When the 24th season of “American Idol” debuted Jan. 26, Steve Pohl wasn’t watching.
But that certainly wasn’t the case in the spring of 2019 during Season 17, when the NIU College of Education graduate played a pivotal role in the story of one of the contestants.
Her name is Shayla Winn – she’s known to her fans as Shayy – and the then-teenager from Midlothian, Virginia, had met Pohl only months before her memorable audition in front of Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and a moved-to-tears Lionel Richie.
“That was a whirlwind,” says Pohl, who earned his M.S.Ed. in Special Education: Vision Studies from NIU in 2013 and is a subcontractor of Virginia-based Allied Instructional Services as a teacher of students with visual impairments and a certified Orientation and Mobility specialist.
“I had my caseload, the school year was rolling along and, all of a sudden, we got word of this student at this high school who had missed half the year because she had been in surgery, she was recovering and she could hardly see,” he adds. “So, I kind of got pulled out of part of my caseload and sent down to get this student ready.”
Pohl and his colleague, Carrie Horton, the vision program technician at the time, were called in December 2017 to assist Winn, diagnosed with hydrocephalus.
Only a couple frantic weeks were available before Winn’s return to classes after winter break, Pohl says, and just knowing where to begin was hard: “We didn’t even have a space to work. We were hauling things around, trying to do things in the library – any place we could find room.”
So, he says, “we started with a 504 plan – accommodations – and quickly changed it to an IEP. Usually, when you know about a student, there’s so much preparation that goes into it, but we were not prepared at all.”
“You need to communicate with the teachers, making sure that their curriculum, when the student gets there, is going to be accessible. And when Shayla got back to school, she basically had to catch up from missing half the school year at that point, and then would have to finish the year without being able to see the curriculum, not knowing braille yet.”
Makeshift Solution 1? Writing and drawing everything on 11-inch-by-17-inch sheets as the team was “finally able to determine what font size she could see, which was 70-point Arial black.”
Fortunately, Pohl was working, and innovating, from a strong foundation.
A CAREER IN VISION was not the original plan for Pohl, whose interest in manufacturing and drafting yielded a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technology and Management.
Nice weather in his native Michigan meant endless hours on the job and no chance for vacation. Harsh winters meant … well, the opposite.
“I kind of grew tired of that,” he says. “I liked the work, but it was just challenging to always have your nice time of year consumed just because that’s when the construction season is.”
Meanwhile, Pohl always dreamed to learning Spanish, and when he found a chance to live and work in Bolivia, he took it.
One year became five, including a connection to Ignacio Zalles Foundation, where he was introduced to working with people with visual disabilities.
Returning home, he wanted to continue.
“I wondered if I could do the same thing in the United States,” Pohl says, “and then I found out that there’s a nationwide shortage of us.”
NIU’s program in Vision Studies, among the best in the country, “was intense” and equipped him with tools and tactics he still uses on the job.
The exposure to the current assistive technology of that time helped prepare him to keep up with “break-neck pace” of the industry, and his student-teaching in Schaumburg and orientation-and-mobility internship at the Wisconsin School for the Blind and Visually Impaired allowed him to put classroom lessons into practice.
Every day now is different, says Pohl, whose clients represent the K-12 spectrum and bring a variety of skills, abilities and severity of impairments and who require comprehensive assessments to determine what will provide the greatest impact.
Some are learning to type on computers. Some are learning braille. Some need his assistance in accessing their curriculum so that they can participate effectively in school.
For students with multiple disabilities, “maybe I’m trying to work on something like using their vision to notice something with the eventual goal of using their vision efficiently. But, at the moment, maybe the student doesn’t look at something that’s too complicated. So, how do I help the teacher make the curriculum accessible and simple enough that the student can perceive and understand it?”
He especially enjoys helping students on orientation and mobility.
“To see those who start out absolutely terrified of crossing a light-controlled intersection and then master it and then know that, ‘Oh, yeah, I can do this.’ To see them struggle along with using all of those pin-pad payment terminals in restaurants and stores and then finding out, ‘Oh, yeah, I can do this. I can do these things independently.’ Those are all rewarding to see.”
POHL KNEW THAT WINN had talent.
She sang in her school’s musical show choir and was cast in a lead role in the school’s fall play, although her diagnosis and absence meant she’d need the assistance of her classmates to pull it off – which she did.
When Pohl heard American Idol would hold auditions in Richmond, Virginia, he encouraged Winn to try.
Next-step auditions took place in Atlanta followed by more in Louisville, Kentucky, where Winn finally and confidently stood before the judges, cane in hand, to sing Andra Day’s “Rise Up” on camera.
“I was very, very proud that she followed through with it. Before she’d even gotten to that point, she had been through about six rounds of auditions,” Pohl says.
“She wasn’t ashamed of her diagnosis – that happens a lot as people try to ‘pass’ because they don’t want people to know – and she was very eloquent. She was able to rattle off everything about her diagnosis and what it was,” he adds. “Not everyone has that level of courage.”
- WATCH THE VIDEO! Blind Contestant Shayy Audition Brings Lionel Richie to TEARS With “Rise Up” by Andra Day
Winn’s courage earned her a “golden ticket,” a televised journey that carried her to just outside the final 20 and the opportunity to return of the finale, where she reprised “Rise Up” in a duet with Andra Day herself.
For Pohl, the vicarious experience “helped me take a step back” to realize the kind of difference he makes.
“A lot of times in the day-to-day, we don’t necessarily see the end results. Students graduate and we don’t find out what happens to them after a lot of battles to try to make the curriculum accessible and just trying to get them through the year,” he says.
“To see this, and to see that this is what it looks like in the world when somebody has these skills, it was like, ‘OK, this is something worthwhile that I’m doing,’ ” he adds. “It’s a healthy reminder that the work is meaningful and can be impactful.”
