School for the Blind in NJ starts student newspaper

From The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. In the picture, Judy Ortman, interim executive director of the Concordia Learning Center, is interviewed by student Indigo Estevez from Newark for the school paper.

There's a buzz in the newsroom of a New Jersey start-up newspaper, and not a whisper of the falling revenue, layoffs and closures buffeting the industry.

Reporter Indigo Estevez has just wrapped up an interview with an official regarding a school name change, her questions typed in advance and printed large enough for her to read.

Ashley Kivelier questions her subject from her wheelchair, probing Mary Dixon about her 43-year career at the same Hudson County school. In the back of the newsroom, Omar Tzic types his tape-recorded notes on a computer that speaks aloud every letter, tab and backspace the blind 11-year-old enters on the keyboard.

Indeed, this is no ordinary shop. It's a classroom that turns newsroom twice weekly for the 16-member staff of The Student Voice, a periodical from Concordia Learning Center at St. Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City.

The newspaper debuted last month and students are working feverishly to produce their second edition. The paper is a first at the state's only school for blind students with multiple disabilities. But similar papers have cropped up nationwide at schools for the blind, as technology races forward to help students clear once-daunting hurdles.

"When I started doing it, it was awesome," Estevez, 15, of Newark, said of her reporting position after an interview with interim school executive director Judy Ortman. "I love it. I asked her what made her want to change our school name. Her response was .¤.¤. 'We need to grow and change, so we're changing our school name.'"

Growth and change have long been staples at St. Joseph's, which opened in 1891. But today, those themes are increasingly vital, with educators using new technology to prepare disabled students for fields the sighted world once considered them incapable of doing.

An assortment of screen-reading computer software, like JAWS for Windows, and other advances have let the children bridge wide opportunity gaps.

But public perception of abilities has not kept pace with technology, several advocates for the blind said.

"With the appropriate training and opportunity, blind people could do just about anything," said Quintina Singleton, vice president of the New Jersey Association of Blind Students and a 2006 graduate of Kean University, where her frequent dean's list honors seemed to baffle her sighted classmates.

"It really is about lack of education and information," Singleton said. "And that's our job as blind students, to educate people."

Joe Ruffalo, president of the National Federation of the Blind of New Jersey, said "blindness does not have to be the tragedy that sighted people think it is."

"If these students think they can do it, they probably will do it," said Ruffalo, adding that the St. Joseph's project would help students gain responsibility, leadership skills and teach them to work collectively. "Some of these students may not end up doing newspapers but the confidence they gain from this experience will never be equaled."
And those skills are easily transferable, said Annemarie Cooke, vice president for sales and administration at De Witt & Associates, a Midland Park firm that uses new technologies to train people with vision loss.

"The skills you develop as a reporter just carry you through an array of different careers," said Cooke, who spent 17 years covering police and courts for the Home News, as her vision eroded from Juvenile Macular Degeneration.

Cooke is proof that while reporting, photography and newspaper production may be new to St. Joseph students, the kids aren't exactly pioneers.

Ed Lucas, an education development director at the school, is something of a legend in sports journalism. The Jersey City native lost his sight as a child during a 1951 baseball game accident, but he has spent five decades as a reporter and broadcaster on the New York sports scene.

"People may be against you or feel that you can't do it, but you can't give up," Lucas said.

In the Concordia newsroom, student Tamillah Alexander, 20, of Irvington, who is about to graduate, was using a portable "Brailler," a Braille typewriter, to finish an article about teachers.

The newspaper is the brainchild of Nidia Cartagena, a technology coordinator at St. Joseph's for 22 years. She led older students on a project to write books for 3-year-olds, but when they finished two books last year they went searching for something more.

"As I was home one day, I started thinking about, 'Well, how about a student newspaper,'" Cartagena said. "It will be the students' writing, no staff will write, with them (students) telling us what they're thinking."

The idea won over the children, who came up with a range of story ideas, everything from a feature on students living in the school's residential program to a first-person piece from a new student.

"I wanted to stop people from polluting the rivers and save the environment," said reporter Zyshon Goldsmith, a 10-year-old from Newark who tapes interviews and types up his notes on a Brailler. "So I figured I should write a story about polluted rivers."
R>Tzic, the student working with the speaking computer, expressed an interest in the presidential race and confirmed he'd like to one day write about politics. But he didn't stop there.

"I want to be the president some day," he said. "You gonna vote for me?"