Teacher
hears all, because she has to
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 • BY VICTORIA ST.
MARTIN AND SULEMAN DIN • Star-Ledger
Staff
Phyllis Volker hasn't seen her classroom in more than 30
years. But the seventh-grade teacher is there every
day.
Each morning Volker walks into her classroom at Iselin
Middle School in Woodbridge with her Seeing Eye dog, Nate.
She lets the harness loose, and the golden retriever
scampers off under a desk with his toys and rug.
Volker, 57, doesn't have to rely on Nate once inside the
classroom. The district has not changed or rearranged it in
three decades.
"I know my classroom," says Volker. "I saw it 30 years
ago."
Before she begins class, she closes the door behind her,
to mask distant conversations. Over the years, Volker
explains, her hearing has become so attuned that a student
clicking his pen in a silent classroom sounds like a bomb
going off.
Volker's desk is an old-fashioned typing desk; her
wooden seat creaks. The blackboard is clean, and thank
goodness they changed to yellow chalk, she says. It doesn't
feel as gritty as the white chalk she used when she was a
student.
Volker says hello to her students and to her teaching
aide of 11 years, Michelle Sobeski. Then she sits down. For
the next 90 minutes, the language arts teacher will discuss
writing and reading.
The routine is the same every day -- an ordinary routine
for an extraordinary teacher, who last week was named
Middlesex County teacher of the year.
"She has overcome some great hurdles and adversity,"
said Vincent Smith, superintendent of the Woodbridge
Township School District. "She is not only a great teacher
but a great person as well, with a good heart. A good person
overall."
Volker began teaching at Iselin in the September
following her graduation from Douglass College at Rutgers
University in 1969.
Five years into her career, Volker, a juvenile diabetic,
became blind from diabetic retinopathy, a disease that
damages the blood cells of the retina.
Then 27 years old, Volker knew she wanted to continue
teaching.
After taking six months off to train with the New Jersey
Commission for the Blind, Volker returned to the classroom
in February 1976.
Teaching again, though, took time. At first, Volker let
her teacher's aides ask students the questions, but she felt
too much "out of the loop."
Volker now has a method. At the beginning of the year,
she has students sit in alphabetical order and speak their
names, so she can hear their voices. She will ask silly
questions, to attach memories to those students.
She walks up and down the aisles, asking each student to
answer. Soon enough she has them all down, and the students
are free to switch seats.
Most of Volker's classroom material, such as books and
short stories, are on cassettes. For a lesson plan, Volker
relies on a talking computer, and on Sobeski.
"She is tremendous," Volker said. "I think most of all
-- as helpful as she is with materials and assignments --
she gives me the visual feedback from the students, which is
what I need more than anything."
In a session on writing a memoir, Sobeski draws a heart
on the blackboard. Volker talks about things she'd like to
write about: Nate, her nieces, her summers at Lake
Hopatcong, her blindness. Sobeski writes them inside the
heart. It's a "heart map," meant to show students how to map
out their ideas.
Such methods earned Volker the county's Teacher of the
Year award.
Sarah Derollo, another language arts teacher at the
school, said her eyes teared up when she heard Volker's name
announced during the ceremony last Friday.
"She was my teacher 10 years ago," said Derollo, 23. "I
have loved English ever since seventh grade. She taught me
how to be a better teacher. She let us open up and talk
about the message in a story. That was a powerful and
amazing experience."
School Principal Jacqueline Miller said Volker is an
inspiration to all. "From being in the resource room to
learning new material and promoting the community," she
said, "Volker works with the whole student, academic as well
as social. She makes them aware of the world around
them."
To help students see their world, she teaches them her
own visual process.
"I make pictures in my mind," she said. "I have no idea
if they are real or not. But I don't have a blank screen in
my mind."
Since losing her sight, Volker said the look on a
child's face is the thing she misses the most.
"Not just the questions but their smiles, too."
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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