When a district has a blind or low-vision student, the hardest part is often not knowing what the student needs — it is finding someone qualified to provide it. Orientation and Mobility specialists are in short supply nationwide, and instructors certified in Structured Discovery Cane Travel are rarer still. Traverse Instruction exists to close that gap for schools: direct instruction, assessment, consultation, and staff development from a nationally certified O&M professional, delivered on-site or virtually, elementary through high school.
Services for Your District
- Direct O&M instruction. One-on-one cane travel instruction delivered in the environments where the student actually learns and travels — hallways, stairwells, cafeterias, campus grounds, bus loops, and the surrounding community. Instruction is aligned to the student’s IEP and scheduled to fit the school day.
- O&M assessments and progress reports. Evaluations built on the National Orientation and Mobility Assessment (NOMA), a nationally recognized, evidence-based instrument that yields objective scores across four domains: conceptual knowledge, general mobility skills, orientation skills, and travel confidence. Domain scores give your team a measurable baseline — and reassessment shows progress in numbers, not impressions. Reports arrive in plain language your IEP team can use directly.
- IEP team support. Help drafting O&M-related IEP language: present levels, measurable annual goals, service time, and accommodations that build independence rather than dependence. O&M is a related service under IDEA, and well-written goals make compliance straightforward instead of stressful.
- Virtual consultation. Remote records review, structured interviews, and problem-solving around a specific student or IEP question — detailed under Virtual or In-Person Consultation below.
- Professional development. In-service training for general and special educators, paraprofessionals, and administrators on supporting blind and low-vision students: high expectations, student agency, when to help and when to wait, and the everyday interactions that build — or quietly undermine — independence.
An Approach Educators Will Recognize
Structured Discovery Cane Travel will feel familiar to anyone trained in education, because it is built on the same learning science that runs through good teaching everywhere. Instruction operates in the student’s zone of proximal development: lessons are set just beyond what the student can do alone, with support that is deliberately faded as competence grows — scaffolding, applied to travel. Foundational skills are practiced to automaticity for a reason educators know well: attention is a limited resource, and a student whose cane technique is automatic has attention left over for orientation, problem-solving, and everything else the school day asks of them. Managing that cognitive load is what turns a hesitant traveler into a confident one.
Students are also taught to think about their own thinking — what they know, what they do not, and how to find out. This metacognitive skill is the difference between a student who has memorized the route to the gym and a student who can find the gym in a building they have never entered. It transfers to every environment the student will ever face, which is precisely the outcome an IEP is supposed to produce.
Independence Is Also Social and Emotional
Travel skills and self-belief develop together. A student’s adjustment to blindness — their attitudes, expectations, and confidence — shapes whether skills get used in the hallway on Tuesday or only in lessons. Structured Discovery treats this directly: students accumulate real, self-produced successes in real environments, and confidence is built on evidence rather than reassurance. For schools, the practical payoff is a student who moves through the building with age-appropriate independence, participates fully in field trips and activities, and needs less adult support over time — outcomes that serve the student, the staff, and the classroom alike.
Informed Choice
Families are increasingly aware that more than one methodology exists in Orientation and Mobility, and many specifically request Structured Discovery instruction. Contracting with a certified Structured Discovery provider lets a district honor that request — meeting informed choice with a qualified option rather than a substitute, and building the kind of family-district partnership that prevents disputes instead of resolving them.
About the Instructor
I hold the National Orientation and Mobility Certification (NOMC) through the National Blindness Professional Certification Board and an M.A. in Counseling and Guidance with a specialization in Orientation and Mobility from Louisiana Tech University. I began teaching in schools during my graduate training, providing direct instruction to a kindergartner — and I have worked with students across the full K-12 age range ever since. I spent nearly a decade on staff at a National Federation of the Blind training center, where I taught students at every level and supervised candidates earning their own national certification. I have provided direct instruction, assessment, and professional development on high expectations and student agency to schools and professional audiences across the country.
Practical Details
- Based in New York City; on-site services available throughout the region and, by arrangement, nationwide. Virtual consultation available anywhere.
- Contracting as an independent vendor with public and private schools; references and vendor documentation available on request.
- Scheduling built around the school day, including summer and extended school year services.
Virtual or In-Person Consultation
Not every question needs a site visit. Traverse Instruction consults remotely with teachers, paraprofessionals, related service providers, and administrators — records review, structured interviews, problem-solving around a specific student, or guidance ahead of an IEP meeting. Virtual consultation makes specialized Orientation and Mobility expertise fast and affordable for districts anywhere in the country, and it is often the most practical starting point for schools without a qualified provider nearby. One boundary is worth stating plainly: virtual consultation supports your team — it is never a substitute for the direct Orientation and Mobility instruction or assessment a student’s IEP requires, and I will always be straightforward about which one a situation calls for. Where in-person services are needed, consultation can lead directly into on-site assessment, instruction, or staff training.
Contact
Ben Schuler, M.A., NOMC — Traverse Instruction LLC
info@traverseinstruction.com | (770) 490-4991 | New York City