Anne Kõiv

Vision Teacher From Estonia Writes of her Experience in the ITP Program

My name is Anne Kõiv. I am from a small Baltic country – Estonia. I work in a state school for the visually impaired in as a teacher of elementary school and as a rehabilitation coordinator. My work is to take care about the quality of the rehabilitation of our school children, to guarantee our visually impaired and blind students with special devices and to organize special courses for our staff and for the teachers/educators from mainstreaming schools/kindergartens.

I am very happy that I got the chance to participate in the International Course for the Rehabilitation Workers of the Visually Impaired at Carroll Center for the Blind in summer 1996. The program offered us was full of activities and I enjoyed this program very much.
The best part of this program was to be introduced with the work of different facilities for the visually impaired. I got a lot of new knowledge and experiences, I learned better to understand and speak English and learned love USA.

The knowledge and experiences I gained during this program I can use in my everyday work. After the visit to Carroll center I feel much more confidence in my professional life. For last 3 years we have carried out 3 long-lasting (160 hours) general courses about the teaching/developing visually impaired children and some two weeks special courses:
Orientation & Mobility, Activities of Daily Living, Low Vision. Often we asked lecturers from abroad (N. Neustadt from Israel, P. Rodrey from Denmark, specialists from Finland and from The Netherlands). Besides we arranged a Low Vision Conference in Estonia and some trips to abroad for our pedagogical staff.

I wish you success in your dedicated work!

With best regards

Anne Kõiv