followed consistently by all of them.

In a good program the professional staff will conduct meetings with volunteers in which differences of opinion can be vigorously discussed. These discussions should result in improved services to blind children and their parents.

Volunteers often report that rewarding experiences do not always come in anticipated ways. They become more aware of the significance of warm relationships with children. They are awakened to what children can do. They shift their concepts from disability to ability. This understanding, spread in the community, is one of the positive by-products of a volunteer program.

VIII. Dialogue

As with most professional writing in any discipline, the content is developed for the purpose of assisting a child, a parent, a patient, a client, a student, a consumer. Seldom is material included telling how the child, the parent, the patient, or the client may react to what is said about him, for him, or involving him. This kind of reaction can be described and sensed when working with the person for whom or about whom the material is written but seldom can it be expressed better than by the person himself. The child speaks; the patient speaks; the client speaks and the reader becomes excited. In the instance of this book, the prose of the practitioner becomes poetry when the child speaks through one of his gifted

teachers:

"Let's find the child where he is!

We will join him in his world and bring him out of it—.

But you cannot come into my world like I am in my world, for I am fast inside; I live here, but you just look in. You are just a visitor. You know the way back to your world. Even as you twirl with me, or scream with me, or babble with me, you are saying you have found me. But do you know how hopeless I feel? Can you feel that tighter than iron band binding me in? You know the way back-can you really take me back, for I am so tightly bound in. And maybe I am in more than one place, or maybe my house has many rooms, and I can hide in different ones. But if you join me in one, you may quicken me to new life. You found the weak part, and I may come out or maybe I will just open a window a little and let a little light in—not too much at first, it hurts.

Perhaps the key is hidden. Perhaps it is hidden way back in the past. If you find it I can act out all those situations that made me build this wall and lock the gate. But help me while I get them out. The door will unlock, but it will hurt.

Did you know that in some places my wall is quite thin? In fact you may give me many ideas in those places. Teacher is teaching me, and in those places where I am able to hear her, the wall is crumbling...

One day I may forget that I am not supposed to let you know that I know, and when we each realize that the other knows, we can stand together on the same side of the wall.

What am I? Who am I?

We will show you. You are a child. You have arms, legs; these are you. You are a schoolgirl, and these are the things a schoolgirl does. We know you are a schoolgirl, and that is why we give you schoolgirl's work to do.

Why, I must be a schoolgirl-I am treated like one, I must act like one.

But the anger, the anger that builds this wall

Bang it out on the mad-blocks, kick it out, scream it out, act it

Yes, the more I act like a schoolgirl, the more Daddy and Mummy treat me like one, and one day I am not acting, I AM.

But arithmetic! One and one do not make two in my world. Yet if you could truly show me that one and one make two, so that I could experience it and know, then that day I shall have taken a step out of my world, and the more I can believe the reality that is arithmetic, the further I shall leave behind my world where two and two make seven or an egg or a blade of grass. So keep trying, teacher-real experiences, real experiments and fun steve may guide me out-especially if I am just climbing out by one of the other ways you are leading me, and then this authmetic notion comes just when I needed somewhere to put the next step. Only watch me carefully, always watch me, and You will know just when I am ready for the next step.

So you are watching me so that I may teach you what I need to learn. Yes, grass is cool and moist and sweet to eat, and I am rolling in it and the sun is warm and comforting and I am feeling it and the wind is blowing and ruffling my hair and my feet are on the earth and my nose is smelling good air-Then this is ME, and soon I can jump myself for joy and no one will jump me, and soon I can walk and no one will hold me, because it is I who am walking, and I who am jumping, and I who am feeling all these things.

Perhaps I dare try to listen and understand some of the other things THEY are saying and doing to me. Perhaps THEY do not all hurt after all. Perhaps some are glad and happy like sun and grass and a hug and cookies for lunch. But I did not hear what they said before, for I was afraid and THEY were afraid too, for THEY had walls around them, too. THEY have been hurt, and THEY still hurt themselves and they still hurt me . . .

A parents' meeting is a families' meeting is for all of us, and we share our hurt and we recognize our hurt and after a little while we are not scared of our hurt any more-or if we are scared we remember that those others had the same hurts, the same scares. We are bringing them out, and in the end we shall defeat them all, but first we must find them before we can fight them.

Does a little hurt child feel more hurt by feeling the grownups hurts? For maybe he is the cause of the hurts. Could he sometimes play in the other room and the adults can battle alone—could he please-sometimes?

I could not tell when soon or late or coming or going or to be or has been were, for I sat in a crib all day, on a chair all day, in a bed all day and I rocked and I rocked-and I did not know soon from since nor was from will be. But you are setting me free, and I am moving and space and distance are real, and space and distance mean time, and now there is coming and going, now is now and there will be soon, and once there was. And after moving and moving and feeling and feeling, there is space and time, and there is ME in space and in time. Yes, I found space through the echoes, and I found it in the air currents and the