Ben Tang, Caroline McEnnis

The Blind Youth Slam, which unfolded from July 31 to August 4, 2007 on Hopkins’ Homewood campus, involved 200 blind and low-vision high school students from across the country. The students were matched with 70 adult mentors from the blind community from a variety of professional backgrounds, as well as students and faculty from the Whiting School, and participated in a wide range of science and engineering experiments. The projects ranged from the biological—dissecting a dogfish shark and learning about the circulatory system— to engineering and technology topics, like launching rockets and building windmills.

“You have to think very creatively to convey these very complex ideas in a form that
high school students can understand, as well as translate them so they can be performed using non-visual techniques,” said Tang. In the months leading up to the Slam, he and McEnnis held workshops to help sighted people working on the project adapt their ideas for the blind.

Tang and McEnnis hope the Slam will become an annual event. The two also plan on developing curricula to go along with the project that will find its way into high schools where blind students are taught.