Independence Training Program

These Denver high school students, Deya and Alma were two of the dozen middle school to college prep students who experienced all the sensory data of a spiny dog shark when they opened one up today at the Center. Well, except for taste. Thanks again to Arapahoe Community College’s Biology Professor Terry Harrison for leading these blind students through a meaningful lesson about anatomy – a lesson with the side benefit of learning that vision isn’t the only sense with which to do real science!

It was a relatively calm morning after yesterday’s Bomb Cyclone, with 8 to 12 inches of snow and extreme winds blowing the flakes sideways and into drifts. Admittedly we had to skate our way into the Center before eight this morning, climbing over ice boulders thrown onto the sidewalk along Prince Street by snowplows, but we are here. We are grateful not to be among the nearly 80,000 customers in the Metro area without power this morning.

And we are on for tomorrow’s shark dissection with Arapahoe Community College’s Terry Harrison. We’re plowing and digging and de-icing our way out in plenty of time for that! And the sharks come frozen anyway!

Let there be no doubt – students at the Colorado Center for the Blind form lifelong friendships. Monday, three such friends reunited at the center Kathy Kudlick, Bill Lundgren and Anahit LaBarre. They are shown above standing in front of our tactile CCB logo, left to right, Anahit, Kathy, Bill and Director Julie Deden.

All three were students at the same time, in fact, they began arriving shortly after our move to Littleton in August, 2000.

Kathy was first in October of that year. A professor of French History at the University of California-Davis at the time, she came ready to at last embrace her identity as a blind person. Today, she is Director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University.

Okay, we haven’t been talking about this much, because it’s kind of stressful. But on January 11 the roof of the McGeorge Mountain Terrace Apartments began to leak. The leaks were massive, and the insurance adjuster traced them back to hail damage that would have occurred last summer. Water damaged the ceiling in all 12 of the 2nd story apartments. In most, the damage was minor, in a few others water was collected in buckets for several days while disaster mitigation crews worked to dry things out.

We expect no less. But it just goes to show that blind people are not afraid to travel in the snow, not even the new ones who come from such warmer states as South Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Independence doesn’t depend on the weather!

Pictured above is one of our hopeful goose-deterrants. We’re still holding out for a group shot of snow angels. No takers, especially after warnings about goose poop in the snow.

These are the faces of just a few who have benefitted from previous Colorado Gives Day donations. They range from ages 5 and up and their circumstances are all a bit different, but all have gained the skills and the confidence to “Take Charge with Self-reliance!”

This year our Confidence Camp for Kids (CC4K) had 11 elementary school kids for this two-week day-camp. They worked on Braille and cane skills all the time, but also learned to make their own lunches, traveled on the light rail and bus, went canoeing and rock climbing, and gained a peer group of other blind kids.

It may be the best yet! This year’s “Shared Visions” tactile art exhibit at the Colorado Gallery of the Arts at Arapahoe Community College (ACC) featured even more tactile painting pieces, a series of “boxes” from another class that were in every instance surprising, as well as an installation of an idyllic natural setting, complete with a trickling spring.

It’s the fifth year that we’ve collaborated with Arapahoe Community College’s Art & Design Center, and the fourth year our students had some of their own work on display.

The best news is that it’s open till Monday, December 3! In fact, this Friday our Senior Program will be making a pilgrimage to see it.

Thanksgiving is of course very much a harvest celebration. So it is appropriate that we invited our Master Gardeners to the center for a little thank-you celebration Tuesday morning. After all, our collaboration with them in our Legacy Garden each summer results in a wonderful harvest of tomatoes, peppers, herbs and squashes, to name a few, but also in a harvest of opportunity and confidence for our students.

While many of the students who worked in the garden as recently as September have graduated, there were many individual thank-yous and some great comments for the gardeners.

Colorado Gives Day is Tuesday, December 4, and we’re in for the mega-million-dollar statewide day of giving, sponsored by First Bank and the Community First Foundation! Your gift to us on CoGivesDay2018 ensures that we can continue to offer programs to youth, seniors and working-age adults that challenge, impart skills and infuse the confidence in themselves our students can draw on throughout the rest of their lives!

Sure, we’ll take your gifts any time, but there are some advantages to both of us if you contribute on December 4:

Thirteen is our lucky number when you look at the Rogue’s Gallery in this photo. These are thirteen volunteers who contribute so much to the Colorado Center for the Blind and to our students. Yet they humbly protest that they get back more than they give. We suppose that’s their call, but we’re telling you they give a lot.