Community-Based Work Experience for Students

By Don Dubuque, Special Educator
Polson High School
and Ellen Condon, Transition Project Director
The Rural Institute

On October 7, 1999 we began discussing the development of a community-based work experience program in Polson, Montana for our high school students with significant support needs. Two staff members from the Rural Institute's Transition project were invited to come meet one of my students, a16 year old woman named Alicia, and talk with staff about the possibility of her working in the community. After shadowing her throughout the school day, they made suggestions about how to increase her participation with peers, give her more control and responsibility over some of her routines including personal assistance, and support her to be more assertive in expressing herself using words rather than crying when she was frustrated. They also discussed the feasibility of her working in the community. This discussion spawned a new awareness of our students' capabilities and the opportunities that would allow them more independent functioning. That afternoon we met around the table and the ideas flowed. We focused on creating a community-based work experience program that would result in Alicia, as well as other students, becoming productive members of the work force after graduation. We set our goal at getting community-based supported employment as an outcome from high school.

Developing the Work Experience Program

We developed a clearly laid out plan with time lines and talked about using work experiences to gather information about the students' interests, abilities, and support needs and to provide the students with an opportunity to have a say about what employment they would like. Even at this point, we saw things change in the classroom. All of our expectations for the students were higher than before, which changed how we interacted with them. Alicia took an interest in the conversation because someone was talking about her going to work. With just the mention of the word "work," we saw a change taking place.

We formally explored the Polson community with the help of the Rural Institute Transition staff. Visiting and touring different businesses, we looked for work experience sites and got to know the students better. We realized we needed to schedule accessible transportation, juggle support staff, and rearrange classroom schedules. We visited the hospital and looked at potential work experience positions as well as life skills learning opportunities. We identified various potential components of jobs that students could try, such as delivering medical records to other departments or working in the cafeteria and kitchen. We also identified different community skills that they could work on, such as using the elevator independently, buying lunch, using a payphone, or learning to maneuver their wheelchairs around people in the halls. Next we went to Walmart, and let the girls lead us around. We watched to see what the girls were interested in, whether it was watches or videos, and to see what their skills were. Did they know how to get around the store by themselves? Make a purchase? Ask for help? We got some ideas about where to start for work experience. In December we went on another community trip—this time to a manufacturing plant at Jore Industries for a tour of the company.

After visiting Walmart, we met with representatives from Vocational Rehabilitation, the Comprehensive Development Center, Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation, Developmental Disabilities services, and school administration. We wanted to make sure all the players knew what we were doing and that we were preparing these students for real jobs after graduation.

In January I spoke with the president of the hospital, John Glueckert, about developing a work experience site at the hospital where students could try different jobs and receive some job training. We were looking for one employment site that offered several different job types so we could assess students in various environments performing a variety of tasks. Later that month we toured the lab, purchasing, dietary, and medical records departments. In each of the areas we spoke with the managers, looked at accessibility of the environments, and inquired about the various jobs, demands, and expectations within their departments. The next step was an agreement between Polson schools and the hospital that identified what each party agreed to do and ensured that the hospital was in compliance with the Department of Labor regulations for unpaid work experience. We made it clear from the start that we were not displacing any employees; these jobs were for training and evaluation purposes. We came in under the umbrella of volunteers. The hospital agreed to provide individualized work experiences for three of our students for six to eight weeks in each job.

Job Coaching and Task Analysis

The Rural Institute consultants provided an in-service on job coaching for my two aides, Jennifer Jones and Annie Braithwaite. Staff training is a key part of starting a more community-based program. The expectations for students and for staff are very different in the community than they are in a segregated classroom. A major component of the training focused on the aides providing support to the students to enable them to perform as much of the tasks themselves as possible and being aware that how they interacted with the students influenced the community's perception of the students' skills and capabilities. Rural Institute consultants stressed that the end goal of getting kids employed meant that one-to-one support of a job coach would eventually be faded from the site. The students would have to perform the job by themselves. This meant that the job coach couldn't be doing the job for them, but needed to teach them to do the job and create adaptations or supports for the pieces of the routine that the student could not perform. This was a different orientation than we had taken previously at school. We needed to move from a care-taker role to a coach, advocate, and support role.

One tool that was effective in helping us train to independence was the task analysis. It helped us look at tasks in teachable steps and to evaluate what the student was able to do and what needed to be done a different way. It also helped us look at areas where we were providing more support than the student needed. On January 31 we went into the hospital and performed job analyses in the dietary and the medical records departments, the two areas where the hospital administrator felt we should start. The purpose of doing the job analysis was to learn as much as we could about the work environment: what was expected socially, what would help the students "fit in" and appear competent, what tasks needed to be done, how were they done, and how fast.

We wanted each job coach to have a vision of what the student was going to be doing for a task and write a step-by-step task analysis for each job, prior to bringing the student in on day-one of the work experience. After spending about an hour in the dietary department, we had several tasks carved out for training Alicia. Carley would train in medical records, making new patient files. For each student there would be pieces of the job that, physically, they would be unable to perform. We considered this to be alright, since this was for assessment purposes, not for long-term employment. The job coach could make the decision about providing some adaptations to the task or environment and providing assistance on certain parts of the task. To ensure that job coaches knew the job inside and out, they each spent one shift performing the tasks themselves in the department where they would train with the student. They broke the steps down into teachable pieces and wrote them down as a task analysis. The task analysis served as a guide for training as well as a way for them to measure student performance. It also documented that the student was "training," to meet Department of Labor requirements for unpaid work experience.

On the Job

On the 7th of February, we attended orientation at St. Joseph's Hospital as a class (Alicia, Carley, the job coaches, a substitute teacher, and myself). To prepare for day-one on the job we talked again about professionalism, and for the students to be seen as they are—capable of work. That required insight on our part. Are we making it appear that they need us all the time? When we enter the building, do we give them a good independent chance to come into that building, or are we saying "Now be careful on the right or be careful on the left"? This was important to the students' success in the work environment. We need to be there for safety sake, but we needed to give them the opportunity to show how capable they really are. Carley and Alicia, began work on the 9th of February. We were there from 9:30 to 11:30 am.

The next day we began rethinking our training plan. Carley was having difficulty folding the flap of the envelope back inside the envelope. So I went to one of the maintenance folks and we designed a wraparound piece of wire with a hook on it that she could wear on her lefthand and helped her with this task. A few weeks later when I was observing Carley, she decided she didn't need this device any longer, and she picked up the wire gadget and stuck it in the drawer. On the next envelope her finger of her lefthand came up, and it began to open the flap, and using her right hand she tucked the flap in. When you begin supporting students with severe needs in employment, such small strides are exciting and significant. Carley's production rate was lowered, but this would be built up again.

We realized early on that the Medical Records job was not a good match for Carley's skills. Her physical challenges prohibited her from doing many pieces of the job independently. However, the main reason for this work experience was to assess interests, support needs, and abilities and gather information that painted a picture of what she could contribute to potential employers and to identify the types of job tasks and environments she prefers. Since the placement was short-term and just to gather information, we did not explore the option of assistive technology or alternative equipment, although these options could have increased her independence on the job.

Lessons Learned

We began to see these young women doing things that they had not done before. Hands were opening, heads were up, smiles were broader. Alicia worked in the dietary department a total of fifteen weeks. Her duties expanded from setting the trays to filling the salt and pepper shakers and wiping the cafeteria tables. She then began hauling supplies on her wheelchair in a tray from the back storage room to the bake room. By the end of the experience she was independently putting on the required hair net and gloves, which had been a real physical challenge for her initially. Things we learned about Alicia included: she has an amazing work ethic, her verbal communication skills increased when she had to make herself understood, and her people skills are a real asset. She is caring and social. Alicia became much more outgoing, assertive, and self-confident.

We decided to shorten Carley's work experience at the hospital to go in search of a position where she could make a greater contribution, something that better matched her skills and abilities. We had learned that Carley was great at remembering where things were located and she liked showing people where things were. She enjoyed interacting with people, and as an Individual Education Plan (IEP) goal the team wanted her to be using her communication device more often. We had enough information to approach an employer and describe what Carley could offer and inquired about their needs in order to create a job that matched Carley. We approached Walmart and learned they needed someone to bring returned items to various departments and be able to direct customers to various locations and that, indeed, Carley's skills would be valuable to Walmart.

This summer Carley is participating in a paid summer youth employment program funded through Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation. She works three hours a day, five days per week at Walmart in the Customer Service department returning items and "zoning," or straightening things on shelves throughout the store. Her family is covering the cost of her job coach for the summer and Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation is providing her transportation and her wages. We are hoping this will turn into a long-term paid position for her as an employee of Walmart.

When Alicia returns to school in the fall, we will have a different job for her to try so we can learn even more about her interests and abilities. This year we would like to place her in a paid position, in a job that matches her interests and contributions.

Conclusion

The focus of the Special Education program has changed dramatically at Polson this past year. Now the hopes and dreams of the students and their families drive our work. We want to ensure that our students become active members of the community following graduation from high school. Transition planning in the IEPs makes so much more sense now. What we teach students in school should lead towards those post-school outcomes. And our expectations need to be higher, especially for those students with ongoing support needs. All of the students who participated in community-based work experience this year have grown leaps and bounds. They are different people, much more mature and confident in their abilities and more assertive. All of us have been revitalized.