Students rally to save job of blind professor
By Louise Brown © Toronto Star, Canada — Rod Michalko orders his students to sit in the same seats all year. For the blind professor at the University of Toronto, getting to know their names hangs on hearing their voice from the same spot in the room. He holds his talking wristwatch to his ear from time to time to make sure his lecture isn’t running long. When it is time to mark papers, his teaching assistants read them to him and he dictates comments to be written in the margins. And after each class, he asks his assistants whether the students ever seemed bored, “because that’s something I can’t always tell without seeing them. “It’s rare to have a blind professor, and I do some things in a different way than most, but that’s cool – and together with my students we get the job done.” The shaggy-haired sociologist with dark glasses and white cane is at the eye of a storm of protest at the University of Toronto – but should you even use that phrase? As a specialist in disability issues, Michalko wants people to think twice about words they use that can seem insensitive to those of differing abilities…. READ ARTICLE