Suddenly blind teacher back at school

SANTA FE (AP) - Teacher Martin Gallegos' life went dark four years ago when, over the course of three days, he went blind. He was 42.

In February, he returned to the classroom — his old classroom, in fact — as a volunteer at Atalaya Elementary School. There, he teaches first-graders to read.

"Statistics say there is 70 percent unemployment in the blind community," he said. "I didn't want to be part of that statistic."

He was teaching kindergarten at Atalaya when, one day in February 2007, he noticed "floaters" impeding his eyesight. Soon thereafter, he experienced tunnel vision, and within another day he was blind because of detached retinas.

"Blindness was a monster that came to visit me," he explained.

His teaching days were over — or so he thought.

Initially distraught and depressed, he got in touch with the New Mexico Commission for the Blind for help. He attended the commission's orientation center in Alamogordo for a year.

He credits his Catholic faith and friends and counselors with helping him to see again — in a very different manner.

Admitting his blindness remains a challenge, he nonetheless chooses to refer to it as a "gift that helps me grow and become a better person."

"I don't like the idea that the word blind means 'without sight,'" he said. "Blind can mean brilliant, nimble, determined. It probably sounds awful to say this challenge has changed my life in some way, for the better."

He's gone back to school and continues to work toward his master's degree in teaching the visually impaired through New Mexico State University. He's learning Braille and uses it to instruct the first-grade students in teacher Laura Sanchez's class in one-on-one reading tutorials. He applied Braille to his own flash cards and uses large alphabet magnets to run reading drills.

Sanchez and Gallegos knew each other when they were earning their teaching degrees at New Mexico Highlands University in the 1980s. Sanchez now teaches in Gallegos' old classroom.

The children have taken to him, Sanchez said, and are often protective of him. His one fear, she said, was what to do in case of a fire drill.

And then the school had a fire drill, and Gallegos asked one of the boys if he would guide Gallegos out. The boy did.

"I told the kids when he started, 'Just like how you are learning to read, he is learning to read again,'" Sanchez said. "The kids are so flexible. They just go with the situation."

Among the children working with Gallegos one day were Roame Barron and Michael Apodaca, who sat patiently at a small table while Gallegos tested their knowledge of vowels. Barron also read aloud the story of Flip and Spots, two seal pups. If she got stuck pronouncing a word, Gallegos would ask her to spell it for him, and then he'd correct the pronunciation for her.

"I never saw a blind person in Santa Fe before I went blind," Gallegos said. "I think my being here helps them (the students) understand a person with disabilities. I know it has helped my self-esteem."

Gallegos credited Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez and Atalaya's principal and assistant principal, Bill Beacham and Abbie Casias, for supporting his decision to come back to school. He said a lot of people have come forward with monetary contributions so he can buy school supplies and adapt them to his needs.

He volunteers at Atalaya every morning for four hours. He believes that someday, he'll be able to work in school again, either as a teacher's aide or as a teacher.

"I'm a fighter — being blind, everything is still possible," he said. "I could have just stayed home and given up on everything. But life doesn't end just because you go blind."

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Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican