The Care Academy Program offers opportunities by doing activities everyday to help students “Become more independent.”
Starting from the age of 18, students stay at an apartment-like building to learn basic necessities needed to be able to help their parents at home. With teaching the students how to do floral, cooking, and baking, students are able to think about potential future careers they could be interested in.
“We see them follow picture instruction recipes,programming themselves to see what is a teaspoon or a tablespoon. The same thing goes with the floral arrangements; they see the vision and want to copy it, sort of like Copycat Syndrome,” said Gustavo Sifuentes, one of the care academy instructors.
Because of the various learning levels these students have due to their disabilities, teachers “Go to their level and bring them out.” With teachers bringing these students out of their shell to teach them new things, students are able to get a taste of what they like and what they can see themselves doing in the future.
“We do on the job training with students, but as if now because of COVID-19 we are not allowed to leave. At the restaurant students clean and set up tables or whatever the restaurant tells them to do, they’ll go in and do it. I have students who enjoy doing certain things and they see themselves doing such things in the future,” said Sifuentes.
With the growth of students doing these activities on a daily basis, they are getting closer to reaching their goals, moving one step forward closer to independence!
