The Law- IDEA: The purposes of IDEA include ensuring that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education (FAPE) that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.
Beginning no later than age 14 or grade 8, the IEP must include:
- Measurable post-secondary goals, based upon age appropriate transition assessments
- Transition services, including courses of study, needed to assist the student to reach the post-secondary goals
- Consideration of the student’s strengths, preferences and interests
Kohler’s Taxonomy of Transition Programming: (Read More)
- Student-focused planning
- Specific skill development
- Family involvement
- Program structure including the provision of community-based instruction and extension of services beyond secondary school
- Inter-agency collaboration
Career Preparation (Adapted Curriculum)
- Work Awareness and Transition
- Education for Employment
- Office Technology and Procedures
- Career and Technical Education and Academies
Work Based Learning:
- Component of all classes and programs
- Range of options including job shadowing, job trials/assessments, and paid & non-paid community work experiences that links to instruction
- Career and Transition partners with local employers annually
The Job Coach will provide instruction to students ages 14-21 with developmental, physical, and/or visual disabilities in classroom and community vocational settings. The Job Coach will work cooperatively with employers, team members, and support staff as well as working independently with students at their vocational training sites.
The Job Coach should:
- Arrive early and meet student worker and employer
- Prompts student to introduce himself/herself to the employer/co-workers
- Locate phones, clocks, break room, bathrooms, supervisor’s office
- Gets tasks from the employer
- Reduces student’s stress
The Job Coach starts to assess the student’s work strengths, “notes” (records) major job tasks:
- Job duties are recorded so a routine can be established and the movement required between work areas can be determine
- Speed of task completion is considered
Once the sequence of major job duties has been firmly established:
- Analyze the specific skills (e.g., alphabetizing, numeric sequencing, etc.) required to successfully perform each major job task
- Determine the most efficient procedure to complete a task with employer input
- Always have the worker present when the employer is communicating job-related information
- Encourage the employer and co-workers to communicate with the worker directly (and not go through you as interpreter)
- Identify natural supports at the worksite to foster integration
- A coach must always facilitate relationships between the co-workers and the student throughout the training process
Initial Training:
- First weeks of training are the most challenging for a Job Coach because you are teaching and trying to keep up with the employer’s expectations
- Develop a daily training schedule
- Choose instructional techniques – cues and prompts, sequence of steps
- Identify reinforcement strategies
- Reinforce expected work behaviors
- Adjust/alter responsibilities as needed to ensure success
Cueing and Prompting:
- When prompting or cueing a student, it is important to consider choosing the least invasive intervention and the one which occurs naturally in the workplace. Please refer to the form Hierarchy of Cueing and Prompting form (Read More)
- All coach prompts must be faded before the coach ends support
Data Collection:
- Baseline Data provides a starting point of where the student is performing. Baseline data is collected by simply observing the worker perform each task step. Record (+) for successful completion and (-) if worker cannot perform step without direction. Read More
- Continue to take data throughout the training process. When data indicates student worker proficiency at a task, then fading can begin
Fading Coaching Support:
- The coach explains the fading process and time frame
- The coach physically moves a few feet or more, away from the worker based on the student’s tolerance level
- As the worker progresses, the coach fades support more and more
- Fading continues until student follows his/her work routine completely independently
Supporting Independence:
- Job Coaches train student workers to perform job tasks, establish work site integration and increase student self-advocacy skills
- Research indicates that students with strong self-advocacy skills are more successful in establishing and maintaining long term employment
More Thoughts:
- A coach has to support the student in a non-intrusive way
- Tasks are broken down into a task analysis as needed and taught step by step
- A job coach must include the student when problem solving any potential problems
- A coach must teach the student how to advocate for themselves
- A coach must take data to prove that a skill has been mastered
- A coach must quickly establish a work schedule while on site and start fading support once the student is demonstrating independence
- The coach leaves the job site when the coach, employer, teacher and the student feel that it is appropriate
Although there are commonalities between students, who have similar disabilities, it is important to realize that each individual will have their own strengths and needs.
The following list of strategies will be more effective with some students than others but may work equally well for a student with autism and a student with an emotional disability
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- Establish structure and routine with realistic rules and consequences
- Use concrete examples to relate new ideas
- Use student’s strengths and interests to gain attention to new tasks
- Pair verbal direction with modeling of task
- Read out load written directions together
- Provide immediate and specific feedback of performance
- Teach positive social behaviors including how to spend free time
- Give lead time if changing routines
- Provide opportunities for success to build confidence and self-esteem
- Allow the student to make choices
- Give feedback privately
- Modify the environment if necessary (i.e. rearrange work space, allow for break area, etc.)
- Most people learn from example – demonstrate appropriate interactions and work habits
- Teach step by step problem solving
- Teach coping strategies – “When I feel mad I can…”, frustrated, tired….
- Teach organizational skills
- Teach time management – set alarms on phone for start, stop, and breaks in work times
- Use accommodations to offset deficits (i.e. use an alarm for someone who can’t tell time, use a checklist for someone with memory problems.)
- Respect and listen to your students
- Set goals with the students and let them know what they are working on
- Avoid power struggles – sometimes giving in is better than creating a scene
- Control your own emotions (don’t take student’s or employer’s behaviors personally.)
- Have a sense of humor but remember there is a fine line between having fun with and making fun of someone
- Reinforce positive behavior
- Ignore behaviors when possible
- Teach new behavior to replace old behavior
- Teach new skills (just because they have never used a box cutter doesn’t mean they can’t learn.)
- When needed; review acceptable conversation at work and unacceptable vocabulary/ topics
- When needed; teach proper dress and grooming for work environment (i.e. Some work sites jeans and gym shoes are fine and others dress pants and a collared shirt are required.)
- Discuss clothes washing before each shift (i.e. aprons and uniforms are to be clean.)
- Have students take a picture of their work schedules with their phones and ask them to share with parents
- Have students enter employer’s phone number in contacts of phone so they can call if late or absent
- Remind students they should not be late or absent!
- Practice coworkers and supervisor’s names
- Go over a script and go with student initially to ask questions of staff
- Practice what to do and where to go during a fire / drill
- Train safety at work (i.e. proper way to use a knife, box cutter, step stool…)
- Review security for work site (i.e. Many places have key cards for access, so students should not let strangers in.)