Job Education Begins with Basics
by Melissa May
Special needs schools in the Delaware Valley view honing basic skills and life skills training as important components in preparing students for the transition from school to work.
For students with special needs, educators believe that successful job placement depends upon strengthening life skills, then building on that foundation with work experiences, skills development and identification of each student’s talents and interests.
For example, Commerce Bank has furnished a campus branch to Archway School, Evesham Township in Marlton, NJ. Before students can gain work experience as bank employees, they must understand how banks work.
What are bank deposits and withdrawls? How do you make a deposit? How do you withdraw money from your account?
Some students with special needs face such questions when they interact with the outside world. They must learn how to handle everyday tasks many of us take for granted before they can understand and succeed in jobs.
Archway’s Program
Archway School, which serves children with learning and emotional disabilities as well as autism, offers a wide-ranging vocational education program.
According to principal Frank Bartolone, Archway’s vocational program includes campus roles such as secretary, landscaper, coaching assistant, lunchroom aide, janitor, coffee shop or school store attendant, and other positions.
“The students must succeed in jobs on campus first,” Bartolone explains. “If they succeed for a time and their behavior is appropriate, then we place them (in outside jobs).” If the students don’t behave, they can lose their jobs.
One of the most important features of Archway’s program is the campus Commerce Bank branch, which serves the student body and employs students as tellers.
Student employees are required to have a bank account, a way of incorporating life skills into their work experiences. They are required to deposit at least 25 percent of their paychecks into their accounts. “There was a real need for this,” Bartolone says, “students never realized what they had to do at a bank.”
Once students show that they are capable of handling employment, they graduate to the next level and receive the help of a job coach. The coach travels with them to supervise their off-campus work habits.
Other life skills classes, such as health, are incorporated into the school curriculum and taken simultaneously with career training.
Vocational coordinator Charlie Blank meets with students to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Blank, a 31-year vocational education veteran, says such evaluations are the key to placing students in the right off-campus job.
Archway students also take a weekly career class in which they discuss the elements of workplace success, including attitude on the job, how to handle difficult customers and how to behave responsibly.
Mercy Vocational
Mercy Vocational High School in Philadelphia offers students technical training in seven concentrated areas. Career services director Frank Smiley says that 20 percent of Mercy’s students have special needs, while roughly 90 percent come from poverty-level or other at-risk populations.
Mercy’s students learn from speakers as well as career-exploration and life skills courses. Another important aspect of Mercy’s training is instruction in social skills that the school believes are important factors in workplace success.
“We concentrate as much on ‘soft skills’ as on competencies and proficiencies in specifc work areas,” says Smiley. “We teach the ethics and morality of business. We focus on
the social skills needed in the workplace.”
Smiley says the Philadelphia Water Department recently hired 15 vocational education students to train as electricians. Seven were from Mercy. “One of the things they like about our students is their soft skills — showing up for work on time, getting along with colleagues, being happy instead of walking around with a sour face, being more mature,” he says.
Mercy’s vocational educators work hard to attract corporate partners, who provide their own employees to teach Mercy students how to succeed in the workforce. They focus on speaking properly, interviewing, resumé-building and participation in business as part of a team.
“The future lies in trades,” Smiley says. “You have baby boomers retiring in droves and no one to replace them. We don’t have a 100-percent success rate, but do have a high percentage of kids that succeed. The mission of The Sisters of Mercy (who staff the school) is service to the community. We want to see kids not just end up with vocational training, we also want to see them get a high school diploma.”
Smiley knows what is at stake. “I lost sleep many, many nights trying to put (students) into situations where they have the best chance for success. We try to marry them to an employer, find out what they’re willing to give. In 99 percent of the cases, the mentoring that is given is
phenomenal.”
Archbishop Damiano
At Archbishop Damiano School in Westville Grove, NJ, life skills instruction starts at approximately age 10 and continues until graduation. Skills include learning how to handle money, how to recognize practical signs such as stop signs, using public and other forms of transportation, domestic maintenance such as cooking and cleaning and personal maintenance to look presentable to employers.
The school’s secondary program focuses on getting students and parents ready for transition into the world after graduation. Students first attend vocational skills classes. In-school workshops are available to simulate and provide practice in a work-like atmosphere.
“They go to school half a day and then have workshop experience for half the day. It’s a head start to get used to the routine of work,” says Gene Dolnick, secondary supervisor.
“Job sampling” includes experience both in the workshops and within the community. For example, some students have worked at Wawa and Home Depot.
“In work-adjustment training for students 18 to 21 years of age, we focus their attention on job sampling,” Dolnick explains. Initially, a certified teacher and two to three students provide volunteer work at community jobs in nine sites that include supermarkets, fast food restaurants and libraries.
“The purpose is work experience, learning likes and dislikes and assessing work habits and attitudes to determine whether they have the attitude to stay on the job,” Dolnick says.
In the next phase, the Damiano staff matches students to a paying work experience in their home community. “Cooperative work teachers will coach them to do the job
independently,” Dolnick says. The students work 5 to 15 hours per week and receive high school course credit for their work.
At Archbishop Damiano and other schools with vocational programs, the emphasis is on identifying each student’s needs, skills and interests to prepare them for work — and life — after graduation.
Delaware Valley special needs vocational educators develop relationships with families, employers and adult-service providers in the community. These relationships help them provide important age- and skill-appropriate work experiences for students to explore their interests and aptitudes.
Building from these experiences, the schools evaluate and adapt vocational training to each student’s needs. All the while, the schools maintain a focus on life skills necessary for success.
Melissa May is local freelance writer and parent of a child with special needs.