OGDEN, Utah — At the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind in Ogden, students become lifelong learners as they learn how to cook, clean, and become independent.
The school in Ogden has around 50 students who all learn together but some students live at school during the week, fostering their independence.
"We have 8 students that reside on campus, six girls and two boys, they are here in what we call our cottages," explained Wade Hester with the Utah School for the Deaf through an interpreter. "It is a residential program where they live on campus for the week."
Students in the cottages were whipping up a breakfast of waffles, sausage and more as they sat at a table, signing back and forth to begin their day.
"It feels like a home away from home," Wade said through an interpreter. "They have their own bedrooms here and in each bedroom they bunk up, they have a nice bed, they get themselves up in the morning, get ready for school."
The students are picked up on Sunday and dropped off back to their parents on Friday to spend the weekend with their families.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, blind students were also cooking up breakfast.
It's not a rare occurrence for students to take over the kitchen as teacher Kathy Bingham teaches a food class twice per week.
Students usually see the cooking process all the way through, from gathering ingredients to cleaning up.
"Reading our recipe, gathering our ingredients, preparing the food, cooking the food, eating the food as well as washing our dishes," she explained.
Bingham also explained blindness is a spectrum and the school works with children with varying degrees of sight to no sight at all.
For students will low vision, tools such as high-contrast measuring cups and large print is used to make kitchen tools easy to use. For students with no vision, measuring cups have brail identifiers.
The school also has use of a 3D printer where they can make specific tools like finger guards to keep students safe in the kitchen.
After the meal has been eaten, the cooking tasks aren't done as dishes have to be washed.
Student Cheyenne was at the sink Wednesday morning, washing up a bowl.
"I've been washing dishes ever since I was a little girl," she said. "I'm pretty quick!"
Cheyenne said she doesn't mind doing the dishes, saying it's great experience for real life.
As students showed FOX 13 News other things that make their school cool, like an underwater robot students built for competition and a drone obstacle course, there's no doubt, the students make this school cool.
