Touring "Reform School" in May

After setting up an appointment and Googling the directions the night before, we took off to tour the Adult Orientation and Adjustment Center in Des Moines. Having no difficulty in finding the place we parked the car and went inside. We met the receptionist who called Dave, our tour guide and shortly Dave arrived. I did not know it at the time but the receptionist was blind. We met Dave in a spacious room he called the rec room. Dave talked a few minutes to us about the place and popped in a 30 minute DVD that described to us what a great experience the training center was. Stuff was said like, “Changed the way I lived” and “Helped me to do things that I never had the confidence to do before.” I did notice when viewing the DVD the chairs were situated very close to the TV. I thought, they knew enough to do that.

The structure is a converted YMCA building with six floors. The procedure was to take an elevator up to the top floor and work our way down. Only that wasn’t the case. We went even higher. We went up to the roof! Pretty cool view of downtown Des Moines and one of the prime spots to watch Fourth of July fireworks. The roof was adorned with boxes of flowers, which were planted by the residents. I didn’t mention this but all the residents wear sleep shades and must use a white cane. I tried on a pair of sleep shades and it is impossible to see anything through them.

The sixth floor contained the men’s’ dorm rooms. They were all singles. There is a shared bathroom. The rooms had a dresser for all my summer clothes, (shorts, t-shirts, and underwear). I’ll throw in a few Hawaiian shirts to wear on special occasions. The fifth floor had the women rooms.

Quite a bit of the building is taken up by the library (sixty per cent). The library contains all the cassette, digital and Braille books used by the blind and handicapped for the entire state of Iowa. They have over 100,000 different titles. Braille books take up an enormous amount of shelf space. It takes 88 Braille volumes of large like three ring binders to make one copy of a dictionary. One shelf, which encompasses all four walls of a fairly large room, will get you only one volume of an encyclopedia written in Braille. That’s quite a contrast to digital media. Just think how much information you can store on an iPod or other hand-held devices.

The classrooms we visited were computer, shop, home ec. There were no monitors on the computers. In shop class I will make a picture frame using power tools. Remember, I will be wearing sleep shades, which are not possible to see through. The home ec class expects me to make a seven-course meal for my family. That may be messy.

We finished the tour in the basement of the facility. An exercise room with plenty of equipment inhabited the basement. I would have available to me, treadmills, fx machines, stair steppers, and numerous free weights. Dave opened a door to an adjoining room that almost made my eyes water. In front of me lay a 60-foot pool. Cool. I plan on doing a few laps once I’m there.

After the tour we went to the director’s room and had a conference call with Joe, my contact in Waterloo, Sandy, the director and Dave. We all agreed I would benefit by staying at the center for a few months. On June 8 I will be heading to Des Moines.