Looking Beyond: Tips and Tricks of Itinerant Teaching and Contract Work

The world of itinerant teaching is constantly evolving with changes in expectations, policies, and practices. These changes may affect our students’ educational setting and learning environment, resulting in how we approach instruction. Join us as we discuss looking beyond the tips and tricks of itinerant teaching. Explore the possibilities of expanding your instructional services into contract work and additional opportunities to serve students with visual impairments, including blindness and deaf-blindness. From this discussion, you will gain an understanding of the lessons we’ve learned along our journey as independent contractors in the field of visual impairment across a variety of systems and how these experiences may help you
decide to expand your current service provider options.

Learning Objectives:
1. Participants will learn about the unique and foundational aspects of the itinerant teaching model and how vision impairment professionals have adapted to this teaching model to serve the students they work with.
2. Participants will learn about the emerging need for independent contractors for children and students with visual impairment in charter schools, regional centers, non-profit, and other institutions.
3. Participants will learn how they can expand their current use of effective organizational strategies for planning, scheduling, documenting, and communicating using traditional and electronic methods, to help them decide if independent contract work may be a good fit.

Speakers: Patricia Camarillo, NBCT/TSVI, and Jamie Maxfield, O&M,
Fresno Unified School District, Fresno, California

Patricia Camarillo is a Teacher of the Visually Impaired for over 20 years and achieved National Board Certification in 2021 in Exceptional Needs. She has worked in an itinerant capacity for over 90% of her teaching career and holds teaching credentials in Multiple Subjects, Visual Impairment, Orthopedic Impairment, and Early Childhood Special Education, including certificates in Assistive Technology from CSUN and UIC, Chicago. Over the last 6 years, she has worked in a part-time capacity as an independent contractor for charter schools, non-profits, and regional centers in California.

Jamie Maxfield is an Orientation & Mobility Specialist for students with visual impairments in Fresno Unified School District. After having her three daughters, Jamie returned to school in 2010 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Orientation & Mobility from San Francisco State University, graduating in 2012. She has worked in a wide variety of settings, including: school districts, county office of education, CA Department of Rehabilitation, private schools, charter schools, contract work, and with ages ranging from pre-K to adults. Jamie is passionate about collaboration and working together to find the whole child perspective for each student.