Would a disability stop you working?

It’s a maths lesson and after a group activity it’s time to go through the workbooks. Like many other primary teachers, Julie Genovesa helps the children individually with the exercises. Unlike many others, the pupils have to come to her.

For Julie this is one of the most frustrating parts of teaching. “I don’t like not being able to turn the pages of their books or show them how to lay a sum out,” she says. “I would like to be able to wander up to them instead of them having to come up to me.”

Julie has motor neurone disease (MND), a condition that destroys the cells that control her muscles. She has no movement below the neck, uses a wheelchair and breathes through a ventilator, but she is determined to carry on teaching as long as she can. “It didn’t occur to me not to work. I’m not a martyr; I just adore my job.”

Julie was diagnosed with MND four years ago after a colleague pointed out that she was always out of breath when she reached her first-floor classroom, at Buttsbury Juniors in Billericay, Essex.

After an exhaustive series of tests, she was told she had a progressive and incurable form of the disease. She was given 18 months to two years to live. “It was a horrible shock. Everything was good in our lives. I had a six-year-old son, a job that I loved, and then bang, this happens,” says Julie, 51.

Her GP wanted to sign her off permanently but Julie was determined to carry on. After speaking to Vaughan Collier, the headteacher, it was agreed that she would come back to work three days a week, Monday to Wednesday. She would have a teaching assistant for afternoons as well as mornings, and move to a downstairs classroom.

At that stage Julie was using a walking stick. The school already had a disabled toilet and a ramp installed for a former pupil. “There were barriers, but I worked on the supposition that if she was fit to teach medically, there was no reason for her not to continue,” Vaughan says.

Julie’s return to work – three months after diagnosis – didn’t start well, though. She tripped and split her head open on her first day back. On another occasion, she fell down in the toilet and a colleague had to kick open the door.

Within six months she realised that she could not postpone it any longer and
opted to use a wheelchair. “It wasn’t fair on the children to see Miss fall over,” she says.

A voice-activated computer provided by the school means Julie can surf the internet looking for resources and ideas, and her desk is raised so the wheelchair can fit underneath it. Fortunately, the colleague who shares her Year 4 class is very tall.

Wendy Wright, Julie’s teaching assistant (TA), operates the whiteboard, wheels Julie around the classroom and writes down Julie’s comments on homework.

“Wendy is not a normal TA. She is my hands and my legs,” Julie says.

“We often think on the same wavelength because we’ve been working together so long,” Wendy adds.
Julie went on to the ventilator full-time two years ago. She lets the children handle it so it doesn’t scare them. “Children are adaptable and accepting. The main thing they ask is how I go to the toilet. I just say: ‘Like everybody else’,” she says.

While Julie’s struggle was to get back into the classroom, for Sab Sahota-Lyons the challenge was to get there in the first place. At the age of 8, Sab contracted Still’s Disease, a form of arthritis that can inflame the eye as well as joints. By 18, she needed a scribe to do her A-levels. By 22, she was almost completely blind.

She wasn’t going to give up on her dream of becoming a teacher, though. “I never stopped to think that it might be difficult. That was what I wanted to do and the fact that people said I wouldn’t be able to made me more determined,” she says.

She got three interviews from 18 applications but acknowledges that she was lucky enough to be championed by the then head of English at the Priory School in Lewes, East Sussex. Her six-month placement at Priory during her PGCE at Chichester University proved she could manage in the classroom. The only setback was an interview at another school, where the head asked if she was worried about walking into walls. “I thought: ‘What a stupid question,’ but I just said: ‘No, of course not’,” says Sab, who uses a cane but has resisted getting a guide dog for fear of becoming too reliant on it.

Sab, 36 and a mother of three, is in her 12th year at Priory, where she is now head of English and a head of house, after a stint as head of year.

She doesn’t expect the children to be nicer to her than to other teachers, but those who think they can get away with more in her classroom are often in for a rude awakening. “My hearing is very good so I know what is going on,” she says.

“I can make out I’m not concentrating and sometimes the kids wonder whether I can actually see.”

She can tell if a pupil is still wearing a coat; she can hear them eating; she recognises voices quickly; and she knows whether someone is standing up or sitting down.

It takes her about a week to get to know all the children’s names and voices, so she knows who is playing up and who is working quietly. She’s always worked alone in the class, giving her self-reliance.

Perhaps because she can’t write things down, her memory is particularly good, which helps her to be consistent. “I never, ever forget, and discipline is not an issue.”

Children compete for the honour to be her “eyes” in each lesson, picking pupils to answer questions, with strict instructions not to keep choosing the same people and to alternate the sexes.

Reaction from parents has been positive, apart from the one in Sab’s first term who complained that a blind teacher would be ineffective. “It upset me because it was so personal and there was nothing I could do about it,” she says. The pupil stayed in her class for the next four years, though, and his mother didn’t complain again. “I got a lot of support from the school and just went back to work. It would take a lot to upset me now.”

Read more stories in this week's TES Magazine, out Friday March 28