.:Little Secret:.

 Welcome back!

Today I've translated for you a very interesting story 

about a teacher, who had a very peculiar secret...

Original PL article can be found here.

Enjoy!!!

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Translation: Krystian Iwaniuk

Original: Małgorzata Szlachetka/ Gazeta Wyborcza

.:Little Secret:.

Maciej Białek has been a teacher for 18 years – he cannot see for 12. He’s been gradually losing his sight. For the first four years he concealed this fact, because he was afraid of losing his job.

In one of the secondary schools in Bronowice, Poland, a history lesson begins. Attendance list is being checked by one of the students. She marks absences in a class register. Later on, this data will be entered by a school librarian to an electronic register.

A historian, Maciej Białek, tells about reigning of the first Piasts throughout 45 minutes of the lesson. He doesn’t use any notes, and when he wants to draw a contour of Poland he asks students whether a blackboard is wiped clean.

Maciej Białek has been losing his sight gradually. He has worked as a teacher for 18 years, whilst he cannot see for 12. For the first four years he concealed this fact because he was afraid that he will be dismissed. Only few people knew the truth. “I lived in the same neighbourhood where I worked. I’ve known the layout of the school. I’ve just tried to walk slower and be more careful. Nevertheless, it happened a few times that I hit a post, stumbled over a pavement, or a neighbour thought that I was drunk because I tottered a bit,” tells Białek.

He resorted to a simple trick in the school. “I asked a caretaker to nail a hook on a board, which hung in a teacher’s room, at a height of a key no. 12. Thanks to that, I knew, by counting, where are the other ones,” explains Białek.

The whole truth was revealed at a school trip, when Maciej stepped on a dress of one of his colleagues, and hit something else afterwards. He heard that someone said: “You’re walking like a blindman.” Then he told the truth. He didn’t lose his job. Moreover, he has as many duties as the other teachers, with the only difference that he is not a class tutor.

At first sight it is extremely difficult to figure out that the teacher is blind. During a discussion he turns his head towards an interlocutor, he does not use a white cane at school, and when he goes down the stairs he does not even touch a banister. Out on town he does not use any help of a guide. He highlights that young people, especially his students, treat him very well. “We have an agreement that there is no cheating during the tests. But when I catch somebody red-handed, because I will hear a rustle of turning pages, I have no mercy – he gets an F!”

What is a loss of sight? Maciej Białek calls it “the end of the world.” The most difficult thing for him was to learn to ask others for help. Till this day he regrets that he cannot see a screen in the cinema, because until he was six years old he lived by the Grunwald cinema, closed down years ago. In the beginning, he could not get used to the fact that he cannot read. He had to stop his doctoral studies, as well as give up playing bridge. “I was the only blind person who was buying books to wait for better times. My friends chipped in to my first talking computer. Thanks to the advanced technology it is a lot simpler to live: if I want to read a book I scan pages and the computer converts the print into words,” says Maciej Białek. However, equally often it happens that his friends or family read his students' tests to him.

Blind people can also dress themselves to match a colour thanks to a device resembling a remote controller. They press it to their clothes and they can hear its colour.

How to handle a talking computer taught him years ago a man, who came specially for him from Warsaw. The man was blind as well, but despite this issue he brought up three sons only by himself. Moreover, he was not afraid of any physical effort: he liked rock climbing, tried horse riding. “He was a model to me,” admits Maciej.

What Maciej did not have to give up? Such pleasures as cooking for friends or travelling abroad.

For GW Anna Woźniak-Szymańska, a president of Polish Association of the Blind (PZN).

“Unfortunately in Poland only 15-17% out of all blind people has a job. This indicator in Europe reaches 50%. There is a view in Poland which still lingers on – that if somebody is blind he has to stay at home and draw a pension. After all, losing a sight does not mean that someone has lost his knowledge.”