ISD, Woodlands team to provide employment classes for special education students
Published 10:52 am Wednesday, June 1, 2016
- Students with the Lewis Cass ISD’s and Woodlands Behavioral Health’s employability class raise their hands to answer a question during a trivia game Friday afternoon at the North Pointe Center. The exercise closed out the several-week-long class, designed to teach special education students important job skills. (Leader photo/TED YOAKUM)
Spirits ran high inside the Lewis Cass ISD’s North Pointe Center Friday afternoon — and not just because it was near the end of the school week.
Nearly 30 special education students, split into two teams, raced against each other to slam the buzzer situated near the front of the classroom and answer the questions posed to them to score points as their teammates cheered them on.
The slate of questions focused not on trivia nor on the usual subjects taught at the ISD, but instead on a subject that nearly every person needs to learn at some point — on how to land and keep a job.
The quiz capped off this year’s “employability classes,” organized for special education students by the ISD and Woodlands Behavioral Health. For the last several weeks, 15 North Pointe students were joined by 11 students with Woodlands’ Clubhouse program to learn some basic — yet essential — lessons on how to get a job and how to behave in the workplace, said instructor Molly High.
“The students learn many of these life skills in our classes with the ISD or at [Woodlands’] clubhouses,” High said. “But here we get into a lot more detail, allowing the students to ask more questions and to spend more time with each subject.”
The lesson plan focuses on teaching the students practical skills, such as résumé building or filling out job applications, as well as exercises meant to teach the students things like how to get along with coworkers, how to interact with customers and how to deal with difficult situations at the workplace, High said. Similar to other classes at North Pointe, the instruction is very interactive, with students learning through exercises like Friday’s trivia game or through role-playing, the instructor said.
Now in its second year, the employability class doesn’t just contain students to the classroom. Throughout the last several weeks, the class has met at places like Southwestern Michigan College, the Cass District Library and Woodlands to highlight everything the region has to offer students, High said.
“It not only exposes them to employment skills, but the class also connects them [students] with other organizations in the community, gives them a chance to make some new friends and to learn what is out there waiting for them,” she said.
