Virtual learning presents challenges for students with disabilities

It's been an eventful school year as physical classes ended mid-March, and students were left learning virtually. But virtual learning can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities such as blindness and deafness.

At the dining room table, 12-year-old Nelly Evans sits with his mother, Shana McCoy. He's learning how to make a chocolate cake for his classroom assignment. Nelly is nonverbal and diagnosed with cerebral palsy and visual impairment. He attends Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children.

Since mid-March, classes have been held through a screen and teachers are sitting afar, and parents are the hands-on teacher.

"I didn't expect to be a teacher, but I'm trying to be more positive," McCoy said.

COVID-19 changed the routines of students all over the state, but McCoy said it had a drastic effect on students like Nelly.

"I do feel far as the physical aspect of it," McCoy said. "He may lose some things, so that's my greatest fear. As of today, that he may lose things."

McCoy said Nelly would get physical therapy in class and use the school's pool to help his muscles. She doesn't blame the school and is working with Nelly's teachers, who understand the difficulties for parents.

Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children has about 500 students from 33 surrounding counties.

The school's assistant superintendent, Rachelle Rectenwald, has been in education for 29 years and said this is a new situation she never expected to be in. 

"Challenges that we never expected in my nearly 30 years in special education, I have never, ever faced anything like this current pandemic, and it gives me pause in an area of great concern."

Rectenwald said virtual education is not ideal for their students. It's "more challenging than ever," she said. "Our students need hands-on instruction. They need physical care, and you can't provide that remotely. And we know that it's not perfect, but we are trying to do everything we can do."

That concern is also felt by Maureen Reilly-Price, a 30-year veteran teacher at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.

"We really really miss faces to face interaction," Reilly-Price said. "This is just not normal. It's not normal for them. It's becoming more normal work-wise. But we have a very close relationship. It's taking everything I can (to) maintain the relationships."

While the distance is keeping students safe, the Zoom classes provide socialization. School officials and parents hope students will head back into the classroom in the fall. McCoy said, in the meantime while she cooks a cake with her son for the first time, she's focusing on the progress he's made.

“I can give you a timeline from March to now, present, I can say, well, I’ve seen with my own eyes his progress onto different activities,” McCoy said. “I get to see it with my own eyes, and that makes you smile, forget the negative, that makes you smile like, we can do this.”

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