High School Students Overwhelm Blind Classmate With A Braille Yearbook

Jun 13, 2020

When you hear about an entire group of high schoolers doing something that they need to keep secret from a member of their class, we tend to think the worst these days. This makes good deeds like the one that the Class of 2019 at Colorado’s Conifer High School thought of for a member of their class feel all the more special. That year, graduating seniors surprised blind classmate Randy Sampson with a braille yearbook.

In the mountain foothills in Colorado, Conifer is a small, very close-knit community. Most of the high school students have grown up with each other and most of their parents know each other, many of them having graduated from the same high school that their children now attend.

This community spirit encouraged Conifer High School’s senior class and staff to band together to spend more than 1,500 hours on a special project that would bring joy to one of their classmates.

According to CBS Denver, RJ Sampson was a senior who asked one simple question during the year he was set to graduate from high school and start the next chapter of his life. Thinking nothing much of it, he kindly asked when the school would make him a braille yearbook.

RJ loved his high school and had a great experience at Conifer, enjoying a good group of friends and participating in a variety of activities.

However, RJ is visually impaired and had never been able to read his yearbooks, let alone look back on the years that had passed as he approached the end of his senior year.

RJ’s teacher, Leslie Thompson, wanted badly to make a braille yearbook a reality. However, the publishing of standard yearbooks was already a massive undertaking. With the help of the yearbook committee and the senior class, students and staff spent over 1,500 hours working exceptionally hard to create a special braille yearbook for RJ.

The school gathered together in the gymnasium to present RJ with the braille yearbook commemorating his senior year, a moment he will surely never forget!

How wonderful are the students and staff at Conifer High School for banding together to do something more special for RJ? Stories like this are so incredibly moving. We would love to hear your thoughts and comments about all the hard work and effort these students put into making such a special gift for RJ! And please pass this inspiring story on to family members and friends.