CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Corpus Christi Independent School District teacher is reaching out to the community to help fund hands on instruction for her special needs students.
“My teacher’s the best," Melanie Mora's student, Violet Martinez said.
"I learn new stuff," another student, Emily Garza said.
Mora is an adaptive education teacher at Hamlin Middle School.
"A lot of them, depending on their disability of course, rely more heavily on their parents and providers and caregivers, so they don’t have that independence of walking to the corner store by themselves," Mora said.
Mora said that's why it's important for them to learn certain skills earlier, ones the can learn outside of the classroom, programs like Community Based Instruction or CBI field trips.
“Something as simple as ordering at McDonalds, knowing how to utilize public transit," Mora said. "So, just familiarizing them with those things just baby steps for now.”
“Go to the mall buy new clothes,” Martinez said.
Martinez said after she was asked where she wanted to take a field trip.
And while her classmates got a kick out of Violet’s honesty, buying clothes and other things like food are very important for her to be able to do on her own one day.
“Just being able to be more independent," Mora said.
Mora started at the campus during the 2019-2020 school year and hoped to take her special education students on field trips to help them with life skills.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic halted the plans of her community based instruction, or CBI, plans.
Students are back on campus and she hopes to take them on a field trip every month.
“The student’s would then need funds to okay ‘hereyour assignment today to go get milk and come back and try to do that independently.”
CCISD officials said special education teachers have the option to take CBI field trips and have before.
Mora said she has enough funding to take them only twice a year.
She’s asking for donations from the community instead of having to solely rely on the families of her students.
Mora says her district and principal have been very supportive.
“She offered the opportunity for us to go do a fundraiser that would be donation based,” Mora said.
The link to donate can found on Hamlin’s web page by clicking here.
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