Empowered to be Independent!

"I work with the greatest team of teachers and most motivated group of students who work hard and enthusiastically everyday to try to reach their goals of obtaining employment and more independent living despite the barriers posed by their cognitive, communication, and motor challenges. Our regional..." more»

"I work with the greatest team of teachers and most motivated group of students who work hard and enthusiastically everyday to try to reach their goals of obtaining employment and more independent living despite the barriers posed by their cognitive, communication, and motor challenges. Our regional program accepts students from several districts and focuses on functional academic skills, independent living skills, and pre-vocational skills. We strongly promote community integration and teach our students how to access community resources, travel, and perform life skills within the community. Our ultimate goal is to make each student a self-advocate and as independent as possible performing the tasks they need for a fulfilling life after high school.

When many of our students join our program they are prompt dependent and lack task initiation and independence as a result of years of having well-intentioned adults do and get everything for them. Learned helplessness in students who have special needs is difficult to change, but with time and consistent supports, these students thrive and become empowered. The first step to decrease adult verbal prompting is to provide structured visual supports, organizational tools, and teach students to rely on tools rather than people to support their performance. Creating such supports can be extremely time consuming and require a great amount of materials and supplies, neither of which are in great excess in our district. Often the resulting visual supports are cumbersome and not socially discreet.

Due to incredible applications that have been created for use with iPod Touches and iPhones, there is now a way to use a mainstream, socially acceptable tool to provide the very individualized support our students need to function more independently. iPod touches are compact and portable enough to use across community, school, and work settings. Best of all, we will be able to quickly and easily customize supports for students to use no matter what the task we want them to learn or the location.

Please help EMPOWER my students to be more INDEPENDENT! Change "I can't" to "I know I can and I know just the tool to help me!" This is their last stop before adulthood and what they will do as adults depends greatly on what skills and tools we can give them now. It is all about tools for EMPOWERMENT, INDEPENDENCE, SELF CONFIDENCE, and SELF ASSERTION. Once they have a taste, there is no telling how high they will soar! hide»