White Cane Day 2015

Happy White Cane Day 2015!!!

I have been so excited to see all the fun posts on social media sites about White Cane Day!!

Are you curious to know how I celebrated? We had to do our celebrations a little early due to fall break in Utah. We had a big event last Friday night that was SO much fun!

We were honored to have Blessing Offor (most notably from TV's "The Voice" but is also a very accomplished musician and speaker). Check out his The Voice audition below. 

Blessing was a true blessing as he was motivational, real and energetic about his life and experiences as someone with a vision impairment. Our theme for White Cane Day this year was "Sing Your Song of Independence". I chose that theme because independence isn't the same for everyone. There are truly different levels of it. It's time we have fun and celebrate it! Plus, I totally wanted to empower my students to pick up their white canes and walk with pride. 

I decided to turn White Cane Day into a full on short term program for students. We spent almost two full days with Blessing. We co-wrote a song with him and several talented students shared their musical gifts. I also wanted this to be a big opportunity for community service, education and awareness. Our students got busy by making handout cards with information about White Cane Day and their feelings about the white cane. We made white cane key chains to give away. 

I couldn't have done it without my amazing staff that always steps up and helps with these events! They are a talented group of recreational therapists, OTs, special ed majors and adaptive PE teachers from our surrounding universities. 

The t-shirts were one of my highlights! But if you have been reading my blog for awhile now, you know that I love my t-shirts and designing them is always a fave thing for me to do. 

Did you forget about White Cane Day? It's not too late to celebrate! There are so many ideas that you can do to help promote awareness of White Cane Safety Day. You can have a class presentation (and let your child talk about the white cane), invite mobility instructors to come and demonstrate (and then let you try under blindfold). I have done art contests in the past where students draw white cane safety. There's no "right way" to celebrate as long as you are! 

Can't wait til next year to celebrate one of my favorite holidays again!!

White Cane Day 2014 Highlights

Happy White Cane Day Highlights! We had a great celebration here in Utah!!

Here's our 2014 White Cane Day t-shirt:

 Our activities? We headed out to the community and invited the community to learn about White Cane Day as well as reviewing stores in the City Creek Mall. Don't just read the highlights, make notes for your future celebration!

Thanks to our mobility instructor, Kari, we had a challenge to collapse and open a white cane. My son took this challenge personally and challenged every person he could find! 

 We had a community outreach table where you could get your name in Braille, see a regular print book and then its Braille counterpart, trivia and all kinds of fun stuff to learn about. 

 Thanks to Guiding Eyes puppy raisers, we had 5 stellar future guide dogs celebrate with us!

 I organized our students to award three awards: Customer Service, Vision and the Orientation and Mobility Award. They had to fill out criteria sheets and have some good group instruction lessons before selectively handing out the awards.

 A new group of guys came by for the white cane fold challenge:

 We offered food for our event but in order to have a snack, you had to put on the simulators and even grab a white cane (thanks to our mobility instructor for the idea!)

 Here's our busy tables teaching the community about White Cane Day.

We even made it into the local news:
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=31971866

All in all, we had 5 hours of community awareness and mobility instruction for White Cane Day 2014! It was another successful year. I can't wait for next year!!

White Cane Day 2014

It's almost here: White Cane Day will be here in two days! It's celebrated nationally on Wednesday, October 15. I would love to hear what everyone is doing to celebrate. I will be celebrating in Utah this year with my new students in downtown Salt Lake City. This year I'm having my students become a "blindness expert panel" and they will be reviewing establishments and rating them on how blindness friendly they are. I have made up some awards and thanks to my colleagues, we have a checklist of items to rate our places. We have our t-shirts and our theme, too. This year it is "White Cane + Me = Independence". We will also host our community outreach table with lots of fun trivia and activities about our blindness community.  How exciting, right? I will be sharing some highlights of our community event. I can't wait to see how everyone else is celebrating White Cane Day 2014. 

Check The Voice Blind Auditions!

Check out The Voice on Monday, Sept. 29th
because a seriously talented blind guy auditions!

His name is Blessing Offor and I have had the privilege of working with him.

I am excited to see what song he chooses to audition with.

Check him out!

http://blessingoffor.com/

Sofia Sees Hope (at The Nutcracker)

Let me tell you about this awesome young girl, Sophia. She has Leber's and is probably one of the most dynamic kids out there. And top it off, she's a talented ballet dancer. I have had the pleasure of knowing her since preschool.  Her family works to raise money and awareness for their cause. Go check out their website:

http://sofiasees.org/.

Who doesn't love a fun Christmas tradition like The Nutcracker?! Go to http://sofiasees.org/ and order tickets for the family. This production is presented by Mystic Ballet Company at Fox Theater, Foxwoods Resorts Casino.

There is more information about how this a fundraiser and supports research funding for children with Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. 

White Cane Day Highlights

 Holy cow did we have a BLAST at White Cane Day 2013!!! Major thanks to Old Navy West Hartford for providing us the space and the love to host our bash. They were a great staff led by Emrah and totally supported our cause. They kept our fliers out on their registers for a month. Our events included simulators, assistive tech demos (with our very own tech guru John--from my post about the tech whiz), mobility activities, Braille fun and our first ever White Cane Day CT art contest. It just doesn't get better than that (well, there is always next year and who knows what we will do next year....). I hope wherever you live you were able to celebrate White Cane Day. I am so excited for next year!!

          Our assistive tech table led by John                   Frank Rosetta, art contest winner                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

              

 We also had an awesome fashion show put on by our students!! That was SO fun!! We were also lucky to have our friends from Fidelco Guide Dogs come out with their dogs-in-training. Freedom Guide Dogs and Fidelco also had some families come that were raising guide dog puppies come out as well. I loved watching my students proudly wearing their "I Heart White Cane" t-shirts stand outside of Old Navy and talk to complete strangers about White Cane Day. 

Above: I love my supportive family. We all heart white canes :)



Fidelco trainer, Jamie, with our students at White Cane Day 2013 

My husband, Todd, loved his time with the guide dog puppies. 

 Brother and sister Jimmy and Celeny modeling their fashion right before the fashion show.

Winning White Cane Day 2013 submission by Frank Rosetta

Holiday Braille Items are Ready!

I am not one to jump the gun and go from summer to Christmas but these two little items are fun to plan for. First, Starbucks will be offering Braille gift cards all year long (are you thinking Thanksgiving or Halloween gift ideas?). Let's give snaps to our friends at Starbucks for offering a bit more accessibility to the world!

Here's a write up from delish.com: "Starbucks began offering Braille gift cards during the month of October a couple of years ago to highlight disability employment awareness month. Now, according to Consumerist, Starbucks plans to offer the cards year-round. The gift cards say "Starbucks" in Braille on the front to help customers differentiate between the cards in their wallets. On Starbucks' Ideas In Action blog, the company explained that the new offering was established because of a customer request: "It's that same spirit of innovation that drives us to constantly look to MSI for inspiration on how to come up with solutions — that have the potential to vastly improve the experience for a huge community. For better readability we've adjusted the font and print sizes on our menus. We also created Braille & large print menus, and large print & picture menus. And for the third year in a row we are offering a Braille Starbucks gift card in the store. Thanks to a customer request, it's now available year-round."

The other fun holiday item are Braille holiday cards from Hadley School for the Blind. I don't want to rush away Turkey Day or Halloween but let's face it, I am planning my Christmas card (I love making my family wear coordinating outfits...ha ha). These cards are quite popular and allow you to have a photo card. 

Here's the link with more information: http://www.hadley.edu/holiday_card.asp.

 

Cool Event in NYC

100 Days out to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games

October 29, 2013 in Times Square, New York City, NY

2:30pm – 4:30pm EST

Come join the Youth Programming adventures 

with Olympic and Paralympic athletes!

Olympian and Paralympian Autographs/Q&A

Athlete

Demonstrations

Figure Skating

Hockey

Curling

Speed Skating

Sesame Street Character Interactions, too!

Conference time!

Hi friends,
I am excited to announce that I will be back at the Perkins 30th Annual Early Connections conference April 27, 2013 at Perkins School for the Blind.  This annual conference is for kiddos birth to 7 (with childcare!).

 Here's the link:

http://www.perkins.org/news-events/news/early-connections-conference.html.

You can get all the information about attending the conference from this link or you can go to perkins.org for more information. I will be presenting three different times (you will be sick of me by the end of the day, lol!) I will be presenting on building your social skills toolbox, a professional development group on social skills and a panel discussion with  my students and their parents called "Everything I Learned, I Learned Because My Parents Made Me Do It". It's gonna address how parents can successfully empower your kids to be awesome. I think it is going to be a fun day. I look forward to it. Plus I am happy to once again present with my fabulous students. Come and say hi if you are going to be there. I would love to meet you :)

I hope you can make it!

In related early childhood news, have you been on Wonderbaby.org earned Parent's Choice Foundation Seal of Approval! Way to go to our friends at Wonderbaby! In need of more resources and community friends like us, check out Wonderbaby. You will see me there, too!

"How Blind Kids See the World"

I received this email about this from a colleague today. I think it will be fun to watch!

Date: 01/25/2013
Airing Monday, Jan. 28, at 8PM (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon
NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 2013 — Kids describe what it's like to live without sight in the brand-new Nick News with Linda Ellerbee special, "Out of Sight: How Blind Kids See the World," premiering Monday, Jan. 28, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Nickelodeon. They discuss the challenges and opportunities they face living in blindness.
"There are actually people who will stay away from us or won't talk to us," says 15-year-old Alyssa of Colorado Springs, Colo. "I had a friend - we were really good friends - and after I went blind, he stopped coming around."

"Some people see my blindness as an easy target for bullying, for ridicule. You know, taking advantage of my blindness," says 14-year-old Chrisof Baltimore, Md.The special discusses how many blind kids know more about what they can do than what they cannot and how they use technologies to help them navigate a "sighted" world.
"Some people choose their clothes by using their vision," says 15-year-old Santiago of Hollister, Calif. "I use an application on my phone that tells me the color of my clothes."
10-year-old Xin Ju says she sees being blind as an advantage. "I don't need to see something to believe in it. We use our hearts and our imaginations."

"We've listened to what these kids tell us," says Ellerbee. "What they want sighted kids to know about them which is, in most cases, that they are just regular kids. But me, I think they're pretty special."Age Groups
All ages (birth to 26)
Parents of children with visual impairments

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