Her pupils love these pupils.
A special education teacher who lost her left eye in an accident says her students adore her $170,000 collection of glass peepers.
Sunshine Jones, now 27, was left with impaired vision after a piece of wood pierced her left eyeball when she was five years old, causing it to deflate.
Over the next two years, the Los Angeles resident went through twelve different surgeries in an attempt to restore vision via a cornea transplant, which her body eventually rejected.
At seven, Sunshine was given her first prosthetic cover, which fitted around what was left of her damaged left eye.
“I remember getting bullied for it,” the teacher told Caters in an interview on Friday. “Kids ripped the eyepatch off my face and called me a monster.”
Just two years ago, Jones was contacted by The Fun Eye Fund — a charity that helps provide prosthetic eyes to those in need — which transformed the way she felt about her disability.
The organization helped put Jones in contact with an ocularist in Portland, Ore. who specializes in creating and fitting people with fake peepers.
Using high-quality cross-linked acrylic, the expert created a custom mold of Jones’ eye before creating a fun and unique design for the cover, which the teacher can wear whenever she pleases.
“When I was about 25, I got my very first fun prosthetic eye and have never gone back since,” she declared.
Jones now boasts 17 different prosthetic eyes in a range of different colors and styles.
Each eye is worth around $10,000, but with the help of the Fun Eye Fund, Jones pays just $500 per peeper.
She also obtains a content creator discount as she has started to show off her eyes online.
“There’s a lot of really bigoted people and a lot of really gross people online that, of course, find their way to anyone’s page,” the teacher stated. “Being a content creator online, you get hate periods.”
“They say things like, ‘Disabled people shouldn’t have jobs. Shame on you for being a teacher. You can’t even do your job, right?'” Jones continued. “And, you know, it makes me sad, but I just block and restrict. And then I try to focus on more of the positive side of things.”
Jones says that by wearing her fun fake eyes in the classroom she’s also teaching her students important lessons about disability, visibility and acceptance.
“I exclusively wear my fun prosthetic eyes now, and I think it’s a way to broadcast openly that I do have a disability and that it is not shameful or something that I need to hide,” she declared.
“I wanted to be the teacher who would make a positive impact in kids’ lives,” the educator added. “They don’t always have the opportunity to get that, especially kids with disabilities, where they do need that much more love.”
