Learning Shades

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 soon as we finish morning announcements in the main room, staff and students move to one of the seven breakout rooms: Braille, Cane Travel, Home Management, Brett’s lab, Chip’s Lab, Tech Lab or Study Lab. At 11:15 we all meet again in the main room for philosophy class.

Good evening!

This is the last blast for Colorado Gives Day. Promise.

There’s still time to donate to the Colorado Center for the Blind at the Colorado Gives page.

And as your reward for clicking on this post, you get to meet Katie. She’s a career social worker whose degenerative eye condition interrupted her professional employment, so she came for training. For the past three months she’s been posting regularly on her Face Book page about her journey at CCB. She calls this “Katie Goes to Blind School.” Here’s a portion of a post about learning to travel with a long white cane, and the other things she is learning along the way.

That was one of the first lessons of the first day of summer for Confidence Camp kids this morning.

“If someone asks you what your backpack looks like, what are you going to tell them?” the lesson continued.

Yes, Monday began with learning for the 10 5 to 12-year-olds. It went on from there, including making lunches, and there will be plenty more lessons in independence and fun over the next two weeks. Lots of fun too – their day ended with a trip to the pool for a swim. Now that’s summer!

And then there were the 23 teenagers in our Earn & Learn and College Prep programs in their first day of classes. they will be with us for 8 weeks, including a trip to the National Federation of the Blind 2018 Convention in Orlando!

Starting with a little turkey structured discovery right up to the point where we start stuffing our faces, when the videographer puts away his camera to get in line. Even journalism has its natural limits.

There was plenty on Thursday, November 16 – plenty to eat and to be thankful for at our 100-percent student-prepared Thanksgiving Feast!

It’s tradition at the Colorado Center for the Blind to hold our own Thanksgiving feast before we break for visits to family and friends on the official holiday. Our students cook it all with the guidance of our unparalleled Home Management staff, and there are always a lot of “firsts”.

For example, every year there are students who have never seen what a turkey looks like just out of the refrigerator. So on Tuesday, with serving gloves on, students examined and explored the four turkeys that eventually became our dinner.

And on Thursday in the buffet line Casey was happily talking about the gravy he had made.

Here are a few photos from the Shared Visions reception at the Colorado Gallery of the Arts at Arapahoe Community College on Thursday night. Everyone got hands on with pieces from Nathan Abels’ painting and drawing classes. CCB students also had laser-cuts of drawings they made in Ann Cunningham’s art class with accompanying Haiku, and CCB alum Jenny Callahan had a number of stone carvings and a bronze in the show.

The Seniors art class had bowls thrown on the wheel in Katie Caron’s ceramics studio. Katie brought her daughter, who insisted on wearing sleepshades so she could try to identify the art tactilely.

If you’re on the Front Range of Colorado this post won’t surprise you, because you drove/walked/bussed in a steadily-falling snow this morning.

But let’s admit it – this 3 to 5 inches of snow is a bit early this year, just think of all those trees whose leaves have yet to drop! Tonight will be a killing freeze, with temps in the low 20s. That will likely mean an icy commute tomorrow morning. Tricky, but it’s part of the deal. Blind people have to go to work in good weather and bad, just like anyone else. And that’s what we teach and expect here at the Center.

So, we’ll be open tomorrow just like today, unless of course frozen branches knock out the power, as they did in an arc that went around us, from the Bemis Library to the Littleton Downtown Light Rail Station.

Here are a few pics from our Science Saturday way back in July! Students rotated between three stations – basic chemistry, a station dedicated to weather, and a robotics class using Lego Mindstorms.

With the first serious fall weather this week – misty rain, leaves turning and starting to litter the lawns and sidewalks – it’s kind of fun to think about how hot it was that day out front with the bucket and the hose!

The point, of course, is to show our students that blind people can do science and – Wow! – it’s even fun!