OUR NEIGHBORS: Palmer girl measures success dot by dot

PALMER — After a strong finish in a reading competition in California, a Butte elementary third grader is back at school playing her recorder, swinging with her friends at recess and reading chapter books.

Taylor Thompson said she hopes to learn to read music soon. Having mastered literary Braille, she is confident she can handle Braille music.

Taylor, 8 (“almost 9”), finished in the top one-third of contestants in both the speed and comprehension categories of last summer’s reading competition at the Braille Institute in Burbank.

“I thought it was going to be hard, but it was really easy,” Taylor said. “It’s kind of boring. You hear all the other Braillers and you can’t hear your own and you can’t concentrate.”

She entered the contest at the urging of her vision teacher Jacinda Danner, who helps vision-impaired students across the Mat-Su Borough School District.

Taylor’s mother, Brandee Vandermark, said she encourages Taylor, who is entirely blind, to be involved in activities and competitions because it expands her horizons. A competition for blind students gives Taylor a chance to meet other students like her.

“It’s the experience meeting people who are visually impaired — knowing there are things out there she can do,” Vandermark explained.

At the Braille contest Vandermark and her mother, Teresa Clarke, who helps care for Taylor, were able to meet college students and graduates who are blind. That helps them guide Taylor as she looks to the future.

They also had a chance to review new technologies that put the world at the fingertips of the blind.

“She will have access to everything,” Vandermark said.

While there are some adaptations for Taylor’s classroom education, her school day is normal in many ways. She is quick to talk about her friends. Her favorite subject at school: gym.

“My favorite thing to do is recess,” she said. “You can spend time with your friends.”

She slides down poles and slides, swings, hangs on and jumps off “stuff.” She ran the cross country route last school year. That, she didn’t like. Too much work.

Nor does she particularly like reading.

“I like being read to but I don’t like reading myself,” Taylor said. “But at school, it’s called ‘free choice’ but you have to be reading, even if it’s the bottom of your shoe.”

While her teacher, Dwight Homstad, may exhort most students to keep their eyes on their reading, “He knows I am reading if I am touching the book,” Taylor said. “Plus,” she said, continuing her litany of reasons not to like reading, “I don’t like the pokey feeling of Braille.”

Braille uses a six-dot system to delineate the alphabet and numbers. Raised dots in 64 possible combinations spell out sentences.

She said she doesn’t know how she can be such a good Braille reader without liking to read.

“I guess I’m just talented,” Taylor said.

Her classroom teacher agrees.

“When I watch her read, it’s almost like magic,” Homstad said, noting she reads about 80 to 90 words a minute. “She’s really a remarkable young lady.”

And not just because of her reading, but because she spends virtually the entire school day doing what her classmates do. About the only exception, Homstad said, is she works on her Braille and mobility issues while her classmates study cursive writing.

Homstad gives his lesson plans each Friday to Danner and classroom aide Mary Parish, and they Braille out materials and make adaptations to help Taylor have as good a learning experience as her classmates.

Vandermark said the school and the school district have been a tremendous help, along with the preschool program at SESA in Anchorage and the Anchorage Lions Club, which helped fund Taylor’s California trip and her experience at Camp Abilities.

Taylor has tried T-ball, gone hiking, rock wall climbing, tandem biking, swimming and archery. She is also a veteran in the dog show ring with her champion Chihuahua “Lexie.”

Whether at school, on trips or at Kevin and Brandee Vandermark’s home in Palmer, with sister 14-year-old Sierra Vandermark, Taylor’s horizons are always being expanded, her grandmother said.

Sometimes it takes some urging for her to try new things, but as often, it’s Taylor’s idea, her mother said.

“A lot of it she wants to do it on her own — like every other kid does,” Brandee Vandermark said.

While septo-optic dysplasia and optic nerves that don’t connect to her brain mean Taylor has been blind since birth, she looks forward to a life that seems normal to her.

“I know when I grow up, my kids, I am going to try to get them to show dogs,” she said. “I want to be a mom — have a good house, clean.”

She has short-term ambitions, too.

“I want to learn to play the clarinet — no, flute,” she corrects herself. “It can’t be much harder than the recorder.”