Yellowknife (Oct 27/06) - Yellowknife educators are receiving some insight this week into how to help visually impaired students participate in athletics.

Teachers will have an opportunity to take part in a workshop today put on by Susan Ponchillia. An educator from Western Michigan University, she specializes in working with visually impaired students.

Robert Dryneck takes part in the Mobile Rehabilitation Program in Rae. Dryneck, who is from Yellowknife, was attending the course to help him with his low-vision disability. - Jessica Klinkenberg/NNSL photo

"There's a greater need for services," said Ponchillia, following a workshop in Bechoko (Rae-Edzo).

She spent two weeks in the Tlicho community working with people with low-vision and blindness from various NWT communities.

Ponchillia's workshop in the capital will cater to teachers from both school boards.

It will centre around sports and recreation workshops that she's been doing in the United States.

"We have a pretty good system," she said of the camp she holds in the U.S. "We did have a young Dogrib teenager come to our camp."

Ponchillia's training will provide teachers from both school systems with an understanding of what it's like to learn with a visual impediment.

"One of the things we're going to do is simulate blindness or low vision," she said. "The teachers then are shown how we teach blind children to do basic skills, like running, jumping, hopping."

Ponchillia said it's important to involve people with low vision and blindness in sports because it builds self-esteem and fitness.

Behchoko's Sonya Rey, who has low vision and was attending the workshop in Rae, said the training would be a great idea. "It will bring out their natural character. A lot of disabled people hide their character," she said.

Rey said that visually impaired individuals are often scared to be themselves, and sports and recreation would give them the confidence to break out of the shells they're in.

"What sports and recreation means to me is just to bring out their real character, just to say and do whatever they want," said Rey.

Ponchillia has been coming to the North since the 1980s, and has been volunteering her time over the last two weeks to help people with vision loss in the territory.

"I want to give back, I want to give as much as I receive," said Ponchillia.

Ponchillia said she is grateful to the Bechoko community for helping her with research for her doctorate thesis on Retinitis Punctata Albescens (RPA) and Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). Both conditions result in progressive loss of vision.

Her research centred on Bechoko because 25 per cent of the population either has the recessive gene for RP or RPA - 500-times the global rate of the genetic condition.

After her sessions in Yellowknife, Ponchillia will go back before returning home to Michigan.