Explore UT

Every year in March, UT hosts "the biggest open house in Texas" called Explore UT. It's a chance for kids and families to come to UT and explore what college is all about. Each department and college has some fun activity to engage and give kids an idea of what their role is on campus. My office was teaching the American Sign Language alphabet along with some simple signs and were also printing kid's names in Braille (printed Braille, not raised Braille). By default Morey became another "activity" and we did a lot of educating about how to appropriately interact with a service dog, as well as demonstrating how he helps me.

We had printed our names in Braille and were wearing them as name tags. Morey had one too, of course, and kids had fun trying to figure out what his name was by identifying each of the Braille letters. One precocious girl looked at his name tag for about a minute and said "His name is Morey". I was impressed by how quickly she had figured it out and told her so. "Well, it's on his collar. And your name is Emily Shryock." She was looking at the ID tag on his collar that does indeed have his name and mine on it. Smart kid!