Woodshop and Home Maintenance

We are excited to introduce you to Dan Nixon, our new Home Maintenance and Wood Shop instructor.

Technically, Dan has already been with us for a couple of months, but of course, he’s been doing training under learning shades, including training in the wood shop, so that he comes to thoroughly understand how blind people can effectively use nonvisual skills to accomplish any number of tasks in the shop or around the home.

As we come to you for support for Colorado Gives Day on Dec. 6, we want to share with you some of our excitement and pride in the growth and accomplishments of our students this past year. Blindness finds us in different ways and at different times of our lives. But what all of our students strive for is independence. That’s true whether it is a young person going out on their own for the first time or someone who has already established their lives, jobs, even families and now must learn blindness skills and come to believe in themselves as blind people. We all want to be independent. Obviously, employment and careers—just feeling like we are productive—are among the most critical factors in achieving personal independence. This is no small achievement since estimates of unemployment for blind, working-age adults range between 65 and 80 percent. Here are what some of this year’s Independence Training Program students are pursuing after graduation.

Students from every continent and every epoch imagine, even if only idly, of someday, somehow turning the tables on their teachers. Likely they don’t realize until they have done it, that their teachers also may see such a reversal as an opportunity to return the torment.

That’s partly the story of Role Reversal Day 2022, held on Friday, February 4. Hand it to the leadership of the CCB Student Association for organizing carefully and thoroughly, putting staff into groups and planning the schedule, even reviewing lesson plans from each ”teacher of the day.” This is the group, remember, that collected necessary items for the NICU babies when Avista Adventist Hospital was forced to evacuate during the December, 30 Marshall Fire in Boulder County. They also received an additional $820 in cash donations which were donated to the Marshall Fire relief fund.