Why Lyndhurst Orientation & Mobility Instruction?

When I was 14, my family moved to London, where we spent 3 amazing years. Our flat, on the top 2 floors of an 1886 brick Victorian house with a yellow front door, was located in Hampstead at 16 Lyndhurst Gardens. My parents were quick to let me know that I would be responsible for learning to navigate the London Tube & expansive bus system independently. This was obviously years before cell phones & travel apps could be found in our pockets & purses, so as a teen, I learned to read the schedules for the famous red double-decker buses, interpret the Tube map, & “Mind the Gap” along my journey, allowing me to travel all over London on my own. I relished my ability to independently navigate one of the greatest cities in the world with ease.

Thanks to our time spent in London & my love of the theatre, I majored in Theatre Education in college after we returned to the States. I decided to minor in Special Education, so I took an introductory class on blindness, where, each week, we learned about assorted topics related to teaching specific skills to blind students, such as braille & daily living activities. The week we discussed Orientation & Mobility, commonly referred to as O&M, I learned about all of the essential skills people with blindness/low vision need to learn in order to travel safely, independently, & efficiently throughout their environment. This included skills to interpret tactile maps & use nonvisual strategies & techniques to analyze intersections, safely cross streets, & access public transportation. O&M instruction also includes teaching the use of the long white cane. I quickly realized that during my family’s time in London a few years prior, I, too, had learned a set of specific travel skills which had allowed me the freedom to safely roam the city on my own or with my friends.

That initial “blindness basics” class in college barely scratched the surface of blind education, but it was enough to make me reconsider the idea of attempting to make a living as an actor! Learning about the importance of O&M instruction sparked a desire to learn how to teach others to freely navigate both familiar & unfamiliar environments safely & independently, the way I had learned while living in London. Upon graduating with my degree in Theatre, I immediately went on to study Orientation & Mobility for Children. I learned all of the skills that I now teach my students, including how to use the long white cane, interpret traffic sounds at busy intersections before crossing the street, implement various problem-solving strategies along a route, & take the city bus across town to an unfamiliar destination—all while I was under blindfold.

After being uprooted from familiarity & replanted in possibility, I’m confident that had I not spent those years living abroad as a teen, I would not be teaching O&M today. You may not find me acting on a stage in the West End or on Broadway these days, but as Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s a stage,” & my stage really is the world as I empower my students to learn the skills they need to travel, whether that means around the block or around the world—so as a nod to the street where my personal O&M journey began, Lyndhurst Orientation & Mobility Instruction was born.

Sara Zachariah