Preparing Special Ed Students for Jobs

JORDAN, Minn. — Each student needs to prepare for life after high school while still sitting in class before graduation day.

Every high school student needs to think about pursing a higher education or be ready to enter the workforce with necessary skills that match jobs in technical or service industries.

Special education teacher Vanessa Bigaouette teaches a Transitions class at Jordan High School that prepares juniors and seniors for life after high school. The curriculum covers subjects like planning for post-secondary education or training, employment and independent living.

Learning Life Skills While Helping Others

TUMWATER, Wash. – They emptied garbage bags filled with plaid dress shirts, hooded sweatshirts, jeans, sweaters, mittens and various other clothing items.
White, gray and khaki clothes went on one table. Medium colors, including blue, red and orange, went on another. Dark clothes, mostly black and brown, were separated into a third pile.
Tenth-grader Michael Berman, 16, asked about dark-green clothes. After all, they aren’t a medium color, but they aren’t as dark as black or brown, either.
And that’s when he and his classmates in Tumwater High School’s Life Skills class learned about one of the universal mysteries in laundry – right up there with disappearing socks. Sometimes, a color can go in either pile; it’s a judgment call.
Life Skills is designed to help special-education students learn daily tasks, such as riding a bus and household chores, according to teacher Elaine Robertson.

High School Prepares for First Class for Students on the Spectrum

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Stamford High School and four ninth-graders will share a first Monday.
Students in a distinct class for autism spectrum disorders have progressed through Westover and Roxbury elementary schools, then Cloonan Middle School. Now, four of the five students who finished eighth grade last year in Cloonan's modified home economics room are starting high school with the promise of a classroom, Room 106, outfitted to help them learn life skills, such as cooking, along with academics.
The high school isn't new to them. During the summer, they took part in an extended school-year program, which took place, in part, at Stamford High, home of the Black Knights.
"Mickey is enchanted with Stamford High School. He thinks it's a castle, because he sees all the stuff on the knights," said Heidi Teubert of her son.