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• • "It Really Clicked" — How A Casual Tour Launched A Teacher's Career

    When Stephanie Hays-Dwyer (pictured right) first stepped onto Overbrook’s campus, she expected
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    When Stephanie Hays-Dwyer (pictured right) first stepped onto Overbrook’s campus, she expected nothing more than a polite walk-through. A quick look at the sensory room she’d heard about, maybe pick up an idea or two to take back to her classroom at Royer-Greaves School for the Blind in Paoli. Nothing life-altering.

    Then she met Joann McNamee.

    The now retired, longtime staff member welcomed her warmly and led her down hallways that buzzed with a kind of quiet, intense energy. Moving from classroom to classroom, she saw a future path: the sensory strategies she loved—textures, contrasts, thoughtful adaptation weren’t add-ons here, they were present in the routines, in the materials, in the tiny adjustments teachers made without thinking

    “It really clicked,” she says now. “I saw so many things I wanted to be a part of.

    So when McNamee turned to her at the end of the tour and asked, “Do you want a job?”—a career was born. 

    She joined the staff in 2009, starting in the Whitehall Program, teaching young adults the real stuff—budgeting, cooking, navigating life beyond school. Long evenings. Real-world learning. Seven years of hands-on growth.

    She eventually moved into the high school program, where she now teaches math and science and alongside colleagues like Dan Renz, with support from staff such as Lisa Nolan. Their students thrive on practicality—functional academics, independence, problem-solving that matters outside the building.Which is why her newest project feels so right.

    The idea was conjured during a chat with Early Childhood TVI Alisha Van Bernum and Secondary Program Supervisor Lisa Lisicki: What if we got high schoolers to read braille and tactile storybooks to the early childhood classes. But it has grown into something bigger—an inter-campus rhythm, an exchange of joy. Her students rehearse, bring props, read with purpose. The younger ones trace textures, soak in the attention.

    “It’s connection. It’s confidence. It’s literacy. It’s all of it,” Stephanie says. “And it feels exactly like what we’re supposed to be doing.”

    
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• • An Innovative Reading Program Connects Students of All Ages

    
    Among the challenges facing educators at Overbrook School for the Blind is finding ways to connect
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    Among the challenges facing educators at Overbrook School for the Blind is finding ways to connect students across ages and abilities without carving away the precious minutes needed for instruction. Recently, a small team of teachers solved both problems at once: They launched a reading partnership that lets older students practice literacy, braille communications and social skills — while giving younger classmates something even better than a storybook.

    They get storytellers. Real ones.

    Ones who enter their classrooms holding books they adapted themselves.

    "This started with one student volunteering in an early childhood class,” Secondary teacher Stephanie Hays-Dwyer said. “Then I asked the others if they wanted to try it too. Every hand went up.”

    And just like that, a program was born.

    But in her classroom, nothing happens halfway. Instead of simply reading a book aloud, her students set out to adapt it — page by page, dot by dot — until it felt like something they had made themselves.

    Seventeen-year-old Jake (pictured above) took the Braille work. Every word of it. Sitting with Rebecca Ilniski, the school’s Braille teacher, he brailed the text of Little Pumpkins using uncontracted Braille

    “He did it independently,” Stephanie says. “We helped with spelling when he needed it, but the Braille is all his.” Around him, Dayiana, Haley, Connor, and Malikah added the labels, smoothing them onto the pages with a concentration you only see when kids know their work matters. They practiced for weeks. Reading aloud. Feeling the patterns beneath their fingers. Memorizing the rhythms of the story until they could deliver the lines without looking.

    And when they finally walked into the early childhood classroom, carrying their books and a bag full of tactile props — 5 tiny pumpkins — the room warmed instantly

    “We wanted it to be multisensory,” Stephanie says. “If you couldn’t see the pictures, you could hold a pumpkin. If the Braille was new to you, you could follow along by listening.” The moment did what good moments do: it made everyone feel like they belonged there.

    “It’s not just reading practice,” Stephanie says. “It’s confidence. Communication. It’s them realizing they have something to offer and someone who wants to hear it.”

    The plan now is to continue through the year — a new story each month, a new set of props, a new chance for these students to lead. November brought I Love Fall, a book that calls for leaves, fabric, maybe even more sound effects.

    Jake put braille on that one, too. He meets with Ms. Rebecca twice a week, strengthening skills that no longer feel abstract or theoretical. They have purpose now. Someone is waiting on the other end of every dot he writes.

    And that, really, is the point.

    In a school built on independence, these shared readings have created something more — a bridge. Older students offering their emerging skills. Younger ones opening their hands to receive them

    No score, charts or tests needed. Just the steady effort from kids connecting the, well... dots!

    
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