Month: May 2019

On Tuesday, May 21, five students from Project Search celebrated their successful program completion and earned diplomas with a send-off ceremony.  Congrats to all of these students who have already been working within our Fort Collins community and have bright futures ahead!

“Project Search is a business led collaboration that enables young adults with disabilities to gain and maintain employment through career exploration and training at Columbine Health Systems.” (From PSD Project Search web page.)

In photo above (left to right): Stacey Nichols, Occupational and Recreation Therapist @ CSU Center for Community Partnerships; Wanda Leingang, Rehabilitation Counselor at State of Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR); Emily Ring, PSD Project Search Coordinator;  2019 Graduates Haley Inman, John Nielsen, Halie Smith, and Yulissa Silerio; Sara Freeman, Employment Specialist @ CSU Center for Community Partnerships. Not pictured: Project Search 2019 graduate Sierra Terry.

On Wednesday, May 22, Cooper Home celebrated six graduates, all of whom received their diplomas and a well-earned send-off from their time with PSD.  Congratulations to all!

Pictured above: (left to right top) Chandler Burkes and Brendan Marciak. (left to right bottom) Tryphina Zamora, Nikki King, and Nick Shinn. Not pictured: Kay Cary

The score was close, and the competition was spirited!  On Thursday, May 16, 2019, Bacon Elementary school’s soccer field was filled with athletes, staff, and families for the first-ever Elementary-Level Unified soccer match between Shepardson and Bacon!

On Monday, May 13, 2019, seven Community Connections students, Ashli Hunter, Zachary Moss, Kale Crawford, Brady Hood, Cory Breslin, Anna Reed, and Matthew Douglas (left to right in group photo) were celebrated in a Send-Off ceremony that was the perfect start to their next adventures.  Presentations were made by Community Connections Program Specialist, Michael Woodruff and Teacher, Maggie Atkinson.  Several PSD staff, teachers, and family members were also present.  These students have already been contributing to the local community through work and volunteer opportunities, and they all look forward to continuing success!

Emily Ring, Program Specialist at Cooper Home, recently received her Alternative Cooperative Education (ACE) Certification!

Erin Coy, Integrated Services Coach, graduated on May 9 from CU Boulder with a Master of Arts degree in Equity and Diversity with an ESL endorsement!

On Friday, May 3, two PSD Integrated Services Teachers of the Visually Impaired, Melissa French and Sarah Goodfellow, graduated from UNC with their Special Education Master of Arts degrees with a Visual Impairment Emphasis!

Melissa French (left) and Sarah Goodfellow

We appreciate the effort that went into these noteworthy accomplishments while Emily, Erin, Melissa, and Sarah continued providing excellent education services to our students here in PSD.  Congrats to you all!

Headphone/Earbud Safety

Did you know that the fastest rising incidence of hearing loss in our country is occurring in our 12-17 year olds? And exposure to noise is the cause of 1/3 of all hearing loss. With the increasing amount of time our children spend plugged into technology in some form or another, it is important that parents, children, and teens are aware of the dangers of listening to programming at too loud of levels!

If you want to measure the loudness level of your own or your child’s earbuds/headphones, you can download apps such as Audio Spectrum, which will evaluate the loudness level of any environment (this requires two devices; one playing, and one using the app to read the volume). Anything listened to over 85 dB for any length of time is potentially dangerous. You can also test loudness by asking your child to play their device at a typical level, and hold the earbuds out at arm’s length to see if you can hear what is playing. Another rule of thumb for volumes being too loud is if you ae able to hear your child’s/teen’s music when they are wearing earbuds. To experience what it would be like to have a hearing loss, (Click Here).

Parents of younger children can consider purchasing volume limiting head phones on sites such as Amazon to ensure their children are never increasing volumes to an unsafe level. And parents can also limit the volume level of a child’s phone (on iphone, select settings, -music, -volume limit). Now is the time to teach our children about the relationship of listening at loud levels and possible hearing loss in the future!

~PSD Speech-Language Pathology Department

Donna Boudreau, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Professional Practice Expert/Team Lead
Speech-Language Department
Poudre School District
Fort Collins, CO
dboudrea@psdschools.org