1. Supporting Youth Transition to Employment, Careers and Independence
Mission: Transition
Supporting Youth Transition to Employment, Careers and Independence
Session Three

2. Welcome back to Mission: Transition!
Thank you for joining us for this SSEAC Education and Skills Development Learning Option!

3. Home/Fieldwork Activity Review:
Review of Local/School District Transition Planning Documentation
As EA’s, having confidence in investigative and analytical skills is highly important!
You applied knowledge of values and visions and disability models by analyzing current educational literature meant for families about transition planning and;
Brainstormed ideas about SWOT (Strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of school/district transition planning literature
What were your findings? What did you discover?

4. Strength-Based versus Needs-Based Profiling
Strength-Based Approach
Needs-Based Approach
“A strength-based approach is a positive psychology perspective that emphasizes the strengths, capabilities and resources of a youth”
(Resilience Initiatives, 2011)
A needs-based approach is a deficit-model perspective that emphasizes the needs, limitations, challenges and inabilities of a youth

5. Why are understanding these profiling paradigms important?
“If we ask people to look for deficits, they will usually find them, and their view of the situation will be colored by this.
If we ask people to look for successes, they will usually find it, and their view of the situation will be colored by this.”
(Kral, 1989)

6. The Impacts of using a Needs-Based Approach
Labeling and therefore, limiting of options
Obscuring the recognition of a youth’s unique capabilities and strengths
Focusing on the “can not’s” as opposed to the “cans”
Ignoring potential growth that can result from adversity
Professionals prescribing programming rather than youth identifying their own solutions
Professionals looking for patterns, such as broken homes, dysfunctional neighborhoods, and poverty, to explain difficulties
Interventions lacking credibility to clearly show cause versus effect”
(Resilience Initiatives, Mentalhealth4kids.ca, 2011)

7. Strength-Based Principles
As an EA of Mission: Transition, you are sworn to uphold these strength-based principles in the line of duty!
An absolute belief that every student has potential;
What we focus on becomes a student’s reality. Focus on what a student can do as the starting point; not what they cannot do;
Be mindful that the language we use creates a reality – both for the educators and the students;
Belief that change is inevitable and all students can and will be successful;
Positive change occurs in the context of authentic relationships;
What a student thinks about themselves and their reality is primary – it is their story;

8. Strength-Based Principles
Students have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (or to the unknown) when they are invited to start with what they already know;
Capacity building is a process and a goal. Effective and sustainable change is a dynamic process one supports in cumulative ways that leads the youth to write the next chapters of their story in meaningful ways;
It is important to value differences and the essential need to collaborate. Transformational change is a collaborative, inclusive and participatory process – “It takes a village to raise a child”.”
(Resilience Initiatives, Mentalhealth4kids.ca, 2011)

9. Strength-based Student Profiles
A student profile is a summary document highlighting a student’s capacity; including but not limited to academic achievement, learning styles and strengths, interests, talents, gifts and abilities, and visions and goals for the future
Student Profiles are key sources of information to be used for planning transition related educational experiences and educational delivery
They share specific information with transition team members
Promotes a student’s healthy self-esteem development
Builds momentum in the transition planning process, engaging transition team, including the student
TIP! One strategy to put vision and values in to action is creating and using strength-based communications

10. Overview of Four Life Domains
EA’s, we must think of and support students as the “whole” person they are because if we do not, and focus more on one domain than another, transition planning will not reflect a natural balanced life.
Employment
Careers & Education
Independent Living
Social Life
Key Considerations:
Aiming for a holistic life and connection to quality life indicators
Keeping high expectations for a wholesome life
Promoting student independence and choice
Fostering self-determination and self-advocacy skills for life

11. Soft Skills Development
Hard Skills versus
Soft Skills Development
Hard Skills
Soft Skills
Specific knowledge and abilities required for success in a job and are more tangible and quantifiable than soft skills such as transportation skills, keyboarding skills, numeracy skills, writing skills, etc.
Is a term often associated with a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, and interpersonal skills that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

12. Importance of Teaching Hard and Soft Skills for Transition Planning
Hard Skills
Soft Skills
Play a vital part in adaptive behaviours with the four domains of a student’s life and contributes to greater independence and control of their lives.
This is an excellent strategy for combatting learned helplessness
These skills will assist students to successfully connect with other people and develop healthy relationships with others in all domains of their lives and to develop a healthy relationship with themselves.
Particularly important in employment. Employers are known to say “we can teach the hard skills, but employees must come with soft skills”

13. Instruction for Hard and Soft Skills
Engaging students in soft and hard skill development activities important for all youth, regardless of disability or differences in learning style
Designing activities using an inclusive model and a structure supporting universal design for learning
Exercises need to get learners thinking about, practicing, and discussing skills important for career and personal success – hard and soft skills.
Mixing activities and natural teaching opportunities
Skill generalization- using skills in various environments

14. Transition Skills Development for Life Domains
In the case of mission: transition, linking individual youth IEP and transition plan goals to a transition plan matrix and deploying daily instructional strategies to target hard and soft skill development within the four transition domains is the essence of your role in this mission
Employment
Education & Careers
Independent Living
Social Life

15. Safety Skills: Requisite Skills for Independence
Teach students it is their right to be safe and in their ability to protect themselves is the biggest self-protection tool they have!
Teaching safety begins with assessing how a youth is moving, thinking, perceiving, and communicating in their environments
(start where youth is in terms of safety behaviours)
Begin with foundational safety skills:
spatial awareness
stranger awareness
hazard awareness
personal boundaries awareness

16. Teaching Safety Skills
Next, select teaching strategies for teaching safety to youth and adults with disabilities. Remember to select the instructional method(s) that bet fit the student’s unique learning style.
Sample teaching strategies:
Role Plays Video’s
Worksheets Real-life scenarios
Comic Strips/Stories
Peer Discussions and sharing experiences
First, determine the where safety skills are needed:
Internet
Home
Workplace
Community
Transportation
Personal Health
For a range of teaching strategies visit:

17. Preparing Hard and Soft Skill Instruction
Introduce instructional strategies and complimentary learning tools for commonly targeted hard and soft skills in each of the four life domains (see page 13 of your field journal for Instructional support tool)
Many hard and soft skills are transferable between each life domain therefore same or similar instructional strategies and learning tools can be used
Selecting instructional strategies and learning tools to compliment skill instruction can depend on “goodness of fit” for individual students or;
If instruction is for a group of students, selecting instructional strategies and learning tools to compliment skill instruction that combine audio-visual and kinaesthetic learning styles is generally recommended

18. Mitigating Risk Skills development is inherent of risk taking;
both on part of student and the transition team
Begin planning targeted skill development by identifying safety issues associated with a targeted skill. Determine instructional strategies and learning aids to assist in teaching “safety” to specific targeted skill.
Preliminary skills instruction should always focus on safety first!

19. Summative Assessment
For EA’s who seek a certificate of completion for this learning option, you are required to hand in a completed summative assessment at the beginning of session four. This assessment will demonstrate your field readiness as a special agent trained to successfully carry out Mission: Transition