Independence Training Program

We’d like to acknowledge two special visitors that came for a tour of the Center on August 24.

Bill Gideon is retired now, living in Longmont, but he served on New Mexico’s Services for the Blind Board from 1972 to 1984. He came to the Center with his friend Jo Anne Brubaker of Evans, and our student Tabea gave them a tour.

Bill doesn’t spend his retirement visiting blindness training centers, though. We have it on pretty good authority he’d rather be fishing. However, his daughter, Yolanda Thompson works for us three days a week teaching computer technology one-on-one, as well as maintaining our staff and student desktops. Yolanda herself is supposedly retired after teaching at the New Mexico training center for nearly … well, we don’t need to mention that number. And of course with Yolanda we also gained Bill’s son-in-law Mike Thompson as a three-day-a-week volunteer.

Dr. Edward (Eddie” Bell, Director of the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness at Louisiana Tech University, visited the Colorado Center for the Blind on September 3.

In Colorado to provide expert testimony to the Colorado Legislature’s Interim Study Committee on Vocational Rehabilitation Services for the Blind, he also presented an excellent philosophy class to our students, urging them to consider higher education as a means to economic independence.

Describing himself as a “ghetto kid” from Albuquerque who’d already dropped out of school by the time he became blind, he told students that he had no plans ever to go to college.

In fact, his decision to attend New Mexico’s training center Alamogordo was because “it sounded better than sitting on my brother’s couch.”

That was his ultimate reaction when a mentor suggested he start thinking about college, but his first thought was “No way.” I was a poor white kid. No one in his family, in his neighborhood or school had gone to college or was going to college. Then he thought of that couch again.

Cindy served a great meal to the entire Center on September 4 as the culmination of her program. She had lots of family from Arizona with her – her Mom and sister, with two little nephews, as well as her Aunt and Uncle and two of her cousins made the long road trip from Nogales to be a part of her celebration of success and independence.

Cindy made her Uncle’s chicken recipe as part of her chicken salad, which was accompanied by a peach iced tea and strawberry shortcake. Despite a food processor malfunction the morning of her graduation, she powered through on the strength of the confidence she has gained in herself throughout her program, and on the confidence her instructors have in her.

Cindy honored two of her instructors, Delfina for Home Management and Steve for Travel, by asking them to jointly present her Freedom Bell at her graduation.

Andy’s motivation was his desire to be an independent blind person, and he worked hard at it every day to earn his Freedom Bell. His love of learning was also a real asset.

On August 27 Andy graduated from the Center following eight months of joyful learning powered by an intense desire for personal independence.

“I can’t teach hard work and motivation,” his Home Management Instructor, Maureen told him.

Andy was a role model of both characteristics. He rarely missed a day and accepted each day’s new challenge with an equanimity that belied his eagerness to try new things.

The days are hot, but the mornings increasingly cool, almost chilly, and the hot air stirs in the evening. The sound of those breezes, the sound of the leaves, has changed, though – just another tick toward fall.

So we started up art classes with Ann Cunningham again on Monday afternoons and martial arts with Littleton Martial Arts Academy on Tuesday afternoons.

We still have gardening on Tuesday mornings with the Arapahoe County Master Gardeners – it’s all about harvesting now!

Tuesday mornings we have Seniors and NFB of Colorado President Scott LaBarre is here to chat with them, and to hold a philosophy class with our ITP students.

What else? Alex went on his first independent travel route to Romancing the Bean at the Littleton Downtown Light Rail Station.

“The coffee was good,” he said. But really, he was pretty excited about this first step into independent travel.

And Haylee went out on a support drop. She couldn’t tell us where she and her instructor Steve were left off, but she easily described how she got back. And she was a little mad …

It was a magical evening. May 15 marked the end to a long career at the Colorado Center for the Blind for Tom Anderson. More than 150 people came to send Tom and Linda off to Kansas after 27 years teaching Braille - and several other duties. We fed them, and gave the tribute to Tom and Linda that we felt they deserved. And we did it without electricity.

It’s the last week of July, and at the Colorado Center for the Blind we’re fighting the feeling that summer is almost over. We know that there are still weeks of hot weather, lovely warm Colorado evenings to enjoy.

But that vague anxiety is fueled as the last week of July saw our 22 summer students graduating on Wednesday, cleaning and packing on Thursday and leaving on Friday. Many of them are starting school in the first week of August. For them, summer truly is about over.

From Shay: Here at the airport, waiting to go home. Thinking about this summer, and how great it was. I met a lot of really amazing people this summer that have really help me and challenge me to do the best that I could. I am leaving here with so much. New friendships, amazing memories, and The ability to do more than I ever thought I could. I will never forget the memories or the people I met this summer. hope to come back next summer and to see all of you sometime again.

For the second year, the Colorado Center for the Blind has partnered with MasterDrive to take students with sleep shades for practice driving in a dual-control car.

Our students always look forward to this training and test of confidence, and on Saturday six students got the chance to practice while MasterDrive instructors were in the passenger seat to keep them safe.

After a brief orientation on the physical configuration and handling of the car, students practiced in a parking lot with gradually increasing levels of challenge … till they were out on the access road, the speed limit sign obscured by tarps (for safety, not secrecy), and the students were navigating on their own and making adjustments.

“Is that 35 miles per hour?” one student asked, pointing.

“No. It’s much slower,” replied the instructor, with a light laugh and steady hands.

That brief exchange captures what happens during these sessions. Not many times does a student ask a question with a smile right after setting off on the road on their own.

(For the past year or so, Wayne Marshall has been sharing a “word of the week” on Wednesday and then discussing it on Friday. Below is an article Director Julie Deden included about this in the January-February CCB Newsletter. We’ll begin posting Wayne’s Words on Face Book and Twitter.)

Message from the Director

Every week at announcements on Wednesday mornings, Wayne Marshall presents us with Wayne’s Wise Word of the Week. His words and quotes are thought provoking for all of us. He gives us a couple of days to think about what the Word of the Week means and then on Friday mornings we have a short discussion.

Some of the Word of the Week thoughts have included:

March’s FAST Saturday will involve taking a journey through prehistory with our hands at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Blind kids participating will be putting their hands on actual fossil bones as well as plaster cast replicas – it might even mean holding fossilized dinosaur poop.

I said it’s fossilized! it’s all coming about thanks to the presence of Cat Sartin as a guest researcher at the Nature & Science Museum this winter. Sartin, a doctoral candidate in paleontology at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, has worked with the National Federation of the Blind’s Jernigan Institute in its STEM-X programs, providing hands-on learning about evolution and paleontology to blind youth.

Museums have traditionally kept artifacts such as fossils and skeletons just out of reach of patrons, if not behind glass, meaning that blind visitors could enjoy a long walk through cool galleries, but not much more.