Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers

In her remarkable memoir, Laura Fogg shares the unique life lessons she learned from the children she has worked with as a teacher of the visually impaired; lessons on patience, hope, doubt, loss, control, judgment and, ultimately, joy. With honesty and insight, Laura relates her experiences as an itinerant teacher in beautiful, rural Mendocino County. The abundant challenges and delights in her life's work are vividly portrayed with humor and tears and each child is seen for who he is--rather than for who he is not. Traveling Blind will bring you a deeper understanding of the struggles, perils and unexpected wonders of learning to negotiate this world without vision. Laura's students reveal that blindness is a difficult and inconvenient condition, but one that does not have to rob people of their humanity, their intelligence or their zest for living. Parents, teachers, caregivers, all who love a child with a visual impair- ment or multiple handicaps, as well as those who have never even thought about blindness, will find stories that resonate in Traveling Blind.

For 35 years Laura Fogg has worked with blind children and their families, traveling throughout beautiful and sometimes treacherous Mendocino County, using her car as an office and her abundant creativity as her main teaching tool. In her remarkable memoir, Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers, Fogg describes the challenges and delights in her life's work while portraying blindness as a condition that can be difficult and inconvenient to deal with, but which does not have to rob people of their humanity, intelligence, or zest for living. Fogg is remarkable in herself, having pioneered the use of the red-tipped white cane—formerly reserved for blind adults—with very young children and with those who have multiple impairments. Combining the best of American ingenuity and pioneering spirit with insight, intelligence, humility and a fierce belief that all humans deserve the right to have a say in the course of their lives, Fogg has guided countless blind children in achieving independence. In Traveling Blind Fogg tells the stories of fifteen of the students whose lives and experiences had the greatest impact on her. In these tales, each child is seen for who he is—rather than for who he is not, and each teaches Laura lessons about patience, hope, doubt, loss, control, judgment and, ultimately, joy. Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers brings a deeper understanding of the struggles, perils and unexpected wonders of learning to negotiate this world without vision. Fogg relates her experiences, both in teaching and in learning to travel blindfolded herself, with honesty and insight, and never reduces a child to someone who should be pitied.

Laura Fogg has worked as an Orientation and Mobility Instructor for the Blind since 1971. With the exception of student teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, her entire career has been in Mendocino County, on California's north coast. She pioneered the use of the white cane with blind students who are very young or who have multiple impairments, and has presented her techniques at a state conference of the CA Association of Orientation & Mobility Specialists. She received a BA from the University of California in Berkeley and an MA at San Francisco State University. She is also a nationally acclaimed visual artist, and has written articles for trade magazines. This is her first book.