WINTER PARK, Fla. — At first glance you would never know that A+ Teacher Shawneequa Brown struggles to see, but the legally blind teacher spent months focusing on her abilities so she could help her special needs students do the same.

“I love the underdog,” Brown said. “I love the person who people said couldn’t make it because I love trying to help them prove everybody wrong.”

For Brown, teaching is a calling, and she is on a mission to make a difference.

“It just feels like it’s the right thing for me to do with my life," she said. "There are so many other kids and adults that they give up.”

“Give up” are two words that are unacceptable to Brown, who teaches special needs and autistic students at Lakemont Elementary School in Winter Park.

“They don’t have anyone in their corner to help define what they are capable of,” she said. “Everyone looks at the errors. They look at the mistakes. They look at the deficits. They look at what you cannot do, and they don’t capitalize on what you can do.”

Brown can certainly relate. She earned three degrees in five years — an unimaginable accomplishment for even people without a disability.

Brown was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease in 1997. Her vision deteriorated in 2014, but by 2018, she’d lost her central vision and now functions primarily with her peripheral vision.

“I wasn’t always visually impaired, so I had to learn. I had to readjust,” she said.

She said the only thing she doesn’t do these days that she did before was drive.

Brown said she had two choices when lost her vision: “I could either lay in my bed and cry and give up and go on disability, or I could figure out how to redefine my life and see what I was still capable of doing and do it.”