Several years ago, when Alexander Traub was in second grade, he got an invitation to compete in a state Braille Challenge. He declined.
“I didn’t want to go,” said Traub, who is now 11. “I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to win, so I’m not going.'”
The next year, he set aside his competitiveness and participated. It was a way to channel his progress with the challenging reading and writing system he’d been learning since age 6.
He has entered the contest every year since. He never advanced, never placed. But he continued to participate. “I had a lot of fun, so I kept going back,” Traub said.
Ironically, it wasn’t until he set aside his desire to win that he finally did.
“This year, I said, ‘Oh, I’m just here to have fun. I’m not going to win,'” Traub recalled. “When they said I got first place, it was pretty amazing.”
First place in Illinois also meant Traub landed a spot in the National Braille Challenge, scheduled for June 25 in Los Angeles. By the time his notification letter came in the mail, he was pretty much convinced he hadn’t placed in the Illinois leg of the competition. He had expected to hear back much earlier than he did.
But the letter that came mid-May named Traub one of the top winners from Braille Challenges in 41 states and three Canadian provinces.
“This year they said there were 850 children or young adults who participated across America. And I guess the three provinces in Canada,” said Traub’s mother, Suzanne West. Out of those, 60 kids were selected for the national competition in L.A., 12 from each grade bracket.
Traub doesn’t seem nervous about the competition, and that’s due to his experience in past challenges. His years of training in Braille certainly help, but it’s not a skill that’s mastered overnight.
“It takes a lot of years. It’s a progressive thing,” said West. It begins early, with a teaching series similar to childhood readers. Traub began in the first grade at a special education cooperative outside of District 90.
“Basically, the kids who are visually impaired or blind are self-contained until they’ve learned enough Braille,” West said. “Then they slowly start mainstreaming back into a regular classroom.”
Traub is now a student at Roosevelt Middle School, reading Braille and using a mini-Braille writer to complete his classwork, which is translated into written English, to be graded by his teacher — and vice versa.
“It can go on the Internet; it can do all sorts of stuff,” said Traub.
Being visually impaired hasn’t limited him. He loves to read and play video games, just like your typical 11-year-old boy — and, of course, hang out with friends.
“I’m excited to meet people who don’t come from Illinois who read Braille because pretty much everyone I know is from Illinois who reads Braille. It’s not many people,” he said. “It’s just a cool experience to be able to go and meet so many people who had to go through what I did, and still get that far, even if they have a disability.”