The ECC: Webinar #7 This video is posted online with the following chapter markers: Chapter 1. Intro - Introduction to Tad Doezema, Principal of Career Education Programs at TSBVI, Debra Sewell, Curriculum Coordinator at TSBVI, and career education components of the ECC. Chapter 2. EXIT and Post-Secondary - Tad Doezema describes the EXIT and Post-Secondary career education programs at TSBVI. Chapter 3. Using Innovative Courses - Debra Sewell describes the use of TEA approved Innovative Courses to target general employability skills for students who are blind or visually impaired. Chapter 4. General Employability - Soft skills needed for successful employment. Chapter 5. MAPS I - Methodologies for Academic and Personal Success (MAPS) I addresses learning and communication styles, self discipline, attitude, resiliency, time management, organization, study skills, leadership and character. Chapter 6. Work Exploration - Students are exposed to a variety of employment opportunities to discover what the like or dislike about their work environment. Chapter 7. MAPS II - Methodologies for Academic and Personal Success (MAPS) II addresses researching, analyzing and applying career information. Chapter 8. Work Training - On-the-job training for student who are blind or visually impaired or who have multiple disabilities. Chapter 9. Links Program - Competitive employment opportunities made possible through a partnerships with DARS and private employers. Chapter 10. Assessment & Documentation - Discussion of need for good assessment and documentation; use of tools in EVALS, a publication by TSBVI. Chapter 11. Resources for Career Education - Resources for Career Education & the ECC The ECC: Webinar #7 Transcript March 5th, 2015. [intro music] Chapter 1. Intro [ Start slide: ] Kate: Good after noon, welcome to our webinar today on the Expanded Core Curriculum. This is our seventh in the series, and this one is going to focus on career education. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Ann: Our presenters today are -- Tad Doezema, the principal here for our career education program on campus. And he also -- notice in his title the EXIT and post‑secondary programs, I'm going to say a little bit about that in just a second. And then also Debra Sewell, curriculum coordinator here at T-S-B-V-I. Before they go into that -- as I travel around [Multiple voices] -- one of the things that I hear a lot, is people have questions about the difference between the EXIT program and post‑secondary. So I asked Tad if he would share some information with that. So, that will not be the focus of what he talks about, but your very first handout is a side by side comparison of those two programs. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] And I think that will be helpful information for all of us throughout the state. You have a few other handouts, one is some information on the innovative courses, specifically general employability, but Debra will talk about the other innovative courses she has worked so hard with T-E-A to develop. And then the last handout is a work history form that they will discuss as they go through their presentation today. There are some final slides with resources that we will get to at the end. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] So as we start thinking about career ed, we have used the E-C-C book that I hope most of you are familiar with, E-C-C Essentials, if I hold mine up here, I think you'll see it. A-F-B publication is really not new any longer since it was last summer, but there is a chapter on every area of the E-C-C in E-C-C Essentials. Chapter 11 is the one on career ed. [indiscernible] wrote this chapter. And I wanted to share a quote from that, because I think when we think about career ed, many of us think it's jobs and employment. Certainly, that's obviously huge and I know that Tad and Debra will discuss that, but as the three of us discussed what we were talking about this webinar, it's created so much more than just jobs and so this little quote mentions the work habits, the behaviors that are needed for success in employment and other life roles. And I like the part down toward the bottom of this that says career education also is about preparing for the student's next environment. Helping young people prepare not just for work, but for all of the roles they will play over the course of their lives. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] So career ed is so much more than that. Those italics by the way are mine. The next slide, another brief summary. It's awareness, knowledge and the development of specific skills. I've also included a brief sentence that comes from the E-C-C flyer that is on our website that describes each of the nine areas of the E-C-C. But career education provides opportunities for students to explore and discover their strengths and interests and plan for transition to adult life. And so I think when many of us think of career ed we think of jobs, we think of employment, we think of transition, but there's so much more than that. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] The next slide, there is one -- and these components are -- hey what can I say? You may call this something different, but the career essentials, E-C-C Essentials book -- boy I screwed that up, didn't I? Can y'all delete that. [ Laughter ] The four components in Chapter 11 are Career Awareness, Career Exploration, Career Preparation and Career Placement. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Chapter 2. EXIT and Post-Secondary You can call them whatever you want to, but those are the four components that will be addressed and now I'm going to turn it over to Tad. Tad: Okay. So it's good to be here. I...I have the -- I have a really great job and I get to...I get to supervise the career education department and also the EXIT program and so last year I had a year in a position as the career education coordinator, which was really a great opportunity to have a full year to just commit...to learning and really diving into career education, so a lot of the stuff that we're going to be looking at today and that -- a lot of things we're implementing this [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] year are a result of having a career to kind of processing what are our needs, how can we best meet those needs. So...basically during the course of the year, last year, I was able to evaluate sort of where we were and the things that we were doing to address career education. You know, for many years we've been doing a lot of really good things here on our campus to address...to address career education, but it became pretty clear that we needed a more systematic and a more sequential way to make sure we were addressing needs. We, you know -- in doing some investigation, talking to a lot of people, it was clear there were huge needs in the area of soft skills, and by that I mean -- and I put examples there -- things like daily living skills, and social interaction skills. You know, basically soft skills is a term that we use to -- for the skills that cause a person to either keep a job or lose a job. And so huge needs for many, many of our students in that area. Also, just basic work concepts. Things like punctuality, and teamwork. Many of our students need explicit instruction in both of these areas. And I think while we've -- you know for many years done a lot of good things to address these, we also, I think, made the mistake in the past of sometimes putting the cart before the horse a little bit with career education and...expecting students to be able to just go into a job site, for example and know some these foundational skills. We realized that we needed to back up and make sure that we were providing those instructions to the students as needed. We also know and realized how important it was for students to have variety, to have real, lots of experiences when it comes to work. We get a lot of students that come to us and...and they have ideas about what they want to pursue as far as a career. Sometimes those -- those ideas are based on a lot of experiences, but often they're based on very few experiences. They might have an idea that they like -- they like the idea of a certain career, but they might not know much about that career. [coughing] They might not have much experience. So we really wanted to expose them to a variety of things and give them lots of hands‑on experiences. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Just to learn more about the world of work and what it entails and about their own interests and aptitudes. So next slide. And I've already referred to the fact that we ‑‑ you know, and I say we. It was not just me last year, it was a few of us. Debra included, who were talking frequently to kind of evaluate the situation and how -- how we can best address these needs. We got a lot of feedback from people. We got feedback from -- from a lot of folks on our campus. Staff members, teachers, we also got a lot of feedback from former students and former staff. Early in the school year last year, we had a -- a conversation with a former employee who now works across the street at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center and that conversation early in the year last year kind of kick-started all -- the things that we're talking about today. Just a lot of the things that so -- so many of our students both come...come to us with, but also even leave our school still needing, you know, a lot of these soft skills that are just such big need areas. We have students out in the community every year doing work training and so we get good input and feedback from folks in the community who have our students working, you know, in their -- in their businesses. Lots of observation. We've been around long enough to see a lot of these need areas and know how badly their need is. And then we all know that the employment rate for people who are blind and visually impaired is not -- is not good. And there's a whole lot of unemployment out there, so we are always wanting to think about ways to improve that and ways to better prepare our students for going out into a sighted world and be employed, get both -- get jobs and also keep jobs. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] So...a lot of the things -- some of the things we're going to be talking about today are how we have decided here at the School for the Blind to address career education. I'm pretty confident that a lot of y'all probably see similar needs with the students that you work with. And so I...I think a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about, even though we have chosen to address them in a particular way, you know, we think there are probably a lot of things that we're doing that could be carried over and...and maybe modified to address the needs of your students. We, you know, we've got it good here. We've got a lot of people who can be involved. We've got teachers of the visually impaired, we also have job coaches. Currently on our campus we have seven job coaches that serve the entire campus. We have teaching assistants, paraprofessionals, and we also have residential instructors. So our goal is to -- is to have sort of T-V-Is sort of leading --leading the effort and addressing these career education concepts and skills and having a lot of them carry over and get reinforced by other folks who work with our students. We have, again I have the luxury of being able to work with our students both during the school day but also in the evening in the dorm so one thing that we're working toward is always working towards continuity of instruction so that the things that are being taught during the school day in our school can also be taught and reinforced residentially. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Ann: I want to just interrupt for just a second, Tad, because I know that I have often found teachers -- itinerant teachers say "Oh, you know, I'm not sure I can do with that, I don't have the access to the kids." That is true here on campus, I think the issues are the same. That's another reason that I was excited Tad was going to be able to share what working here on campus and where they're going because I think when you look at the needs, you look at the issues, those are things we're all facing. It'll be a different issue, I think, for itinerant teachers but you've got to find ways to pull more people in to help do that. That's one of the things that I'm excited to hear Tad talk about and look for ways that itinerant teachers, those of you out there, can take this information and these suggestions and help it work for your kids as well. Kate: And Ann I'm going to throw one thing in, too. I know that we have residential instructors that are able to really keep the continuity going between class and evening time. But I think, you know, parents are a lot of times capable of doing just as... Right. Kate: as much if not more. Again, I think it's important for -- for our audience listening who aren't at the School for the Blind to think about okay we don't have our eyes but we have parents, how can we get those more involved. We don't have necessarily, you know... Ann: A job coach maybe. Kate: a job coach but we have DARS, how can we get them involved? And so I think a lot of it is being creative. And I know many, many schools do have career tracks, and they do have job coaches and they do have that other resource, so. Ann: It's pulling at all of the members in the building. Kate: That's right. Tad: Definitely, lots of creativity and lots of problem solving. And...You know, even though our students do stay here, most of them during the week, they do go home on the weekends. And, so we are wanting to make sure to include the parents and hopefully get the concepts reinforced at home when the students are there on the weekend, too. That's something we are talking a lot about right now is we're, you know, since this is the first year of implementation with this, we are thinking about how to tweak it, make it better. We are definitely wanting to continue to improve the communication so that that continuity across -- across, you know, school day, residential, home, can just continue to improve. Debra: And I think -- not all of you have paraprofessionals or paraeducators that you are working with, but there are some of you that do and you can also call on them as well to help support the -- the instruction. Kate: And especially when you are looking at soft skills. Debra: Exactly. Yeah, I'm going to refer back to those in a few minutes, too. Tad: Right, so, are we ready for the next slide? Ann: Uh‑huh. Tad: Okay. So, basically, again, over the course of the year last year, we divide -- we kind of created a five‑step approach that we decided we wanted to use here at the school to address the needs that we -- that we saw. You know, as they relate career education. Making sure to establish a really firm and good foundation, so in just a minute here we'll be going through those five steps. And the instruction that we are providing right now for career education is a combination of classroom instruction and hands‑on experiences and we'll go into more detail about what that looks like, and how that's working. Even though we're talking about career education, as you all I'm sure know, there are many, many ways that we infuse lots of different E-C-C, you know, areas into what we're doing, you know, within career education, you will see a lot of that in the steps that we talk about. And as I said before, this -- this is our first year of implementation with this model, and so, it's a work in progress. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] There's a lot of things about it that are really exciting and there are things that we'll be tweaking as time goes by, and just improving. [Silence] Chapter 3. Using Innovative Courses Debra: Okay. The next slide is Step 1, and for Step 1 in this systematic sequential approach, we are teaching a course called general employability. Back on slide 10 I believe Tad referred to soft skills, and the soft skills that we are addressing in general employability are independent living skills, dressing, hygiene skills that are important for you to find and keep a job [ Laughter ] and -- and then some other social interaction skills, job-related social skills and teamwork and punctuality. We have written an innovative course called general employability skills. And you can receive state elective credit for that course. We're using several innovative courses in the career ed department. These innovative courses have been approved by T-E-A for state elective credit. You have a handout that is titled: Innovative courses related to career education. The first page talks about general employability course and it talks about the MAPS course. Well we'll talk about MAPS in a couple of steps. But that -- those descriptions are there for you to look at. The other -- the other thing that you have to remember is you've got to get local school board approval to use any innovative course, not just these. But the school board can give just blanket approval to use innovative courses then you can -- you can teach the general employability course. Now that we are -- now that it is in law that we are supposed to be addressing all areas of the E-C-C, the general employability course is a great way to do that because not only does it deal with career ed, it deals with independent living skills and social skills and self‑determination. So it addresses a lot of the E-C-C areas, I mean, I know it says general employability, but it addresses a lot of the E-C-C areas that we all as T-V-Is need to be looking at. Ann: I think that's one of the advantages and pluses of innovative courses that you develop, Debra. And I'm not sure that everyone out there realizes that there are courses with T-E-A approval, I hope this isn't the first time that you're hearing about it, but there are several that Debra worked very hard to get T-E-A approval for. And the handout that you have lists all of those, I know she's going to emphasize the general employability, but we want to make sure you know that there are several others as well. Debra: On the back of your handout there are two other ones, Braille and O&M are also [ Inaudible ] -- but I really just wanted you to look at the front part of it for today, because there is general employability in that, and -- general employability was a group effort. Tad, and Jeri, and I worked on this for quite a bit because these are the things we wanted our kids to learn. These are the things we wanted our Step 1 to be. Do you have those skills first of all and then we'll shoot you into some other -- other steps where you can go do some career exploration. We're going to talk about resources at the very end of this conversation, this...webinar. So I'm not going to talk about those right now. But the TEKS, we have TEKS for general employability. There are TEKS for MAPS, there are TEKS for Braille, there are TEKS for O&M. There -- you have to have standards and TEKS for all of these, the innovative courses. But I will send the TEKS for MAPS and for general employability skills to Kate [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] and then y'all will have them in your hot little hands. Chapter 4. General Employability Tad: So, this slide just goes into a little bit more detail about the areas that...that we've been talking about that -- that are addressed in that general employability course. And so you can see there -- these are those soft skills we were talking about. These are the skills and concepts that are essential in any employment situation. Again, these are the things that, you know, our students may be able to get the job, but are they going to be able to keep the job. Are they -- Are they grooming, are they paying attention to hygiene and grooming and the way that they are dressing. Dressing appropriately for the type of work that they are doing. Are they caring -- taking care of clothes or are they wrinkled. Are they -- Do they have a balanced diet, are they interacting appropriately, so huge, in a lot of the TEKS, a lot of the time that we spend in that class has to do with just a lot of the subtleties of social interaction in the workplace, what's appropriate, what's not. Personal management. Being able to manage time and be organized. Problem‑solving skills, conflict resolution. I'm -- I'm guessing many of you out there probably are -- are working in an -- in addressing a lot of these things...and so this class is a really nice way to address these E-C-C topics and concepts in a -- in the context of employment and employability. We get asked a lot of questions about when [indiscernible] should -- when students should take this course. I think our school is unique. They come to us at various ages, various grades. And, so, our -- The way we've approached this course is that this is the foundation, the foundational stuff. So we need to meet them where they are and if they come to us they are in high school, you know, this is what we need to give them before we can move on to other -- other concepts. And so -- so it's nice if we can get these concepts and then get this course to students when they're younger, but regardless of age, we definitely want to make sure we're addressing -- addressing these. Ann: Are you saying that this means that this course is something the student with a visual impairment could take at different age levels? It's not just for sophomores in high school, not just for 8th graders. It could be offered at various times as could the other innovative courses, right? Debra: Yes, that's correct. They will not get high school credit if they take it in the 8th grade, of course, but it's very, very applicable to middle schoolers as well. Ann: Okay. Tad: One thing, just one more thing about this...You know, before this year as I mentioned, we had -- we didn't have as systematic a way of knowing that these things were being addressed. So, now we've got this course we know that these -- we know that these concepts and these skills are being addressed by a T-V-I, and that, you know, that other people who are -- [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] who are working with the students can reinforce, but the T-V-I is the one providing the instruction in these areas. Chapter 5. MAPS I Next ‑‑ Step 2 is the MAPS 1 course. Debra: Okay, MAPS 1 was not a course that T-S-B-V-I submitted to T-E-A. It was already in the pool of innovative courses, and we love it. It's a great course. It -- You also have that on your innovative course handout. And it -- The first part, we have broken MAPS into two...Into two. MAPS 1 and MAPS 2, into two courses, you can get a credit for MAPS 1 and another credit for MAPS 2. MAPS stands for Methodologies for Academic and Personal Success. And the reason that we broke it into two consecutive courses is because it's huge and the first part of this deals with self‑determination, problem‑solving, knowing and valuing who you are, it's a lot of self‑determination for Part 1 and our -- and our MAPS 2 -- that's -- well we'll get to MAPS 2 in a minute but it really specifies more of the -- deals with more of the job seeking, and job maintenance type of -- of skills. The TEKS are also available for MAPS 1 and I will -- I will send those to Kate as well. And again, when we found this course, we thought "ah‑ha," this is great because it deals with a lot of things our kids need to be learning and working on and these are courses that you as a T-V-I or O&M specialist can be teaching for these kids. And one of the other things that I would like to say about these innovative courses is what T-E-A has said to me repeatedly...Is that it doesn't matter how many hours you are sitting in a chair learning this stuff. It is the amount of the TEKS or the standards that you cover. So if you get your hands on these standards and you think "oh, I can do these when I'm working with my students," then go for it because it doesn't matter that you have them three days a week or five days a week or one day a week. It's the amount of the TEKS that you cover. And there's a lot of...leeway, I suppose, in if you aren't covering all of those TEKS in one year, then -- then you can...teach it again. Teach it for another year. And then when you get, you know, however many of the standard that your district has deemed necessary for credit, then you can give them the credit at the end of that time. Ann: Even if it takes more than a year, they still get one credit, they may have worked on it for two years. So for teachers on an itinerant basis that makes sense. Debra: It may take more than one year to get all of that accomplished. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Ann: Debra? Twinkle had a question. For innovative courses each district must approve them for the course choices, is that correct, right? Debra: That is correct. You must have local school board approval. And I think they can give you blanket approval. You may, you know, the school board -- the school board can say you may use innovative courses and you don't have to ask them for each single solitary one. But you do need to have local school board approval for that. Tad: So the next slide is a little bit more information about the map -- MAPS 1 course. And again I like to ‑‑ when I think about these steps, you know, I envision, you know, the ‑‑ the general employability course is a foundational course and we are just building on that foundation. So the MAPS 1 course is -- is again focusing on increasing skills, knowledge and awareness in the following areas, learning and communication styles, self discipline, attitude, resiliency, time management, organization, study skills, leadership and character. So we're still -- we're still pretty broad here in the topics that are being addressed, but -- but, you know, we're just continuing to focus in on and talk -- work with the students on these skills that are just so essential in the world of work. In this class, these first two steps are primarily classroom instruction. And we really encourage the teachers, the T-V-Is who are teaching these courses to -- to mix it up, to not have it be...just lecture, you know. We want them to be hands on, we want the students to be engaged, we want them to be thinking creatively about how to get the students engaged in -- in -- and really active as they -- as these concepts are being addressed. Debra: If you'll look at the skills that are -- that are addressed there, there are compensatory skills, there's -- there are also self‑determination skills, social skills, so again MAPS 1 and MAPS 2 focus on other areas of the ECC other than just career ed. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Chapter 6. Work Exploration Tad: The third step is what we call work exploration. And this is where we really start to -- to have the students in there in a work setting, starting to get that exposure, more exposure, and more experience to different types of work. You can see there that the goal of work exploration is to increase student awareness of work and self in order to narrow down future vocational pursuits. Again this is that thing of students maybe be -- maybe basing their vocational, their career goals on very little in the way of experience or even awareness and so we're wanting to give that to them. We're wanting to give them experiences. And so this is a class that's a year‑long course. And students who are in this course go through seven, five‑week rotations. Again, I know that we have it good here at our school, and this might not be, you know, exactly feasible for -- for you all. But I think still that the concepts and the things that we are doing are -- are the same. If we could go back to that. I'm sorry. Tad: So -- so each -- there are seven rotation areas. Each one is represented by a job coach. And again the skills that have been instructed, taught, up until this point, the idea is that they are being reinforced continuously through each of these work experiences. You know, we want to be able to give experiences -- hands-on experiences to all of the students on our campus, and so the model that we are looking at today is really geared more towards our high school students and the students in our EXIT program, our transition program. But we do, you know, we have -- offer a modified version of this to students in elementary or who are basic skills students. Students who are in this course receive a local credit and it's designed to be a one-period per day course. And you can see there that the areas that we have chosen to focus on with -- with this course. Again, the skills and the concepts that -- that students are working on could be -- could be addressed in any number of ways as far as the actual hands-on work that they're doing. These are just the areas that we chose to focus on because we thought that these were areas that could potentially lead to employment, you know, eventually for our students. But we make sure to tell our students that the main focus for this class is to give them exposure. To help them to learn what they're interested in, to help them get a better idea about different types of work. And so...you can see there that the areas that we have on our campus are animal care, gardening, culinary arts, we have a coffee shop on campus, we have an inn on campus which is pretty unique, and pretty great. So we are able to use that to teach housekeeping skills, we have a laundry service, we have one of the areas that's focusing on assembly and manufacturing and another is focused on customer care and so again we -- we chose those areas because, you know, we thought that they might lead to employment for our students eventually. The fact that they are only five weeks each is nice because students may enter a rotation and be very adamant that they...are not nor will they ever be interested in working with animals or working in a garden. And so it's nice to be able to say five weeks, who knows, you might find something out about it that you like. Little Critter Tad: You might not ever be a gardener, but maybe you will want to have, you know, a garden in your yard, you know. So not only are we wanting to increase their awareness about employment, but also increase their interests and awareness of different things that they can do that might be enjoyable to them. And we also point out the fact that again this is just something that we're able to do, which is very nice. Each of those different areas is represented by a different person who kind of serves as their boss in those areas. And so they are able to learn that there are different types of supervision to work under [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] and so again just a nice way to kind of reinforce those employability skills and being a good employee, even though you are working with somebody who -- who is difficult for you to work with as a supervisor and those kinds of things. Chapter 7. MAPS II Debra: MAPS II is the second part, what Tad just said, of the MAPS course. And after that -- after our students have gone through the voc -- I mean the work rotation, then they kind of know a little bit more about what they like and so what we're hoping now is that we can narrow down what they want to do when they leave us, or go out into the real world. And that it is -- we work on exploring and analyzing the personal strengths, their weaknesses and their interest in order to establish a plan that continues through high school and into adult life. This course, this part of the second part of this course goes into researching and analyzing and applying career information. It also talks about college investigation and job searching skills as applicable. Part of your description that you have on your innovative courses handout will -- it gives a little bit more information about that as well. Again, it could be an academic elective credit and I'm going to send all of those TEKS to...to Kate. This MAPS II really is the last TEKS of this -- of this course, and it's academic and career exploration. So what we are doing is we're really honing in on the last TEKS for MAPS II. One of the problems I want to tell you about for innovative courses is that they don't typically have curriculum attached to them. So what Jeri Cleveland and I have done with some help of -- of the career ed teachers is we have gone through each one of the TEKS for general employability and also for MAPS and we have pulled together lesson plans for our teachers. It was a -- several big giant notebooks of lesson plans and it was a little daunting an overwhelming. And so we're meeting, Tad and Jeri and I are meeting with each group of folks who are delivering general employability instruction and sort of going through that notebook and trying to figure out how we can make life easier for them. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] When we get to the resources section, I'll tell you -- I'll show you some of the books that we have used for curriculum for those classes. These innovative courses are also in C-O table 22 in the PEIMS -- PEIMS books you can find them there as well. Okay. Chapter 8. Work Training Tad: With that MAPS II course, we really start to zero in hopefully on specific interests, like Debra said. And so...That leads to the -- to the last step, which is work training and so if things are working the way that they should and that we want them to, as the students in the MAPS II course and they are getting some help from a T-V-I in zeroing in on their interests, we are thinking about work training experiences for those individual students. And so we -- you can see there in this step students are placed in job settings. You know, sometimes on campus, sometimes off campus. And we really want -- in many ways off campus is nice when we get to that point because we really want the work environment to replicate a real work environment. We want it to be very much like having a job and going -- going to work. All that that entails, transportation to work. That's kind of where it all comes together, all of those skills are put into place. Are they getting to work on time? Are they communicating well with their boss? Are they dressed appropriately for work? Are they -- you know, are they interacting appropriately at work. All of those factors and things that they have been working on up until that point. We, for the most part, we focus on entry level work. You know? We -- we certainly encourage our students to have aspirations and goals as far as their careers, but we like to focus on what are you going to do when you're not in school anymore? How are you going to -- What are you going to do to get paid? And not all of us -- and we have lots and lots of conversations with our students about the fact that we didn't start out of high school by doing what we're doing now, that you have to start somewhere. And so, that's a hard concept. I guess probably for any 18, 19-year-old. And so that's equally true for our students so we really need to kind of come at that from a number of different angles and -- and encourage them to -- you know that they need to start...at the bottom. We -- you know, we take their interests into account when we -- when we develop jobs for them, but we also want -- want to find things that are in line with their aptitudes as well and, you know, when you are developing, if you have ever developed jobs in the community, you know that you can't just create the dream situation. You have to take what there is. And so that's part of it, too. Just like it will be for our students when they are going out to look for work. They are not going to have their dream job, necessarily. In work training we focus on work hardening, which -- which means that, you know, they need to be ideally if we are able to work it out schedule-wise, they are working for a pretty good chunk of time, you know, their building their stamina, they hopefully are getting increased responsibilities over time. This is when they start to be able to put things into practice as far as advocat -- advocating for the things that they need. Job coaches often go with them and support them, but the goal of the job coach is to essentially work themselves out of their job. They want to help the student to know how to advocate for the things that they need. And if there are things that need to be modified on the job site. You know, they might help with that at first, but eventually the goal is for the students to be able to think creatively about how to modify things and advocate for the things that they need. Again, this course is -- is something that we offer a local credit for. And then that last bullet just addresses the fact that for us, I'm sure for you all, too, it's not always feasible, it's not always possible to have large chunks of time in a student's schedule. So that's a factor with work training. What we try to do, whenever we can, is to -- to schedule things in such a way that students have at least two periods, back to back, to that they can have, you know, a larger chunk of time for this work experience. Within our EXIT program, we -- we are not as constrained as -- we are not as constrained with credit situations and for those students we are able to get them out for nice long chunks of time, [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] whether it be four or five hours at a time. So...we -- we have to get creative, and we have to do what we can. But the goal is to get them out there for, you know, to give, really give them that experience of working for a -- for a pretty good chunk of time. So you can see here, this is just a list of some of the work training sites that we have on our campus. A lot of these you'll see are very similar to the rotations, or the work exploration areas. And so sometimes it's appropriate for us to place students in work training in similar settings where they can get a more in-depth experience than they got before when they were just going through the five-week experience. And so some of the things that we offer on campus are horticulture, animal care, assembly and manufacturing, which has an embroidery component to it,again there's our inn, which includes a laundry service, it also includes a...the -- you know we have to flip rooms when we have guests who come, and then they leave, [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] and the we have to prepare rooms for guests, and so a lot of those skills that are -- are needed to work in hospitality industry. We have a coffee shop, and a coffee service, we have a bistro, which is our on campus restaurant, we have a recycling service, we have a cleaning crew, we've got a job coach this year who started a juice bar for -- mostly for our elementary and some of our basic skills students, to mirror our coffee shop, students are making juices, selling them to staff. We've got a -- what's called the roar store, which is our spirit store where they sell gear, T-S-B-V-I gear. We have got some students who are -- who are working towards having work as adults in grocery stores, and so they are working with job coaches to increase their speed and accuracy in bagging groceries and then we have two work centers on our campus. One is more for secondary students and the other for -- for elementary students. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Those are where there is a lot of work, routines and activities being done with students who are -- who are younger or maybe some of our more basic skills students where -- where those are the settings on campus where those students will do a lot of their work. And then again, we have off campus. I'll just say when I first started working in the world of career education, I was sort of intimidated by the idea and the thought of developing jobs off campus. I never really thought of myself as a salesperson and that feels pretty -- pretty sales‑y. But I really liked it a lot. I found that it was a really fun way to go out and to connect with the community. And I was really often very pleasantly surprised by -- by how open businesses were and places were to the idea of what we were doing, and wanting to get involved, and wanting to have our students come and work in their -- in their business. So if that's where you are, if you are in a place something that doesn't sound like fun to you, you might be surprised. It's pretty fun. And so every year this list is pretty different because like I said before, we -- we try to mix it up. We want to base the sites where we place students on who they are and what they are pursuing as adults. And so we sort of have a bank of businesses that we have good relationships with, that we are able to refer students to if they seem like a good fit. And we are always kind of looking to grow the list and develop -- develop new places. But this year the places that we have are the Humane Society, there's a couple of childcares where we have students working, we have a big office building called the Winters building nearby where students work in an office environment, there's a -- there's a thrift store close by and then we also a good relationship with Goodwill, we have a Stubb's Barbecue downtown we have students working at, Texas Coffee Traders is -- has been great to us, they provide all of our coffee, and all of our equipment for coffee, and also a work training site for our students and then we've got a student working at an elementary school in the -- in the office. And I'll just say one more thing about job development. It's -- so much of it is just a networking thing. It's a -- it's a who you know and getting out and talking to people. The Stubb's Barbecue for example, we have a teacher whose husband is in the restaurant industry here in Austin, and so, you know, she -- she talked to him, and he talked to people, when we were able to get people into Stubb's. But that's a lot of what job development is about is getting out there, who you know, being creative. Kate: Tad, I'm going to throw in, this is Kate. You know, one of the things that there -- that schools have -- local schools have, a resource we don't have here at T-S-B, is that they often times have parent‑teacher associations and those are great resources to tap into people there. They are usually involved in local businesses and they can oftentimes point you or help make those introductions for that kind of connection. And then also Lions club, you know that's a great place to go to sort of connect up with people who are receptive, open minded, about giving our kids a chance, and... So, you know, having also down some cold calls, as we used to say when I worked at the Commission for the Blind, you know, it's not so bad if you've got a name and an idea and a little bit of way to approach it. So using Lions Club, P-T-A, you know. And really even the parents. You know, parents know people. They have networks, they know people in their churches. You know, bringing them into the mix to -- to point you towards local jobs that might be at least willing to give them a chance. Tad: Definitely. And so much of it is about creativity, about determining -- finding the needs and finding sometimes just that niche task that really needs to be done and...so, yeah, it's a lot of creativity. One thing that -- that we have really a hard time with that is probably not as challenging or -- or is more possible for y'all is that we work with our students and prepare them for work, but then they leave us and most of the time do not stay in Austin. They go back to their home community. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] So one -- one model that -- that is fantastic, if it's possible, is sometimes -- sometimes students can be in a work training type of situation while they're in school and then can graduate and go and keep that -- that -- that job back home. So ... just a couple of quick points of clarification. You know, there are -- we've kind of highlighted five steps here. It doesn't always -- it's not always a beautiful one, two, three, four, five type of sequence. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] Sometimes it's -- it's appropriate or necessary for students to be in multiple steps at the same time. And not always appropriate for all of our students to be in all five steps. So this is sort of the big picture, but we -- individualized it. Chapter 9. Links Program So this -- this next slide is something that we started last year called our Links program. And this is also something that we're really excited about and wanting to do more of. Essentially, DARS, Division for Blind Services, said that they'd be willing to partner with us in this. And so we have now, for us, the second year a relationship with Holiday Inn where we've got two students who were selected competitively. We -- we...interviewed, took applications here on campus and interviewed students and then selected two -- two students to be -- to have a paid work experience. And so these students are working part time, and they're getting paid by DARS, Division for Blind Services, and they're working at the Holiday Inn. And so they rotate through the different areas of the hotel. The house keeping department, food and beverage, including events, they work at the front desk and they work at sales and marketing. And our goal with this, partly because of what I was just talking about a minute ago with the challenge that we have with -- with linking our students to employment in their home communities, we -- we want to develop relationships like this with operations that have locations all over the state for that. Students can leave us and, you know, in this situation potentially go and work for a Holiday Inn. So we are very clear about that with the people at Holiday Inn, that this is the goal, [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] that we want to link our participants with employment opportunities for Holiday Inn in their home community. So...we're wanting to work more in that direction of preparing our students for specific work and specific businesses. And just real quick, in addition to the things that we've talked about, there are other things that are happening on our campus that we -- that we do with student to address career education. I talked about the work centers. Sometimes teachers will come up with work experiences, projects for their students. There are occasionally student who are really motivated and have an idea for a -- for something that they want to make and sell and that's something that we encourage here. And also we have -- we always encourage students if they're motivated [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] to pursue competitive employment. This year we have one student on our campus who is employed at Starbucks. And...so that's -- that's something that we, you know, we encourage and we support to the extent that we can. Chapter 10. Assessment & Documentation Ann: The next slide assessment slash documentation, y'all are probably mostly familiar with the EVALS book, the EVALS publication, which a lot of evaluations for expanded core curriculum. We have created performance indicators is what we call them around here, evaluations for general employability, for the MAPS course, and for all of the rotations. We have EVALS for animal care, and gardening, and culinary arts, and other rotations that -- that Tad was telling you about. Again, if y'all -- those are not in the EVALS publication because they are new, they are brand new. So if you would like to have a copy of those, I can also send those to -- to Kate and she can distribute those to you if you would like to have them. And the next thing, Tad is going to talk about is the vocational activities history form that we do -- that we do here at our school. Tad: This is one of these documents that's in your packet, I believe. Ann: Last handout. Tad: The last handout. It's -- it's just a simple...document that we use sort of as a working resume essentially for -- for our students. And so, we want to make sure that we're documenting each time any of our students has a new work experience, it's particularly important and appropriate now that we have got this rotation. And so we've got a system here where we -- the job coaches are updating that document so that we can have -- the idea is that that document can really help -- help us and help the student and whoever else narrow down their -- their options as far as what they want to pursue for work. And so the goal is for that document to -- to summarize what are their interests, what are their strengths and eventually with enough experience, you know, that that document I'm hopeful will be a really helpful tool in helping students think about their future work options. Ann: And with this particular slide, I had asked Tad if we could include a sample. If any of you have ever heard me or Debra in the trainings we've done, we kind of hit assessment and documentation real hard just across the board. So I know this is something that we at T-S-B-V-I, you know, we really need a systematic way to keep track of what we are doing, [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] how we base our instruction on something. And what those performance indicators, those assessments, those checklists are and how are we documenting that. So this is one sample that I hope will help y'all as you pursue that. Tad: Its just things that we're working on as we think about next year. Like I said this is the first year we're doing this, and so we're getting a lot of input from folks, and we want to refine it. We're talking to the teachers, we're talking to the job coaches, and so we -- I talked already about the fact that we want to have more and more continuity, especially with the general employability class. But with others as well. So many of the skills in that general employability class are things that can be taught naturally in a home environment or in a dorm, you know, residential environment. Things having to do with hygiene and dressing and so...we want that carryover to be happening. We're in the process of -- we're wanting to create a screening tool for each of the steps and so essentially because we get students coming to us at various points, we want to be able to place them in this continuum appropriately. [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] And so we're working on assessment tools for each of the five steps in order to plug them in well. And also we want to just build on that links site that we have at Holiday Inn, we are hoping to develop another -- at least one more in the near future. Chapter 11. Resources for Career Education Ann: The last three slides include resources on career ed. Some of them I hope you're familiar with. They are V-I specific like the Perkins activity and resource guide, and elementary concept curriculum, but some of them are not. There's some that Debra discovered and the career ed program did. If they were developing [ Inaudible ] Debra do you want to briefly mention a few of those. Debra: Yes, I would also like to say Ann and I have been going around to several places in the state and doing training on things you can use to teach instructional resources for the E-C-C. If you'll look at the first -- sorry the fourth bullet on slide 30, the top 10 tips for work readiness, these -- this is a little compilation of 200 lesson plans for work readiness skills, and you can go to the career solutions group and you can order those, some of them, for example, [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] are finding the right job, writing resumes, what are work ethics, what are some communication skills you need. What we have done is we have used a lot of these top 10 tips lesson plans for the general employability and the MAPS courses. And the next slide you have got some other information on there, Casey Life Skills is one of the things we've used. Okay, career cruising is another. It's an online source that we are using for general employability and for MAPS, right? Ann: Neither of those would be as specific but they have really good information that's applicable to students with disabilities, including those with visual impairment. Tad: Career cruising, I really like it particularly for that MAPS II class, it's got a lot of features that -- that either a student or teacher can use to kind of get a better idea about what different types of jobs are, what, you know, there's interviews... Debra: What does it mean to be a... Tad: Right. There's interviews with people who do different jobs, features like what is a day in the life of the person who does this job, and those kinds of things. Ann: And that's what our students have so much trouble with, putting themselves in someone else's position. Clearly other areas of E-C-C being addressed there. Debra: One of the other books that we like a lot is transition curriculum, it's by Stanfield and Company, there are three volumes to it, volume 2 is career management [ End slide: ] [ Start slide: ] and it's full -- chalk full of lesson plans for all sorts of career information. And one of the other really wonderful books that we're using a lot of for general employability is something called job-related social skills that I think is the first bullet on that next slide. And this one is again chalk full of lesson plans that are related to -- to keeping and finding and holding a job that y'all are probably -- back on the previous slide, you're probably all familiar with Brigance evaluations, there's a new one called Brigance transition skills and inventory and activities. And the activities, again it's a book from Brigance. Brigance has been around forever, lots and lots of lesson plans and activities in it. Kate: Well, I know we may have some questions and we do have one comment, Jill says have you heard of skills to pay the bills. Debra: Yes, yes. [Multiple voices] Ann: I just said yes. There's so many resources that Debra and I have used in the resource trainings we've been doing around the state. So we just picked a handful to include here in the webinar, but yeah we have. And that will eventually be something up on our website, it's an ongoing document we are working on. Kate: And I would say to any of you out there who are listening and have some favorite resources of your own, if you will send those to me, then I can pull together a bunch of this stuff into a single location on our website so that we can share them with everybody. And ‑‑ [Multiple voices] Debra: Send them to us because we are compiling that 64 page document that has all of the resources for all of the areas... Kate: Yeah. If you get them to me, I will make sure everybody hear, that it goes on beyond that. Ann: We definitely want feedback and input from all of you. Debra: Yes, please. [ End slide: ] [ Music ] Debra: Thank y'all very much. Kate: OK, bye bye.