21 years at the 21st chromosome
For 10 years, as a special education teacher, I taught students with multiple disabilities everything from academics to job skills. One such student was an exceptional young man born in the late 1960s and diagnosed with Down syndrome, a heart condition and a visual impairment. Down syndrome results from inheriting a third copy of the 21st chromosome, rather than just the usual pair. It can cause reduced IQ, vision loss, hearing loss, speech impairments, heart defects, floppy muscle tone and fine motor difficulties. But this unforgettable child taught me a great deal about vision, intelligence, perseverance and the sheer joy of living.
I met Morgan Allan when he was in middle school. He looked like a Raggedy Andy doll with shiny brown hair. His little face and head were just that round, his nose was a button, his smile was a perfect semicircle, and his eyes looked small and shiny beneath his bottle-thick glasses. Morgan came to my resource room three times weekly. His face lit up upon entering the room, and his brown almond-shaped eyes grew round and shone amber when he laughed at a pleasantry. Once he began his work, his face sobered and he pursed his lips. If I made an off-topic remark, he uncurled his mouth again and giggled, “That’s silly.”
Morgan’s visual impairment affected his schoolwork in many ways. He hunched like a half-drawn turtle to labor over any close-vision task. It took him three years to learn how to discriminate lowercase b from d. As for practical math, he couldn’t see play coins well, let alone pictures of coins. He learned to sort real coins by scratching the edges for touch cues.
Every task was difficult for Morgan, yet he found joy in the moment. I remember his delight when I once set out purple and yellow plums as thanks for the students’ good work. He feasted on them, with bright juice running down both fists.
Continue read our in-depth article in the January – February 2011 issue of Celebrate Life Magazine!
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