A New Level of Service

 Wow, on November 10, 2012 my students took service to a whole new level! As many of you know I am part of a group of teachers that are advisers for a group of my students called Student Advisory Council (aka SAC). We did a community service project for over 70 youth and welcomed them into the vision impairment community. In addition to my stellar students rocking the house, we also had Fidelco guide dog school and Silver Lining Technology come and round out the cast. We spent almost 6 hours welcoming our new friends into our community and the results were awesome! The morning was spent dividing up the youth into three groups: orientation & mobility, assistive technology and Braille. We shuttled our youth into these groups and had them do sighted guide technique, make some edible Braille and have some hands-on time with AT devices.

My super awesome students!!

I am blogging about this because not only am I super proud of my students but this was an amazing experience for the community. I also want to empower other students to do the same thing! This was great for the community. What I loved the most was watching the youth "get it" about our kids. They saw our students for who they really are. Each group was led by one of our fab teacher advisers. We have two mobility instructors, two TVIs and me! We all split up and headed a group. 

My family and our friend learning about guide dogs with Fidelco.

My tech loving students presenting with Stephen Deltatto of Silver Lining Technology

  The other treat to our community outreach project was that we all worked together and made tactual books for our preschool and special services division. We made three different types of books. You can also do this too!The directions and pictures are in a separate post.

Service project work!!

Michelle and other SACker Gannon instructing goalball

My students, Jose and Michelle, teaching goalball

Youth Mackenzie doing edible Braille

Jimmy also came out as a junior SAC member and taught about Braille

Our teacher advisers leading the discussion on Braille

 It truly was a great community outreach event. The youth leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints supplied the materials for our tactual books and worked with me on setting up the dates and other details.  I still get positive feedback from the youth about this outreach service project. I had a handful of my super stellar students work this. They worked their butts off and changed the way over 70 youth view students with vision impairments. I call that a success! Yeah, another great day for me as a teacher. I look forward to a million more with my students for sure!

My student Kacper and his new friends :)

Everyone took home their name in Braille

Fabric and table set up for the service project