If you or someone you know has any items (such as those listed on the flyer below) please let us know. We are revving up for this years Golf Tournament and need items to auction off to raise money to support our mission of reaching students with learning challenges. Please contact Janice (janice@opp4kids.org) to let us know if you can help, or if you need more information. Thanks everyone.
Here is your official “Save the Date” for the 7th Annual Opportunity Schools Golf Tournament… October 25th at Virginia Country Club.
We have posted information on Opportunity Schools’ 2010 Teacher Training Institute entitled, The Receptive Classroom on our website. The training will be held from June 21st – 25th. We are very excited to have Ron Leaf from Autism Partnership as our kickoff Keynote Speaker. Please visit our site, and view the brochures for more information. Or you can give Janice a call at 714-761-5062.
Hope to see you there.
Our Director of Education & Satellite Support Services, Joanne Foland, recently sat down with Ron Leaf, co-founder and director of Autism Partnership, to discuss autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Videos are below… and you can also view them and others anytime on our YouTube Channel.
We are happy to announce our entry onto the social network Facebook with our new Fan Page that can be found here. Please come, check it out, become our fan, and stay updated with the latest of what’s happening.
You can also stay updated by viewing our fan box on the lower right of the blog here.
Opportunity Schools was recently honored with a grant for $4000 by Amigos de los Ninos Foundation in order to make some upgrades to our media technology hardware and software. We are extremely grateful to Amigos for their generosity. Every year they announce their awards at a luncheon, and this year they had Fritz Coleman speak. He was hilarious, and it was a great time to hear about many other worthy organizations, and for us to get more word out about Opportunity Schools and our mission to serve students with learning challenges.
Louise was able to accept the grant on our behalf and give an acceptance speech. It was an honor and privilege to be recognized… overall a great luncheon.
We are happy to announce a complete success for this summer’s Teacher Training Institute. We want to again thank our presenters; Marcia Fries, Gina Lems-Tardif, Dan Gurney, Glenda McHale, Diana Jones, Jeanne Ruiz, and Katie Kent. They all provided us with a wealth of information and our “schema” will never be the same! (inside joke for those of you who weren’t there)
Please take a moment to enjoy photos from the training on our TTI-2009 page… though pictures fail to capture the energy of the presenters and the great discussion that was had in each session.
We’d like to leave you with just a handful of the many comments from the teachers that attended. Hope to see you next year!
- Their excitement was contagious!
- …very applicable…
- I loved this seminar. The Daily 5, yea!!!
- The training really was so very relevant and important for each and every teacher.
- Wonderful information… great ideas.
- The presenters were awesome!
- Usually I dread conferences or trainings because they are boring, but this one was so great because it was so interactive and very hands on!
- I appreciate making the visual materials during the workshop. They will be put to good use right away!
At the close of the school year some of our students wrote thank you cards for our supporters who help make their school’s program possible. We thought we would share a few of them with you [last names have been blacked out for privacy].
Click on images to see larger versions.
There is a good article from Contra Costa Times entitled, “Berkeley students find bridge to college”, that you may wish to read. It talks about how students function in college after their specialized programs in high school are over.
As the article says:
All the challenges of freshman year are multiplied 500-fold when you’re also dealing with autistic spectrum disorders, says Janet Miller, director of Berkeley’s two-year-old College Internship Program for young adults with Asperger’s and similar disabilities.
It’s not a question of intelligence. It’s regular life they have difficulty with — getting up in the morning, prioritizing tasks, and taking care of themselves.
This is an important area to consider as your student is getting older and ready for college. Your local colleges may have programs similar to the one at Berkeley, or at least a student services department where they can find help… such as the DSS department at CSULB.
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