North Tonawanda Student Shares with BOCES Students Life As Being Visually Impaired
Above: Nina Marranca and her service dog Viggo with Roy Hart Learning Center Coordinator Paulette Hamilton-Koehler and Sawyer Rotella.
North Tonawanda senior, Nina Marranca, recently spent some time at the Orleans/Niagara BOCES’ Royalton-Hartland Learning Center with her Vision teacher Dawn Quinn. She also brought along a special friend, Viggo, who is her service/guide dog. Viggo, a yellow lab, has been trained from a puppy to lead blind or visually impaired people around obstacles.
Nina has been working with her vision teacher Dawn Quinn since she was in kindergarten. Ms. Quinn, who works at BOCES, asked her if she would like to talk to the young students about her life, how Viggo assists her in getting around and answer any questions the children had. Nina enthusiastically agreed and spent a morning at the school.
She told the classes she recently received Viggo. “I went to a school to get him in April. When I got there, he licked me all over and we started training together. A family raised and trained him for a year and a half before that. They volunteered their time and they didn’t get any money to raise my puppy. They had to give him back to the school where they completed his initial training. I don’t know how the family did that because they got really attached. I still talk to them and I send them pictures of Viggo and keep them up to date.”
Some of the students asked Nina why she was blind. “When I was born, my eye didn’t grow enough in comparison to everything else. That’s why I can’t see. I have had a lot of surgeries throughout the years,” she told the students. She told the students she can’t use her eyes to read like they do or be able to see if it is okay to cross the street. When she was asked if she wishes she wasn’t born blind, she said, "No," which surprised many of the students. “My eyes don’t work the same way that yours do. But I like to read, write and sing and I am learning to play guitar from Ms. Quinn. So basically all the normal stuff that everyone else does. I just do things a little bit different.”
She has been with Ms. Quinn for 13 years and she was the one who taught her how to read braille. One of the students asked her how long it took her to learn braille and she compared it to them learning how to read. “I think it took me about a year. I think I learned it quicker because I like to read.” She also uses a BrailleNote device which is a bit like a computer. “I do a lot of my school work on it. I can play on it and write on it. It prints out so my teachers can see what I did on homework or tests.” The students got to examine it up close when Nina passed it around.
One of the reasons Nina came to the Royalton-Hartland Learning Center was to talk about her experience from using a cane to using a service dog. She says that Viggo helps her a lot and he keeps her safe by finding things that people don’t think about, like stairs or a curb on a street or a door. “When he wears his harness, he knows that it is time to work. You should not pet a service dog when they are working because it distracts them. It could lead to me getting hurt or him getting hurt. Service dogs come in a lot of different shapes, sizes and breeds. They help people with disabilities. When I take off his harness, we play together.”
At the end of her visit, she took off his harness and let the students take turns petting him and giving him dog treats. Nina shared that she is very excited about her future. “I am an honors student. I want to go to college to be a writer. I have been accepted into Medaille College and Daemen College and I am waiting on decisions from Harvard and Yale.”
Royalton-Hartland Learning Center Coordinator, Paulette Hamilton-Koehler, said the students were fascinated with Nina and Viggo. “All of them sat completely still and listened to her, which is really amazing. I think it helped with the students’ comfort levels with someone who has this disability and how to interact with them and their service dog. The staff and students were really impressed with her and I think it was a great message that she gave our students; how blindness is not a setback for her and how she faces challenges head-on.”