Real Life Colorado

Real Life Colorado is on a mission to empower, support, and connect individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) with resources to live a full and healthy “Real Life” in their community.

As a small and relatively new 501(c)3 nonprofit school, we could use your help to ensure our students continue to receive the highest quality education at our innovative AAC Immersion program, The Learning Zone (TLZ)! We just completed our second year of teaching students life changing skills and are excited to continue to grow and expand our program!

TLZ is the only program of its kind in Colorado, focusing on teaching students with complex communication needs to communicate and participate academically using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices.

We offer a full-time academic program that provides a small classroom learning environment with highly specialized instruction in writing, reading, math, phonics, science, and social studies. The magic of our program involves the full integration of students' communication devices ("talkers") into all academic, social, and vocational activities.

What we do:

Provide an all-day AAC immersive learning experience to promote the highest academic, social, communication, and life outcomes.

Create, modify, and implement individualized curriculum plans to best meet the needs of our unique student population.

Partner with speech-language pathologists who specialize in AAC to ensure integration and implementation of AAC-focused instruction.

Use of AAC teaching implementation strategies that are research-based to ensure best practice.

Collaborate with school districts, private providers, and local community resources to best support students' generalization skills across environments.

Who we are:

A team of dedicated, specialized, and diverse professionals who desire to provide our students with an authentic life, learning, and social experience.

Professional backgrounds in special education, speech-language pathology, paraprofessional, research/data collection, and behavioral interventions.

How parents feel:

“We enrolled our son at The Learning Zone because it would be the first opportunity where all the students would have talking devices. It would give our son the chance to experience friendship with kids that communicate just like him!"

“Learning Zone meets kids where they are providing relevant and engaging content. Teachers are able to spend time with each student equally and the peer relationships are very hard to find elsewhere - this is what makes RLC so unique. It is so amazing for [my son] to be around so many other children who also use speech devices and teachers who already know how to deal with the behaviors of these unique students.”

“Since starting at Learning Zone I have seen my daughter attempt to use her voice much more! Learning how to use her words on the talker has given her confidence to vocalize more often.”

To find out more about our program or offer support…

Contact our Executive Director - Amanda Attreau, MS CCC-SLP

Website: https://reallifecolorado.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reallifecoloradoTLZ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reallifecoloradotlz/

Thank you for taking the time to learn about Real Life Colorado and the Learning Zone.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!