Reply to What will your non-diploma track child do after high school?

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Reply to "What will your non-diploma track child do after high school?"

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[quote=Anonymous]
PP - I feel a commitment to do so as there is so much focus on the first one-third of life for the individual with a disability, but often very little connection with preparing him/her for the life one hopes to live for the next two-thirds of their life span.  Our long-term plan actually at this point will rely on overall support from her two sisters in the DMV area, but we would like to make that as less intrusive as possible.  To be clear our daughter has a moderate Intellectual Disability with a solid IQ of 55.  However, we had normal expectations of her in terms of conduct and always sought in public education what her sisters had - a challenging, sequential education.

I was old school in the sense that school was for educating her and less about the social relationships as she needed self-contained with some mainstreaming to learn to read especially. And as parents today try to steer away from, I will be honest to say the general milieu of students with similar needs were from a very different socio-economic and educational background.  I decided to be "the curriculum  Mom" for the entire class all the way into high school and never once observed a teacher directly in the classroom.  However, as you may guess, my interest  was not always welcomed, but I knew our two older girls could not be impacted as they were top performers and the other students usually had parents who for various reasons were not involved.  Almost all of the students completed the high school program, and I know that a few are still employed in jobs today.  On education I will note that it may well work for a high school student who is not able to complete the required number of verifiable credits to do a blend of class levels of standard, team-taught or self-contained to meet specific Transition Goals.  The work readiness piece needs to be a part of it, which may possibly be available in the Post High years -- and usually the skills in such a program will also prepare one well to be able to participate in a job, a volunteer job or other adult day programming.

Parents need to clearly understand that it is often a lack of the "soft skills" which show up in the classroom/school setting including behavior skills, communication skills, social skills, executive functioning skills and for some personal care skills, that will  prevent one from a smooth transition to a 4-year college, community college,  job, volunteer job or adult day program setting.  Care needs to be given in what setting within the school division or with supplemental supports in a tutoring or coaching model that these skills as well as academics can be mastered as much as possible. It took 7 years with a myriad of leaning experiences to prepare our youngest to work in a college  dining hall, but she has thrived and is looking forward to her 15th year.  While her academic skills are limited, she has very strong personal care, social, communication (with patience on the listener's end), executive functioning and behavior or emotional regulation skills.  She is a well regarded member of the work team and in her volunteer setting.  I think that many students at XXXXX university have also learned a lot from being a community partner with her over the years.

I will need to clean up local identifiers, but I may  start a topic where I will post an Over View of Transition Planning. [/quote]

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