NM teacher who lost eyesight back in classroom

SANTA FE, N.M. — Teacher Martin Gallegos' life went dark four years ago when, over the course of three days, he went blind. He was 42.

In February, he returned to the classroom — his old classroom, in fact — as a volunteer at Atalaya Elementary School. There, he teaches first-graders to read.

"Statistics say there is 70 percent unemployment in the blind community," he said. "I didn't want to be part of that statistic."

He was teaching kindergarten at Atalaya when, one day in February 2007, he noticed "floaters" impeding his eyesight. Soon thereafter, he experienced tunnel vision, and within another day he was blind because of detached retinas.

"Blindness was a monster that came to visit me," he explained.

His teaching days were over — or so he thought.

Initially distraught and depressed, he got in touch with the New Mexico Commission for the Blind for help. He attended the commission's orientation center in Alamogordo for a year.

He credits his Catholic faith and friends and counselors with helping him to see again — in a very different manner.

Admitting his blindness remains a challenge, he nonetheless chooses to refer to it as a "gift that helps me grow and become a better person."

"I don't like the idea that the word blind means 'without sight,'" he said. "Blind can mean brilliant, nimble, determined. It probably sounds awful to say this challenge has changed my life in some way, for the better."

He's gone back to school and continues to work toward his master's degree in teaching the visually impaired through New Mexico State University. He's learning Braille and uses it to instruct the first-grade students in teacher Laura Sanchez's class in one-on-one reading tutorials. He applied Braille to his own flash cards and uses large alphabet magnets to run reading drills.

Sanchez and Gallegos knew each other when they were earning their teaching degrees at New Mexico Highlands University in the 1980s. Sanchez now teaches in Gallegos' old classroom.

The children have taken to him, Sanchez said, and are often protective of him. His one fear, she said, was what to do in case of a fire drill.

And then the school had a fire drill, and Gallegos asked one of the boys if he would guide Gallegos out. The boy did.