POTTSTOWN — A third-grader at Elizabeth B. Barth Elementary School, Marvin Pearson spends his school day doing a lot of what his classmates do. He learns multiplication and practices reading chapter books. He enjoys gym class. He tells jokes and talks about football with his friends.

But unlike any of his schoolmates, Marvin, 9, also devotes a portion of every school day to learning Braille, improving his listening skills and focusing on how to manage in a world he cannot see or hear.

“Last year I was reading print and hearing, and this year I am reading Braille, using a cane, wearing a hearing aid and a FM system,” Marvin said, reading aloud an essay about his life after his recent sight and hearing loss.

Last year, in second grade, for a reason that’s still not known by Marvin’s family or teachers, Marvin began to experience problems with his vision. He had trouble seeing what the teacher wrote on the chalkboard and reading the print books to which he’d just been introduced.

In addition to his failing vision, Marvin started to slowly lose his hearing. Eventually Marvin’s world went completely dark, and his hearing became so minimal he now uses a hearing aid and FM system to help make sounds audible.

Although he’s living in a world that’s gone dark and quiet around him, Marvin’s personality and smile shine as loudly and brightly as ever, as he continues to be taught at Barth, side by side with his classmates.

“Tyler, you’re going to try to get everyone right,” Marvin said encouragingly to his classmate Tyler Royce while they worked together reviewing multi

plication problems during a classroom lesson. Marvin read the problems aloud from a book written in Braille. He and Tyler took turns answering the problems and Tyler jotted down the answers to the questions on a sheet of lined paper.

“Nine times seven,” Marvin said, indicating a problem for Tyler to answer. “Want me to give you a hint?”

Working together, Marvin and Tyler completed the task like every other pair of students in the classroom.

Marvin’s teachers agree that he can do everything other children can with a few modifications.

“Anything that his sighted peers have, my goal is for him to have that, too,” Terri Moyer-Nyce, materials specialist said. “It’s differentiated, we adapt it. We change it to make it work for him.”

Moyer-Nyce acts as Marvin’s eyes throughout his school day. She stays with him as he transitions between his typical classroom instruction and the one-on-one instruction he’s been receiving since the beginning of the school year. It’s during the one-on-one instruction where Marvin learns Braille, works to improve his listening skills and practices mathematics using tools like an abacus that his sighted peers don’t utilize.

Moyer-Nyce said often times children who are in Marvin’s shoes, whose circumstances put stress on their ability to learn in a typical classroom setting, are taken from their public school and given specialized instruction.

Why then is Marvin still being taught in a public school?

“Because this is the real world,” Moyer-Nyce said. “When he leaves a public school he’ll have everything he needs.”

It’s not just through a strong-will that Marvin has been able to stay in a public school setting. It’s also because of the support the teachers and administration at Barth offer Marvin which enable him to continue excelling academically and socially, even as he adjusts to a new world.

“The thing I love about Barth is they embrace Marvin,” Moyer-Nyce said. “The teachers, their hearts are on their sleeve.

“This is a great lesson in tolerance and acceptance for everyone,” she said.

In addition to Moyer-Nyce and Marvin’s third grade classroom teacher, Jill Pinder, Marvin works with several specialists each week who help him sharpen the different skill sets he will need to live in a world of seeing and hearing people.

Through learning, Marvin is also providing his teachers, Peggy Jarvis, his itinerant hearing support teacher; Marsha Kita, his vision teacher; and Stan Rybicki, his orientation and mobility specialist, with an opportunity to grow as educators.

Neither Jarvis nor Kita have worked with a student who is both blind and nearly deaf before, and Rybicki said Marvin’s circumstances are not typical of most of his students.

Jarvis explained that most people who experience hearing loss can compensate through their use of vision, and vice versa.

Marvin, however, cannot rely on that possibility. So both Jarvis and Kita must think outside the box.

Making their jobs a bit easier, Marvin picks things up quickly, and he has spent most of his life living with the ability to see and hear.

“Marvin is a quick learner,” Jarvis said. “He’s done a lot of natural coping skills” because he was once able to see and hear.

Marvin also challenges Pinder, his classroom teacher.

“I’m a visual person,” she said, admitting that she was anxious at the start of the school year about what would be expected of her and how she would have to adjust to teaching a student who couldn’t see her or his work.

“I learned that you have to be vocal,” Pinder said.

She’s also learned to appreciate the things she has.

“It makes you stop and think you take a lot for granted,” Pinder said. But, “there’s nothing he can’t do.”

Pinder added that her classroom has learned to be aware of differences, but that no one is better or worse off because of their differences.

And Moyer-Nyce said that Marvin is aware that he’s different, but “the big thing with Marvin is he doesn’t identify himself as a blind person,” she said. “He know’s he’s blind, he knows he has a hearing problem, but he’s still Marvin.

“He’s trying to find a different way to do what he did before,” Moyer-Nyce said. “The biggest thing is his attitude. His drive keeps him going to do things on his own.”

While his sight may be completely gone and his hearing is diminishing, Marvin has not lost his sense of humor or desire to make others smile and laugh.

“He’s so funny, he’s quite a character,” Kita, Marvin’s vision teacher, said.

Kita works with Marvin in a learning space set up for him at the end of a second floor hallway where fourth- and fifth-graders frequently walk by.

“He is amazing,” Kita said of Marvin’s ability to learn and keep an upbeat attitude. “There’s always something new to learn and every time we introduce something new a lot of kids are like ‘Ugh, why do we have to do this?’ But he’s never once said ‘I don’t want to do this. Why do I have to do this?’ He’s never once been negative.”

She recalled when he told her the worst thing that ever happened to him was when he played in a football game and didn’t score a touchdown, and this was after he had lost his sight. She said his spirit is contagious, and other students can learn from his example.

“What they learn from him is to never quit,” Kita said.

Rybicki, his orientation and mobility specialist, agreed with the idea that Marvin needs to learn to function in a world that’s not designed for people who cannot see or hear.

“He does mobility every day and he’ll be doing this his whole life” Rybicki said. He noted that it’s important for Marvin to learn the problem solving skills that come along with orientating himself with his surroundings because “20 years from now he may be living in a different city.”

In addition to the lessons Marvin can offer students and teachers at Barth, he is teaching them something tangible.

After students began to voice their curiosity over what Marvin was doing when they saw him working on Braille, Marvin’s teachers came up with an idea to create Braille Pals where Marvin could correspond with students by writing letters to them in Braille, and they could write back in print, which Moyer-Nyce translates into Braille for him.

“I feel bad that you’re blind,” one boy wrote in a letter to Marvin.

“I don’t feel bad that I’m blind, but I’m glad that you care for me. You are a true friend,” Marvin replied in a letter written in Braille.

Marvin said he enjoyed playing football before he lost his sight. He still plays, but with friends who understand a different set of rules and using a ball that has a bell.

He has decided that he wants to help children like him when he grows up.

“I want to go to college to become a vision teacher,” Marvin said, continuing to read from his essay. “No one can tell me that I can’t go to college, believe me, yes I can. Even though I am blind, I can help people. I can teach other students Braille so they can read and write.

“I want to help blind students feel good about their work and themselves. I just want my students to feel great,” Marvin said. “Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will land on the stars.”

Hopefully Marvin will never lose sight of his dreams.