Napavine Student Earns Award from Washington State School for the Blind

When Trista Heatherington began her final year of elementary school, she could only read a few words in braille — now she reads entire stories.

The Napavine Elementary School sixth-grader was honored by the Washington State School for the Blind Friday morning in Napavine for her accomplishments in learning to read braille.

She was the only student in the state to receive the Rodney B. Humble Outreach Student Award.  

Annie Stockton and Tracy Spohn from Washington State School for the Blind both work with Trista and nominated her for this award. They spoke of her progress this year in orientation and mobility as well as her improvement in reading braille.

“Just this year, she went from reading a few words and now she can read whole stories — like an entire page of braille,” Stockton said. “It’s just been really fantastic to see.”

Washington State School for the Blind Board of Directors Chair Dennis Mathews presented the award to Trista during Napavine Elementary School’s monthly assembly.

“We didn’t have a difficult time selecting,” Mathews said after the assembly.

The award is for students who have made progress in the Expanded Core Curriculum, the additional things a student who is visually impaired must learn.

“When a student is blind, or visually impaired, those are the additional things that they need to learn to compensate for vision loss,” Stockton said. “So things that other sighted kids learn through observation, like social skills or travel skills, or reading skills, they just learn those things by being in their class. Even recreation or leisure skills are learned by observing what other people do. So what our jobs are, as teachers of the visually impaired and orientation/mobility specialists, is to teach those skills directly to a blind, or visually impaired, (person).”

Trista’s mother, Melanie Heatherington, saw her receive the award as well.

“I was just proud of her and how far she has come,” Heatherington said. 

“A couple years ago, they didn’t think she would ever be able to truly read braille or have that ability in any way, shape or form. Now she has so many words she knows. It says a lot about the teachers.”

Spohn, who has worked with Trista for the last three years, said Trista is more confident in navigating than ever before.

“When we go into stores, she is able to solicit assistance from an employee without my help and ask how to buy something,” Spohn said. “If she is at Safeway, she can find customer service by herself and navigate the store with someone. Then we can go into smaller stores and she is very comfortable finding the counter by herself. She can make a purchase on her own. She has grown a lot in those community and travel skills.”

Stockton has worked with Trista since she started at Napavine in kindergarten. 

“Right off the bat we were working with pre-braille skills,” Stockton said. “It did not come easy for her to learn braille. It was years of really working hard and just a real challenge for her to learn it. She had some trouble just feeling the dots which is not easy for anybody, but she always kept working on it. Everything that Mrs. Engel and I came up with to have a new, fun way to learn braille, Trista always was a good sport about it.”

Trista uses an iPad with voiceover, which is a text-to-speech program. She uses the iPad to send emails and write notes as well as listen to books and Pandora.

When asked what her favorite book is, Trista couldn’t pick. “It’s too hard to choose,” she said, laughing.