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CHRISTINA KEENER: I'm Christina Keener, and I work for Riverview Intermediate Unit. I coordinate the special education community and vocational programs for Clarion, Venango, and Crawford County, and . . . CINDY SWENDSON: I'm Cindy Swendson. I happen to be retired from IU6, but I was the emotional support teacher for primary age K through 3. SUE SUPLEE: And I'm Sue Suplee. I am with the IU also, and I have . . . middle school. CHRISTINA KEENER: Okay. The next frame. Okay. In 1992, the community-based program regulations were devised between the U.S. Department of Education, which included the Office of Special Ed and the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, also the U.S. Department of Labor and Industry. And at that time, the intent was to provide students with disabilities, moderate and severe, with structured educational activities within the community. And believe it or not, the idea for this program was at a lecture at Penn State. The director of the U.S. Department of Special Education was doing a lecture there, and I happened to be in the audience. At the end of her lecture, I went up to talk with her. She was disabled and also in a wheelchair, and we started talking about the community and how I'd like to get a program started within the Intermediate Unit. So she invited myself and a couple other people, with her colleagues, to go out to dinner. So we sat and talked. When we were finished, she said that she would give me a call because she was going to take it back to Washington, and I'm thinking, okay, you know, really? About a month later, I received a call from her, and she said everyone in Washington was very excited about starting a program like that. September 21st of 1992, I received a letter and the regulations from Judy, and those are here if you want to look at them after her letter from back in 1992. Our program started in 1992 with service learning and limited community instruction, which I was doing in my classroom at that time. Sue Suplee was doing community instruction in her classroom. I went to Harrisburg and, to see about service learning because they were starting the Department of Labor and Industry with PennSERVE, and I remember I was the only special education teacher there at that time. Everyone else was regular education teachers or superintendents/principals. And there were a few chuckles that went around the room when I said I would like to get service learning started with special education students. And I thought, okay, I'll show them, and so I went back, and I researched, and I found a mini-grant from the Constitution Rights Foundation in California, and I applied for that mini-grant, which I did receive. Again, there's a copy of us in the mini-grant from way back then. And from there, in 1993, then I started the vocational program, and I was asked to coordinate all the community and special education programs and create those. And so in 2006, we added autism classes because at that point, I was just working with life skills classes, and it was in 1993, and it was only Clarion County, and

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then it moved to Venango County. And then in 2006, like I said, the autism classes were added. In 2007, we added emotional support classes. Okay. The program design. Okay. Our program design consists of four different components. One is community-based instruction, and that's designed for age-appropriate life skills emotional and autism support students for possible attainable basic skills, with life skills within the student's community and surrounding area. This program would begin in the elementary school at the kindergarten level. Community-based service learning is the second component, and that's designed to, for students to participate in an organized service-learning activity, which meets the school and community needs. Examples would be the intergenerational activities, Head Start Programs, pre-school programs, nursing homes, environmental, and hospital. I think that, another side. MAN: No, push it. CHRISTINA KEENER: Okay. There we go. Sorry, we're a little behind with the slides there. MAN: Should I push the next one . . . CHRISTINA KEENER: There you go. Okay. MAN: Sorry, Chris. CHRISTINA KEENER: No, that's okay. So we do a lot of different service activities within our various classrooms. The third component is the community-based vocational instruction or work-based learning, and with that program, we've designed it to train age-appropriate and grade-appropriate life skills autism and emotional support students to possible attainment of job placement following high school graduation. And with that program, we do job shadowing for five hours with our students at various businesses, vocational assessments 90 hours, and then vocational training for approximately 120 hours. The last part of the program is the free enterprise program, and this is where we orders bulk foods, and the students will package them, weigh them, and they also put labels on them, and then those foods are sold through, to different organizations within the Intermediate Unit at their meetings. Our examples for our program, there you go, our program works grade-wise, K through four, we do community helpers. So the students go as a group out into the community, and they might tour different places like a fire station or a restaurant, etc., and they also do survival skills and then community, some community access, and that is done within a group. When we hit grades fifth and sixth, we do more survival skills, go into store recognition, community access, and at that time, one time a month, an educational assistant might take out one or two students. When we hit grade seven and eight, we do more individual community and experience, and at that time, the students will go out one time a week with an ed

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assistant, two students at a time. And at that time, we select different days of the week that we have specific students that will go out, so that everyone has the opportunity to do that. We also do functional academics, social skills within the community, and access and learn how to use businesses and other sites. Ninth through tenth grade, we have more intensive community, and at that time, we had jobs shadowing around 15, and at 15, 15½ with the vocational at age 16. Eleventh through 12th grade, there we do very intensive community instruction, and some of the things that the students might do, they might go to a real estate agent's office, and that real estate takes them to the different houses within the area. And they get to look at the houses at that time, and decide which house they would like to buy and the pros and cons of the homes. They go to a bank, and there, they're how to write checks, how to do banking, open checking accounts and savings accounts, and the importance of good credit. They might go to a car dealer, and there, they learn about buying a car and what types of car, and the cost. Or an insurance company where they're learning about home insurance and life insurance and you name it. So we do quite a variety of different things, and also many restaurant skills and those types of things that Sue will be discussing at a later date. At this time, we also add a program called Job Smarts, which I have here, and the students all go through this program. You can see this, you know, if you want to, at the end. With the elementary students and through the elementary grade levels, we do Careers are Everywhere. So we do also, when we hit the high school and even through the elementary, we do a lot of career-type activities with them. And we found 90%, I just did some research, and 90% of our students have either full-time, part-time jobs or volunteer when they've graduated because I did some surveys and that kind of thing this last year for our recognition. We have, for example, an emotional support student that is now an attorney, went to college, went to law school, and is now an attorney in Philadelphia. We have life skills students that one drives a semi-truck, and I remember when he got his driver's license in high school, and I went home and told my husband, we really need to watch the road now. Well, but that student is actually working for a trucking company and driving a semi and doing great. We have students that work in motels, restaurants, department stores, all over the place. So you name it, we probably have a student that's placed or doing a job there. Now setting up the school year, with the elementary, middle school and high school, one of the first things that I do is review the IEPs with the teachers, or on my own, and go over see what we've got in the IEP because we also, we always make sure that we're in compliance with the IEPs. And I meet with the teachers to plan their community calendar. And what they do is they do a, they have a sheet where they do the planned units for the year. And on that sheet, when I meet with them, they have down their ideas of what they would like to do for community. Well, then I will go and set up different things like we talked about the banks and different tours, and put those on their calendars. With the service-learning program, again I'll meet with the service providers and set up a schedule for the year with that service provider. They like to do a yearly schedule because they plan way ahead, so we have to keep up with that.

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Vocational programming, again we're looking at the IEPs. I meet with the businesses. We discuss regulations and guidelines, transportation issues, liability issues and, again, go over all kinds of paperwork. And again, I type up those calendars for them. In your packet should be an IEP and program issue. It doesn't have the three holes punched in it because I didn't get time to do that, but you should have that, and you can follow along with me as I go over that. One of the important things that I am very, very aware of are the federal and state regulations and guidelines, and I make sure that I am always, always up to date with those and checking with those before I do anything with our students vocationally or even in the community. Again, necessary paper and forms and then I always have the paperwork on file. No matter what paperwork we do, it's always on file and kept in, and track of that. And our students do not train in a job title or description until he or she reaches the level of independence performance. We make sure that they are ready to go out there and work because the last thing we want to do is put a student in and have them fail, and then have to tell the student and those parents that, sorry, you can't do that job now, or they can't do that. We don't allow our students to train on a job for more than 90 days, and if we see that student does not, has not attained the necessary skills that we think they should from that job or the employer feels the should know, then we will give them a break and sometimes, you know, bring them back to that job. We also, at the Intermediate Unit, community is considered an extension of the classroom educational program, and we consider it a curriculum and instruction model. Specific task acquisitions, skills and work adjustment behaviors are recorded on a daily basis at each training site, and I'll show you those in a minute. They should be in your folder, which I'll show you in a second on that. But every time they go out there, assess the student, and we keep track of that, and that is used for progress reports. There are specific rules on what type of sites and areas students are allowed to train in, and again, I make sure that the students are training where they should be, and that employer does not put them in a spot that they should not be doing according to ages. Again IEPs, any of the IEPs, we make sure we're in compliance with. There's communication with me consistently before there's an IEP meeting concerning vocational programming. I make some of the IEPs when we're looking at vocational for the students first coming in, but I cannot make all of them, so the supervisor of the program is always contacting me and asking me questions about that. And we don't really give out, we give information that we have a variety of sites that students can go vocationally, but we don't give a specific site because, we used to do that a number of years ago, and then it would be, the parents would call and say, well, I want my child at Pizza Hut. Well, that child might not be ready yet to go to Pizza Hut and make pizzas, and, of course, they know there's a free lunch there, so that's one of the big things for Pizza Hut or KFC. So then also with the community calendar, I do a calendar for each classroom, and on that calendar, there's the time that the student leaves the school, the time the student leaves the site, where they're going, the students that are going, the adult that is

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going with them, also the, how they're being transported, and if there's a wheelchair. And that's all put on that calendar. Then that teacher takes that calendar, and then every student gets an individual calendar that they take from the information I give them, and then there is what we call a CBI receipt that goes home with that parent that they have seen that calendar, and they return that signed back to us. And the reason we do that is because of liability because, as you know, students can take home paperwork, and that parent never sees it. Well, they don't get to go out until that paper comes back signed, and again, that's another liability issue. And then I always have meetings to set up, business partnerships, which we'll talk about that in a few minutes. Our people know that we are guests at the site. We treat that site as a guest. We're constantly complimenting them on what they're doing for our students, and we don't take advantage of the businesses. When we first started, I had three businesses in '92 and one personal care home. Now we have 175 businesses and organizations and sites that our students go to, so it's expanded quite a bit. But I remember at KFC, they were allowed to have a free lunch, and the student bought four hamburgers and, I think it was like three orders of fries, and so when the business said to me, we don't mind giving out free meal, but when it's that much, we can't afford to do that with the students coming. So I had to talk to the student and the ed assistant. And the student said, but I was hungry, and the ed assistant said, he was very hungry that day. So we had to have a little talk about that, which now it works well. The teacher and the ed assistant is responsible to monitor the appearance and behavior of the students, and I'm also out there all the time. The students are checked before they go out vocationally, and there is a dress code for all of our businesses, so we make sure that that student is in compliance like that. With the transport, our drivers, we have drivers, we have eight vans, and our drivers are checked with their driving record through Penn DOT and making sure that they're okay to drive the students. We also sometimes have to hire IU Transport since we have so many classes now doing this. Again, we go over a lot of liability issues. Our ed assistants have cell phones that they take with them when they're out with students and our teachers. There is a, we have a CBI manual which is this. You can look at this later if you'd like to. And in that manual, we have the responsibility of the supervisor, responsibility of the teacher, the educational assistant, my responsibility, transportation issues. And if they have cash, it's written how they can use that cash. And if they have, we have a procurement card where the teacher can buy groceries, or they'll have the students go with the ed assistant to get the groceries, and again, how that can be used. And then in the back of it, we have all the forms for, that we use at the Intermediate Unit. There is constant communication between myself, the ed assistants, and also the teacher and our business sites. Okay. MAN: Next slide? CHRISTINA KEENER: Next slide. Okay. With the business or the organization agency, the first thing I do is make a phone call, and then I talk them into letting me see

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them. And I tell them that they can call any business that we work with out there if they want to because in all the years I've been doing this, I've never had a business or a site call and ask not to be part of this. I only get calls to add more. Like for this coming year, I have four more businesses already that have called me and said we want to have your students. At some point, I'm thinking that we might have more sites than we can supply the students for. But anyway, then I set up a meeting, and I work with that employer to explain to them that at any time that they have agreed to do this, that they have the right to sever the relationship with the Intermediate Unit and myself. I always give them that out, so I said, if you're willing to try it just for a month or so but, as we've seen, they've stayed with us for years. We talk about the students' needs and expected outcomes. We discuss also what is expected of the educational assistant, or if there's a teacher that's going to be accompanying the student, we discuss that. Discuss also what is expected of that business, organization, and agency. I allow the sites to choose the site, oh, I'm sorry, the days of the week and the times that the student will be there. Then I go back and talk with the teacher and make sure that's okay and work it out if it isn't. Also, the business or organization or site, one of the things that we do is we recognize them. Like kindergarten through sixth grade, we recognize them verbally or by a letter or sometimes a newspaper article. When we get middle school and high school, we do a recognition. And I do two different recognitions, one in Clarion County and one in Venango County, and then at that time, we recognize all those businesses that work with us during the school year. We have so many businesses. It's impossible to try to do recognitions for everyone there, but we do try to make sure everybody is recognized in some way. In your packet, I was going to go over the paperwork that we do, you should have a yellow sheet like this. And on, this is our partnership agreement, and, again, we have at the top like the agency and the school, and then the above-stated agency and school do hereby agree to the formation of a school agency partnership designed to create community-based instruction, service learning . . . MAN: Next slide? CHRISTINA KEENER: Oh, yes. Sorry. There you go. Hang on a second. To create community-based instruction service learning and vocational experiences that will enhance education, meet the needs of the school agency and community, and the signature of the agency, and then a signature of myself. And at that time, again, I always tell them, just because you signed this doesn't mean if you don't like what we're doing, or you have a problem, and you don't want our students there, then you have the right to sever that relationship. On the back of that yellow sheet is a survey form, and this, I have the partnership site fill out. For the new businesses each year that we get, I have them fill this out at the end of the year. For those businesses we've had for a number of years, I have them do it every two to three years. And you'll see here again, it's like, do you feel the communication was sufficient? Do you feel the students were adequately supervised? What have you discovered about students with disabilities? And has our partnership

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benefited your employees, and do you consider this partnership a success, and do you have any recommendations? And so far, I've gotten just wonderful reports on this. So the next one it's white, and it's called the Fair Labor Standard Act Agreement, and it looks like this, and there's several pages. And on that, I think everybody should have that in there. Did you find it? Okay. With this again, we have the local school system participating agency, the student's name and age, and job title and DOT code. There is a zip code, right now I'm using the DOT code still just because these are NCR paper, and we had so many different copies made, that I want to use those up before we spend more money and make a change. The instructional period is on there, when it begins, when it ends, and when the student will be on site, the time, and the days. And then on the back, at page two, the purpose, and again, that's to provide students with disabilities an opportunity to experience and perform meaningful vocational and social skills in a natural environment, and it goes on. And then the business, we have where it's understood that the employees cannot suffer job loss or reduction of hours due to our student's instruction at the business. Also, I have on there no immediate advantage will be derived by the business. But I always tell the business, I put that on there, but, you know, if that business doesn't derive something from the students being there, whether it's the wonderful relationships that are there or something, then they shouldn't be working with us. And then the students are, under students, we have where they have to be accompanied by a staff person at all times so there's always a staff person with them. Liability. The students are covered under school liability insurance. Now the parents do know that they are responsible. If there is an accident, it comes under the parents first and then the schools. The time again, we had already talked about that the days and hours are agreed upon by the business. The community, at the bottom, the community agrees to, site agrees to participate in student assessment and provide the safety instruction, and notify me if there is a problem. And then the school agrees to provide transportation and award school credit if it's outlined in the IEP, and provide direct supervision and follow the IU's emergency plan. And then on page three, this is, all the parties agree to follow the U.S. Department of Labor's regulations. And then there's also a section for volunteer sites and how the, how we work with the volunteers. And then under, there are three different components here, the vocational expiration assessment and training that we do with the students, and, again, it has the hours at the bottom. I'm not going to go over that whole thing because you can read. Okay. On page four, on the back, and we have the student agrees to be in regular attendance at the community site and in the school, dress appropriately, and act in an appropriate manner, conform to rules and regulations of the work site, and be subject to change instructional site because of poor work habits, attitudes, dishonesty, or violation of the law. So far vocationally, we've had to remove two students in the last number of years, and basically, one of the students was just unable to do the job. We thought they could, but they couldn't, so we had to put them in a different site. And the other student happened to have little sticky fingers. But at this time, that student is back into the

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vocational program and doing well, and we haven't had any problem with him for the last three years. So it must have worked and made an impression on, when we talked with him. Okay. The parent understands, or guardian, that when questions arise during a community site, to contact me. Lots of times they'll contact the teacher. The teacher calls me, and many times I'll call the parent if that's necessary. Then, by signing the agreement, the parent has given permission for the student's participation in the program and, again, that they understand that the medical insurance, if they have it, is the responsibility of the parent and then comes down to the Intermediate Unit. At the bottom, we have the partnership, or business signing, the student signs it, that the parent signs it, that the teacher, ed assistant, and myself and then a school administrator. On page five, we have an inventory of instructional activities at the site and then, and there's a list if you look on the back, I think I put Pizza Hut on there. I did. And on the back of here, here's a list of the instructions program that the student will do at that site. And then at the bottom, it has special considerations and medical concerns. And on this one, I just put that the ed assistant will supervise at all times, and assessments will be done, so, okay. And then you should have a blue sheet that looks like this, and on that blue sheet, this is the Student Service Vocational Assessment form. And our employers fill this out. I don't make it too long because I realize that we're guests there, and they don't have a lot of time. So basically, it's the quality of the work, the attitude, appearance, initiative, dependability, teamwork, customer relations, decision-making, communication, and service or work knowledge and skills. And then at the bottom, was it a success for this student? When I first started doing this, the, I got everything back, and it all said satisfactory for every single student. And I had been around, and I knew that there was still more for those students to learn, so I did have to talk to them, to the businesses, and they said well, we didn't want them to be upset. Well, that wasn't the idea of this. This gives us a good idea as far as IEPs, what the student needs still to learn, that kind of thing. So once I explained it, now we get really good reports back. On the back is one of the vocational assessment, and I think I put on there the work behavior, and I have up here, we do have a curriculum that's a community vocational curriculum, and you may look at that after if you want to, and it has a lot of different evaluations in that. Okay. The last thing, the last bit of paperwork I was going to show you is green, and it's a time log, and each one of our students, when they go out, they have to put the date, and they have to put when they, the time in and also the time out, and that's how we keep track of their hours. On the back, I'll let Sue Suplee go over that. That's the Community Training Preference Survey, so next one. Okay. And before our students go out, the teacher works with them on the history of the business, so they'll get on, the student will get on the computer, look up the business, and look at the history behind the business. And then the teacher does a paper for them that has different questions from that so they know what this, some of the history and can answer some of the questions when they get to that vocational site. They might, the teacher might also take from that some vocabulary words for them to

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learn before they go into that site. And we've had a lot of good input back from our businesses since I started doing this with them because they said that our employees don't even know about the history of say, Pizza Hut, for example. I had, at a recognition, I had one of the owners come up from a business and tell me that they loved working with the students because the students did a much better job than his own employees. But what he didn't realize were behind him standing were two of his employees. And if you could have seen the look on his face, well, that wasn't the end of it. Then when I went to the business to give him an assessment and go over it, he said the same thing, and the same two employees were standing behind him again because they wanted to come up and say hello to me. And I wish you could have seen the faces. But anyway, also I've had, corporate headquarters has sent me letters from different businesses where customers have written in to corporate headquarters and said wonderful things about our students working at the site and how they think it is a wonderful program, and they compliment the business on doing that. And the business, and one of the corporate, the letters I got back from the corporate headquarters said that their sales have gone up in that area because the customers were so excited about seeing our students out there. So our students have been really accepted within their communities. Okay. With, another thing that we do with the students is a picture, for those students that are unable to read well, we do a picture interest career survey so we can get an idea of what they're interested in before we make decisions on where they'll go. Excuse me. We also do a Job Search Knowledge Scale and a Transition Planning Inventory School form. So these are some of the things, tools that we use with the students to find out their career interests, etc. WOMAN: . . . could you pass them around so we can see them? CHRISTINA KEENER: I sure can. WOMAN: Thank you. MAN: There it goes. CHRISTINA KEENER: And then I'm not sure if mentioned this, but we, one of the things that businesses do for us before we put them in there is they do a job skill form for us. It's like a checklist, and they check off, for example, what they think that student should know or how that student should be before they come in. For example, good personal hygiene is one, ability to work in small groups, follow multi-step tasks. But there's a list of 40, and they check off what they feel before we send that student into that business site, what they should know and the skills that they should have. Okay, portfolios. All of our students have portfolios before they leave the school, and Sue is going to discuss a little bit more about that, but there is a resumes in there, and she'll go over some of that. We have the CBI Manual. I think I already explained everything that was in it. If you'd like to see it, it's up here in orange or red, whatever color that is. We also have a

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project search program, and that project search program is at UPMC Northwest, and some of our students that have attained graduation requirements are, if the school district wants to be involved in that, they go into that program and work there with internships and within the different departments. Initially, we had two students hired by UPMC there. Okay. Let me move out of the way. CINDY SWENDSON: I'm Cindy Swendson again, and I'm an emotional support teacher, and I just want to know, do I have any friends in this group that are also emotional support backgrounds? Okay. So you all sort of understand what happened here. I went to an in-service at the beginning of the school year, and my supervisor came up and said, hey, I have great news for you. You're going to do CBI this year. And I went, oh, that's great. In my mind, my imagination has now gone wild because I'm thinking about the temper tantrums, the meltdowns, the confrontations, the runners. I've got it all going in my mind like, yeah, and who's in charge of the zoo now? And that is exactly where I was at. I couldn't see how this could possibly help. However, I will have to say that Chris is like unbelievably patient. She was always accessible by phone. She spent plenty of time with me in helping set up and let me grow into the program so that I felt comfortable when I was going out with the kids. I have to tell you too that I also had an ed assistant in my classroom who had done CBI in Clarion County with a life skills class, and so that was of great help because I was pretty cold to this when I started. Next one, setting the stage. I had to look at the skills and the needs of my students. Now I'm not talking about a great big formal thing. I just informally looked at the kids and said to myself, I think these are some of the things that should be done. You know, I'm looking at some of the things. Now remember, my kids were kindergarten through third grade, so we're just tiny guys. And I also had to look at the options and the opportunities in my community. I come from Franklin, Pennsylvania. It is a lovely community. It has a variety of stores and opportunities, community activities. So what we did was look at what we could use and go from there. And then I, I have to tell you too that I wasn't above going out and hitting places where I had connections and kind of sliding in under their, under their radar and using those. And I used both times where I used the van and other times when we walked or used public transportation. But we went everywhere, we did everything, and we did things outside of our community also. Next slide. I am an ES teacher. For life, I will be an ES teacher. Even with my husband, I'm an ES teacher. I want you to know that in constant situations, I am looking for how I set the situation up for success. So obviously, as an ES teacher, I had to set some boundaries right from the start. The first thing I looked at were vans because I talk to the van drivers very often and deal with van problems. So the kids and I have somewhere I call them up, I had a u-shaped table, and I called them up, and we would have serious discussions about things. The first thing was the van. I explained to my children that if you were having trouble working, riding the van from home to school and back home, obviously, Mrs. Swendson would not be able to take you out in the van. Because if you had problems

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coming to and from school, then why would I subject us to more problems, that what we would have to do is work on some way of correcting those problems. The next thing we talked about, I have it that it say's time out, but put a little line through out and put away because I called my time out area, which we might call it, I called it time away. That was a chill-out area where you went, you chilled out, and you were able to gather your thoughts and come back to the group. Now it could be that it was a choice to be there, or it could be mandated by me. We talked about that. I don't know if you've noticed this, but if you go to J.C. Penney's, or you go to Pizza Hut, or you go to any other place in the community, they don't have time away areas. So we had to talk about, you know, if you're going to melt down, if you're going to have a problem, if you're going to throw a temper tantrum, if you're going to embarrass yourself and all of us out there, it's not the place. But it's okay if you have those problems, and it's okay if you need that area because we'll work with you, and we'll help extinguish those problems so that you can be part of our group when we go out. The third thing happened. Oh, someone in here will know who this person is. I had somebody come into my classroom. I had two foster kids come to my program, and both of them had problems with wetting their pants. And the good thing was we already had the program going, so that when they came in, the kids were excited and talked about when it came the day that we went out in the community. So I kind of took these children aside when they came into the classroom and said, look, we do this. And I understand there's a problem here, and this is again a problem we're going to have to work with, but you have to understand, Mrs. Swenson can't be taking out a change of clothes, and I don't know what I'd do with you if there was an accident. So as long as there's a problem, we'll just stay in the classroom, and we'll find things to do here. And as soon as you see that it's not going to be a problem anymore, then we can talk about joining the rest of the group. Now, I have to tell you, as you might expect, I had very few van problems anymore coming to and from school. I had a decreased use in the time away area because as behaviors would start to escalate, we'd say, oh, this week I think we're going to wherever we were going, be it Pizza Hut, be it to Rite-Aid, be it to Sheetz's, wherever, I'm not sure that if that's kind of behavior. And immediately kids who were ready to go into full force kind of just slithered down and became more compliant with what was being asked of them. And, of course, I just want to tell you that my two children who came in with wetting issues never wet their pants. So we've had some divine healings in our group. Next slide. Of course, besides setting boundaries, you have to do some prep work in your classroom. Now, you know, the obvious things. We look at reading, and we talk about menus, signs, ads, labels, and to start using those. We talk about in the money area identifying the coins and the bills, making change, comparison shopping, budgeting, we do that. Dining skills, I've always eaten with my children. I've always worked on dining skills. Primary age children, and this was a really good thing to have is because we could use it out in the community, I had a whole group that could do anything with their fingers but not much with a fork. So I had to work on moving from everything being a finger food. There were hamburgers, French fries, tater tots, cookies, whatever, but, and bananas, we could do

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bananas, but we couldn't pick up things with our fork, and so we, believe it or not, me, Mrs. Swendson, made them pick up tater tots with their forks because we saw them so often. It was a good way to practice. We also worked on conversation. What I found out in my classroom is you might find is the conversation ends as soon as the food sits down, and it doesn't begin again until the food is all gone. So what we worked on were developing some conversation skills so that they could eat, talk, and interact with the people at the table with them. Of course, all of ES is manners and appropriate behaviors, and so that was really enforced. And then what's not down there was my prep work. I had a lot of prep work to do too. If we were going out to a restaurant or someplace, I was running around picking up menus. I was getting shopping ads if we were going to Shop 'n Save or Walmart or Kmart, wherever we were going. I was gathering up information all the time. I also at times made special arrangements with friends or with just shop owners, walked in cold and said, this is what I'd like to do. So I was going ahead and making those arrangements so that we were well received, and my expectations could be met for the kids. And I constantly was looking for opportunities. In Franklin, there are a lot of little community-type celebrations that went on down at the park or farmer's market, or whatever, so I was always trying to be able to access those also. And then I was following up when we had, oh, I have to tell you, we made a really good connection with the library in our, in Franklin. And the children's person there would meet with us, oh, about once every couple of months. She would have done it every week, but we could only, we had a lot of other things we had to get done, and so we could only meet with her about once every other month. But she'd do crafts and read a story so that my kids who were not necessarily understanding what a library was for had an opportunity to see a library, to take out books, to be participating in that kind of a program. Okay. And let the party begin. We had to do community safety and survival skills. That meant learning how to walk on a sidewalk and share it with somebody else because we didn't understand that. We had to read signs. We had to work on crossing streets, traffic lights, and, of course, we had to learn how to use the crosswalk button, and we had to learn to share the use of pressing the crosswalk button because that was really important. We also had to learn about parking lots. Now do I think that when I was done with them, that they had those skills completely? Absolutely not because I know that if a ball ran across that road, they were going to go too. But they at least were introduced and understood the importance of being alert and what they needed to know. So it was the beginning stage. We had a lot of community sites that we did. And these are, I'm going to give you some and let you know what I learned in these community sites and what they learned. McDonald's. Now everybody knows about McDonald's, but let me tell you what I learned when I took my kids there. Number one, my students had never eaten inside a McDonald's. They knew about drive through, and they knew about it coming home to them, but they had never gone in and sat down. Not ever. Pretty appalling, isn't it? Number two. They didn't know that McDonald's had ice cream cones because, you know, if you're going through the drive through, you probably didn't buy your child an ice cream cone.

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Number three. They didn't know about the ketchup pump, and I had one little boy that learned to use the ketchup pump and thought he ruled the world. He did ketchup pumping for everybody. It was a very successful situation. Oh, and the other thing, mean Mrs. Swendson, mean Mrs. Swendson, would not let them order Happy Meals. I made them use the menu, and then I gave them an amount they could use, money they could spend, so that they learned to budget and eat within their amounts because, and you can say this if you want to, I said, Mrs. Swendson is not taking you to McDonald's for a toy. She is taking you to eat a meal, so we don't get toys out of, you know, that's okay if your mom and dad do it. We went to the thrift shop, Salvation Army, and then we had another one just down the street from us that was run by the humane society. Salvation Army, we got to pick out clothes and try them on, once again within our budget. Taking kids to a clothes trying-on room and handing them clothes and hoping they come out with something on didn't always happen, but we did it. And then learning to shop within their budget, understanding that they can't have everything they want on the rack. They can only have what they can afford. Public transportation. This was a laugh. The first time I went on it, and if you're not from the Franklin area, public transportation in big places is for everybody. In Franklin, it's pretty much low income, and I'm definitely middle income. And I had never been exposed to public transportation myself. I got on public transportation, and we drove around the town. My kids loved it because they got to put their quarters in, and it was all a whole lot of fun. You know we did the schedule, and we went out and waited, and we waved them down, and my kids wanted to have a conversation with the bus driver. We had to explain that you can't have conversations with these people. They're on a schedule. But anyway, we got on that, and we went on a high-rise area for low income. And this lady came out, and I knew there was a problem when I looked, and she was doing this. And then she got on and laid a good kiss right on that bus driver's cheek. And I'm going like, and my kids are going like, ooh, and then she walks by, and there's this aroma breath, and, you know, oh, my garsh, she's drunk. We got on the bus, and we're continuing down, and we come home. I got home that night, and my husband had worked in public transportation. I said to him, look, that is the last time we're doing that. I'm not doing that again. My husband calmly said to me, suck it up. He said, you've got to remember. These kids are probably going to need the opportunity to use that, and whether you like it or not, you need to do it. So I did suck it up, and I got pretty good on it. We went to Walmart. My kids learned out that there were department signs, and that if you looked up and you read them, it gave you an idea where you might be headed for. I was very proud. I had an autistic kid who actually on his own walked up to a clerk, first time ever, and asked for help. He told them what he wanted, and they exchanged some information, and he was able to do what he had to do. We went to a candy shop. We have a Daffin's Candy Shop. My kids walked in, never had seen anything like this, put their head down, and went the whole way along those things and looked that candy over. Then I used it as a reward so that the next time we went uptown, if you had it really good, you could earn some money to use to buy candy at Daffin's. Wonderful situation.

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We went to a shoe store. None of my kids had ever had their shoes, their feet measured for shoes. I got little cards. I'm not sure that it was appreciated, but I sent it home to their mothers because we were having a real problem with shoes and feet matching in my class, so that families would know what size shoes their children wore. We went to Sheetz's. Now I'm a tech dinosaur. I don't know much about that computer, and if you ask me to keep this going, it wouldn't happen. But what I found out is, here's my prep work, I didn't know how to use the touch screen, so my social worker met me after school, and we practiced. And then I went again that weekend, and I practiced. And then they didn't have any menu for me, and I found out with my kids, menu time, we use that so as part of our week when we were going someplace and talked about what we would get, so I had to write down all my menu and get on the computer and access Sheetz's site and all that. Wonderful. We went to restaurants. We learned that hamburger comes from beef, beef cows. We didn't know that before. And we went to a buffet at Pizza Hut, and my kids had to learn to try everything and then go back and choose the things they really wanted to have. We also went to a high-rise center and worked with senior citizens. We did Bingo, and my kids were responsible for calling Bingo and doing all of that. They were also responsible for making prizes, and if you've done that, make prizes, make lots of them because you know how when you're sitting playing a game with the kids, and they all want to win, well, in the high-rise, all those seniors want to win too, and you better have something for them. My kids learned to do that, and that was a wonderful situation. What can I say about this? I learned a lot about that, that those businesses, or those people and businesses were really good with our kids. Now, next one. The roundup back at the ranch I called it. When we would get back in the afternoon after being out, there are a variety of things that we did. One was critique the outing. I pulled my group back together. We'd talk about what had happened, what was really good about what we did, and who made some really good decisions, and where there were some decisions that weren't so good, and how we could improve the next time. I had a checklist. It says behaviors, but it also would be skills. Like, for instance, if we went to Walmart or Kmart or a grocery store, and you were set out to find certain items, then you had to show that you were able to find all the items on your list. But I also did a lot with behaviors. Did you handle yourself right? Were your respectful when you went to check out? Did you ask with manners? Did you say please and thank you? We did a lot of that. Did you ride on the van appropriately? Did you keep your hands to yourself? Did you take turns doing things? Did you offer other people the chance? Did you run anybody over with the shopping cart today? You know, things like that, we always did that. And then the next morning, we always journaled. Now if you were in kindergarten or first grade, it was probably a fill-in-the-blank. If you were in an upper grade, unless you had some, second and third, you wrote a paragraph about what you did, what you liked, what you learned, and everybody always got to draw a picture of about it if they wanted to. So at the end of the year, my kids all had, and I know that you, did you get a copy of that, my kids all had a complete year of sheets showing where they'd been and

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what they did, so that they went home at the end of the year, they had that to share with their family once again. Okay. Next one. What I learned. I learned, remember this is the deer in the headlights. I learned that CBI is purposeful learning. I connected their school work with the community so that they understood knowing how to count change, knowing how to recognize coins, knowing how to read labels, knowing how to do those things connected from what we did in the classroom to what we did in the community, so that they could see a purpose to it. I learned that going out in the community was a great motivator. Now I have to tell you, I've only, I just have been retired a year, so you know, if you do the math, that I went to college a long time ago. But what I understand from college was I had to find a motivator for these kids. I had to find a reinforcer. I had to find something. Normally, I use candies and other types of tangible rewards. Think about this though. The biggest reward in my classroom was going out in the community. Wasn't that really neat because not only did they get what they wanted, but they learned so much from being out there, so it was a great motivator. I learned that my students were a blank slate. Even with my informal assessment trying to decide what they needed to be successful outside of my classroom, I realized that I didn't realize all the limitations in their life at that point. And by going out in the community, I found out. Now I do have to say that probably the reward from that was, as most teachers know, is that smile and the gleam in their eyes as they enjoy and do things that they've learned from out there, and that's the payback you get. But I also did get parents' appreciation, parents telling me thank you so much, you know, I can now take my child to a restaurant. He understands the purpose of sitting down. I have to tell you one thing about the restaurant I forgot to tell you. I had this really cute little boy that was in foster care, that we went to a restaurant, and we all ordered off the menu. And the waitress brought food in. And I'd ordered a toss salad and other, somebody had cottage cheese, somebody had coleslaw, somebody had applesauce, the whole group is like going to have a meal. This little one didn't get anything because what he had ordered came all with the main part of the meal. We had the potential for a major meltdown because he didn't have food in front of him. What did I learn that day? I learned that he thought when he didn't get anything, he was going to get nothing at all, and didn't understand that salads came first and then the rest of the meal. What I also learned that day was what a terrific group of kids I had because we all shared what we had and fed him until his food came because he was just a little bugger, and he just didn't quite get it. So that's one of those things where you just didn't, you know, you just didn't know. But anyway, parents saying to me, thank you so much, my child is much better behaved when they're out in public and all these things that they can do. The other part that I learned is that transition, it began with my class. It began kindergarten through third. I set the foundation for what these folks are going to do later on. So thank you.

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SUE SUPLEE: Okay . . . I'm Sue Suplee. I have the middle school group, so like Cindy said, once they come up through the program, they're pretty much ready to go out in the community, hit a few of the same spots, but a little bit different, a little more in-depth. Years ago, I wanted, just like everyone else, you know, my kids got bored. You're doing a math worksheet, you're doing the same story, you're learning the same vocabulary. So I wanted to show my students why they needed to learn what we were trying to teach them. So right at the very beginning, when we first got going, started, we were working on practicing addresses, and, of course, you know, if you write it, you say it, we made games out of it, you're doing it, I have life skills, some students we did it for quite some time. What happened was, it was close to Christmas, so we decided, okay, let's do Christmas cards. Students brought in their addresses for two relatives or friends, and we used that to write their return address, fill out the cards. We went to the post office. Students were responsible for getting stamps. At that time, we used to have slots, so you had to decide which one does it have to go in, you know, so we had choices to make. So this is how I got started years ago. We talked about things in class, what was expected. Like Cindy said, there is a lot of prep work, but it's definitely worth it. You can do all the prep work that you want to start, and you will get there and find there's ten things you didn't even think about. And that's part of the fun because that can also be the next lesson. When you, the prep work is first. You're going into the community next, and then when you return to class, you have to talk with the students, you know, to figure out who did what, who understood what they were doing, what do we have to do next, where are we going from here? And like I said, once you get out, and you start doing things, that's when you realize, oh, we never thought of there are other services. You know, there are other things you can buy at the post office besides just stamps. So that's how I got started. What's out there? You have to look first. I'm in a community that I don't live in so when I first moved to the school that I'm in now, I had to go walk around the community. So I took time in the afternoons on a Saturday, and I went from store to store just kind of explain to business people as I walk in with my clipboard what I'm doing. And I would go around and look. What does the store have? If you talk to people, you will be surprised what they will do for you and for your students. They were thrilled to have us come in and do some things, and it's led to other events also. But go ahead, look around, go into stores, talk to people, think about how would you use it? What would you do in here? That's your next step. Then begin to plan. Make some assessment sheets. Make checklists. What is it that you want your students to be able to do? Remember, it's not a field trip. A lot of times we walk out the building and, we say, you know, we're going someplace. We let the office know, and somebody will say something about a field trip because that's what it's always been called. But this is not a field trip. This is a learning experience. Okay. So you need to keep that in mind. Okay. From the classroom to the community, middle school, junior high up to high school, now you're getting more in-depth. Cindy's group is going to the restaurant. They're learning, you know, working on manners, they're working on reading the menus,

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they're working on sitting at a table and socializing. Same things we are, but now we're starting to get in a little more in-depth prep work before hand. We have an event called Wilderness Quest in our building. All the sixth graders go out for a week to a camp, and they work on survival skills and safety skills and things like that. We're fortunate enough to get to do that also. Part of the fun of our group going is we have a cookout. So I say to the kids, you know, I let them know before we go, we're having a cookout. What is a cookout? No stove, no microwave. What are we cooking? So we get into these discussions, and we decide, you know, what does it mean? What are we doing? What are we going to need? And then we start leading into the menu. The students are all part of this. This is a group discussion. This is a group thing. So we make a menu. Once we've made our menu, and we might have to narrow it down, you know, we just kind of plan everything, and then we say, okay, now how much can we take? What are we going to eat? Then we lead into the grocery list. Now, in my classroom, I have some students who do not read, so we do picture menus. Internet is wonderful. I love it because you can get so much on there. But we'll do menus for my non-readers, and they will go to the grocery store and use that, and that's how they purchase things. My readers, they'll have a list, and they'll go and look for things. We've talked about recipes. If someone decides they want a salad of some kind, or something for dessert, we might have to get into cookbooks or go on the Internet and find the recipe. So you can see as you start thinking of things, you can branch out, and you can keep going and going and going. Store flyers, we start looking at couponing. What store, we have a couple of stores in town, look at who has what on sale this week. Can we buy it this week, or do we have to wait until closer to time? You know, how are we getting things? Are we, you know, once we get into there, are we taking transportation, then we're limited. Are we going to buy, you know, cases of something if we're on the bus versus our van? And then we get into talking about the stores and the sections in the grocery store. A lot of stores, and I didn't know this when I first started, until I was in a store one time kind of marking the aisles and what was in each aisle, and they said we have a map. So a lot of stores do have maps of their stores. I know Rite-Aids, grocery stores, Home Depot, places like that, they do have maps. If you ask them, they can get them for you, and that helped because then we could review that in the classroom. So once you get out there and see what there is, like I said, this is just an example of how more in-depth it gets because now we're trying to really show the kids from step one all the way to the end. Nope, this one. MAN: This one? SUE SUPLEE: Nope, sorry, back one, at the store, my ed assistant, and I have another ed assistant that comes in and takes my students out on a weekly basis. She has a checklist a lot of times. And that's similar to the one Chris had shown you in your packet. There's one, it's the senior center serving refreshments. That's just a different example. Some of these, you know, get in-depth. You're not expected to go out the first time and say, okay, we're doing all this stuff. I'm checking all these skills.

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Most of the time, if it's a new situation for one of my students, then I have my ed assistant take the checklist and not say anything, just kind of do, see what they're doing, how they're doing, check a few things. The second time we go out, I may give them one or two of those areas and say, these are the areas that student needs to work on, so these are the only two I want you to pay attention to. They may go out. They may, you know, go right through if it's a store, getting the cart, getting a basket, you know, doing different things. They're practicing that, but they're only actually being assessed on two other parts, and that's the parts that she'll hit a little bit harder. Like I said, we get into the aisles and locating items. It's amazing when we first went, I never thought about it, but a lot of our students would walk around, and before we could read the words up above, they'd look at things, and we'd talk about, you know, this is canned goods, so will I find the bread in here, you know, this kind of thing. We're looking for a certain thing, kids would walk right past it, and I'd be thinking, okay, well, because they were looking right at eye level, not looking up, not looking down, simple things that we don't think about. That's why I said sometimes when you get out, I always have paper and pencil because there's always something that comes up and I think, oh, I never thought that's something we need to work on. My students, we do price comparison with some of my higher functioning students. Some students take a calculator to keep track of how much we're spending. Some, we just estimate the cost. They round up. Checking out, you know, you have to take the cart and decide which lane can I go to, you know. If I have to wait in line, putting your groceries up on the counter, waiting to pay, saying hello to the person that's standing there. So there's a lot of different things that we talk about and work on. Sometimes my students will take a worksheet with them. There's one in your packet. It's a Rite-Aid worksheet. It should be on the back, I think, of the senior center refreshment one. That's one I made up at one time. We were going to Rite-Aid, so you don't have to have an ed assistant that takes the sheet and does all, just checking or making notes of what the student does or doesn't do. Some of my students, depending on where we're going and what I would like them to do, take a worksheet. This was just an example of one to get to use the aisles and see what does this store have? It's Rite-Aid. Most of my students think, you know, it's just the pharmacy. It's where you go to get medicine. A lot of other things there. Nope, not yet. Like I said, you will begin to find tons of things that you can do. It can be overwhelming, so my advice is start small, stay small until you really feel comfortable, and don't panic because that's what I tend to do, it's like I think of 20 things, and I want to teach them right now. And you may not have time, may take a while, jot them down, save them for another trip, lots of different grocery stores. And that's another thing, when we first started, if I went to a grocery store with my students, and we went through this routine, and they got it, you know, a lot of them might do it pretty independent, few prompts, little reminders, go to another one, no connection. So you have to remember just because they have it in one situation doesn't mean they have it in the other. Same with like when Cindy was talking about going to McDonald's. You know, if you take your students to McDonald's, and then you go to Burger King or Wendy's or something like that, different set up, and they tend to panic a little bit, you know, until you realize, okay, it's the same routine just in a different location, little different package.

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So when I go, like I said, I take paper and pencil, try to remember things that I want to talk about, things that I want to go over. You'll see at the bottom, I had listed, you know, vocabulary, tax. Just this week, we were working on figuring out a bill and having to add the tax and leave a tip and that kind of thing. Calendar skills, like I said, I'm sure you can come up with a ton of things if you just think about one place that you visit and say, oh, these are the things I have to do. And then from there, once you get there, you'll think of ten more things that need to be practiced. MAN: Now? SUE SUPLEE: Now. Are you rushing me? Okay. That's good. Keep me on track. Back in the class, we always discuss. Now I have a class of students that some are in outside regular ed classes, some are in my class. Students are going out all the time in the community with different ed assistants and coming back, so I don't always have the time to, as soon as they walk through the door, of course, they want to tell you, they want to show you, this is what I got, this is what I did. I have to tell them, okay, we've now learned we have to wait if I'm in the middle of a lesson. The important thing is if you are not the person, I am not always the person that's in the community with my students, unfortunately, because I like that part too, but make sure you take time to talk with your students. What did you do? You know, get their point of view. Did they understand what they went for because you could say, what did you do, and they'll tell you something at the store they saw that caught their eye and have no idea why they were actually there. So make sure you do take the time to talk to your students. We have money, students have wallets when they leave, so if they're making purchases, we, you know, let them take their money. But when it comes back, the students know they have to have receipts and money. So that's the first thing that does get collected is receipts and money because everybody likes the money. They don't understand quite why they don't get to keep it. We go over with the students their worksheets, you know, if they had a worksheet, and they had to take it out. If it's not completed, if they complete it in class, that's fine. If not, save it for later. We'll work on it then. Journal writing, we do the same thing. Students who can write, I have several that have beautiful penmanship. They'll write. Right now, my students do computer journals. We take pictures of everything. I'm kind of a picture person. I think you remember lots when you do it. You also remember when you see it again. So we take lots of pictures on all our outings. We download everything to the computers in my classroom. My students know, they get on desktop, they look at their name, they click on it, there's a file folder there that says pictures, they click on it, bring everything up, and they start to plug in the pictures of their trip. And then they write sentences or paragraphs, depending on their level, on what they did, what they saw, things like that. And then again, at the end of the year, they take home a nice little notebook that shows everything they've done throughout the year, which later on helps when they're getting ready for portfolios. But it's a nice way to show the parents, you know, this is

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what I've done all year in school because we send home the calendars so the parents know when their student is going to be out in the community, but they don't actually get to see what they're doing. And a lot of the worksheets I keep in a folder that goes with them when they go up to the high school, so it's a carry over, and again, it goes for their portfolios. So the parents don't always get to see everything their child is doing, so it helps with these journals. For teachers and ed assistants, I make sure that I talk with whoever has had the student out, you know, at some point before they have to leave before the end of the day. I want to know, were there any problems while they were out? How did things go? What, because sometimes they'll catch things when the students are out, and I wouldn't have knowledge of that because I'm not with them. So I need to know, what do they need to work on? How did they do on this? Are they pretty independent? What can we do on the next visit? Do we need to visit there? Do we need to make up another site? You know, just how did things go? So make sure that you touch base with your students as well as with your ed assistants. And like I said, relax, you can't plan for everything. One of the first times we took what we call the go bus or CATA, public transportation, there's a stop right outside of our school. Worked on reading schedules with the kids, had everything down pat, the first group went and the next thing I know they're back in, going, the bus never stopped. I said, what do you mean the bus didn't stop? Were you at the sign ed assistants? Yep, we were at the sign. We even waved. They waved back and kept right on going. So we called. It was a good lesson. And again, incidental learning, best thing to do, so we called the bus company to make sure we had the right schedule, that there was still a stop there, that it was the right time. It was. They promised they would never pass us up again. But it was funny because then, what do you do? Okay. Here are your students. They're back. They've missed the bus. They can't go on the trip they're going. So it was a learning lesson in itself. It's okay. It's not panic time. We'll reschedule. You'll get to go another time. Kids are here. Bus left without them. Okay. Next one. Work-based learning. Once they leave the middle school, and they go to the high school, can be working in some of the same areas that they were going to before. Now they're getting some training, some job experience. In your packet, there's another assessment sheet. It was for KFC for marinating chicken, and again, when we make up these assessment sheets, nothing is written in stone because everything changes. So as businesses change the way they do things, as stores change, clothes, whatever, we've changed our sheets also, but this is just kind of an example. When the students go out now at the high school level, they're going for job experience. In class, I think Chris had mentioned it, you need to talk. There's a certain expectation if you're going to be working, so we're talking hygiene, we're talking how do you dress. You may have a uniform that you have to wear. You may have certain clothing that they ask you to wear. Need to know how to get along with everyone. You know, if you're going to be working at that job site, you need to get along with the other people working there. You need to get along with your superiors. You need a good vocabulary. You know, you have to work on what skills do I need to do that job? So a lot of that is covered in class.

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We mentioned that, at this point in time, you're looking at graduation, so now we start with the portfolios where the students are very active in helping keep their portfolio. In the past, I keep everything at the junior high/middle school level. Now it's a little more responsibility on their part. Letters of recommendation, account of their job-related skills, what they have learned in the different jobs they have been in should be in that portfolio. Pictures of the student working at that job site can be in that portfolio. Awards, any awards that they've gotten, those type of things should be included, and their resume. This is the time, like I said, they start working on getting out of high school. Okay. Learning to write a resume, learning to update it. We have students right now who are training at several restaurants in the area, automotive shops, they're changing oil, tires, doing all kinds of things, beauty shops and salons, department stores, state parks, Penn State Co-op, hotels, the housing authority, nursing homes, soup kitchens. Also, like Chris had said, community-based service learning, intergenerational. My group does a program on a monthly basis with the pre-school in our area. My students go, and they help out in pre-school. Then we have a big Olympic day for the kids where my students are in charge of making up all the games, and they're in charge of running the games. We kind of sit back and just kind of watch as they take over, real good skills. We will also do Bingo and things like that with our senior center. So it doesn't necessarily, our students also have jobs in our school building, so it doesn't necessarily have to be things out in the community, doesn't have to be stores and things like that. Could be jobs right in your building. Okay. And this is my dreaded part, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. I'm not a paperwork person. I don't mind making the assessments and the things I have to do for the students. IEPs set me over the edge. Okay. Make sure, community base is just like everything else you are teaching. Okay. It should be part of your IEP, of the student's IEP. You need to make sure that even at the elementary level, it's in there. Does not have to be specific. Chris mentioned that before. Do not write in your IEP that the student will be going to Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut could close tomorrow. So make sure that you put general generalizations in there, but make sure it's in the IEP. As the student moves on, mine are still pretty general. We might list some skills that you're working on. By the time you get to high school level, a lot more specific, a lot more specific. Make sure it's in . . . levels. Make sure it's in your goals and objectives. It is going to be a big part of your curriculum. There are state standards. I'm still looking at the old ones even though the new ones came out. But there are lots of state standards other than the regular academics that are in there, academic areas, family consumer science, economics, career education, and family. There are tons of standards that cover what you will be doing. Transition. Make sure it's in the transition, and like I said, transition once you get to high school, big part because that's training for employment, independent living. Ours are all listed as the service and activity and specially designed instruction. You should also have CBI listed there. Progress Reports. I include every, you know, nine weeks, whatever, six weeks, whatever your schedule might be, just like every other math, reading, CBI, it's in there. I let my parents know, these are the sites they've been to, this is things they've worked

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on, things they can do independently, things that, you know, we need to work on, so make sure it's in progress reports. That's where I list specific sites. Don't put them in my IEP, but they are on my progress reports. Okay. In closing, I just want to tell you, it can be overwhelming. Start small. Okay. That's my big advice. Benefits to the students, like I said, I started because I wanted to show my students why we had to do the math, why I'm constantly asking you to read these words, okay, why I want you to count the money. Why do you need to know to tell time? Because if you're not on time for that bus, it's leaving you there. Okay. Improved self-esteem. When I can watch my life skill students take charge, walk up to someone and ask them a question because they can't locate something, it's a good thing. Okay. Improved self-esteem. More responsible. When they're taking over, it's wonderful. Wonderful to watch some of my students who might be shy and things like that all of a sudden walk up to another adult or a pre-school student and interact and do things. Like I said, when we do our mini-Olympics, the students are in charge, and it's wonderful to see them being top dog. Motivation to learn, just like Cindy said. Now there's a purpose. Okay. Now I see when I hand you that math or I say, we're going to multiply because we're doing 6% tax. Now they understand why I'm asking them to do what I want them to do. They develop knowledge and skills to improve their academics. Again, all my academics are intertwined. Like I said, when we're talking about the cookout, I think I had it on the PowerPoint, I just didn't mention it, but money, math, figuring out word problems, mapping skills, time, I mean, you name it, you can tie it into CBI. And hands-on learning. In real life situations, it has meaning. Okay. Students will better remember what they've learned because they've done it. So don't be afraid, jump in, have fun, and watch your students bloom. Thanks. CHRISTINA KEENER: I just wanted to mention one thing about the, what we call instructional trips. All of our teachers, before students go on an instructional trip, they're taught in the classroom. If they're going to Carnegie Science, for example, they know about Carnegie Science. They know what's in there. There's all kinds of objectives and things that they do and connect within the classroom. And you would not believe how many calls that I get from the different places that we send our students complimenting my teachers and students on the students that are there. They want us to come back. I get calls, not things in the mail, actual calls, are they coming this year? We miss them if they're not going to come. So I have to compliment the teachers and our students, and so they've really learned a lot from being out in that community, and they know how to act when they're on trips. I also want to mention this teaching-learning connecting book that you got. I had to, this sounds terrible, but I had to get rid of these before I can do a new one, so this one only has about our life skills students in it, and the next one will have about our autism and emotional support classes. So even our partners in the back, we have a lot of partners back there, but it's not totally up to date so just so that you know. And now, were there any questions for anyone?

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FRANK DINATALE: Yeah, I'd like to make quick comment. My name is Frank DiNatale. I work at the Bureau of Career and Technical Education and Contract Administration. We work with all the tech schools across the state. We have a focus group initiative with PaTTAN with Dr. Diteman(?) and Dennis Clark, but I've got to tell you, Christina was a visionary. She had the fight. She was a champion to get this started 20 years ago with a seed grant. She built momentum over the years to get this to where it is today. Her colleagues here, you're absolutely fabulous, I love you two. You're absolutely fabulous. Well, what I'm trying to say is the reason Christine is even here today is I was, I used a liaison a few years back for IU6, and I had to go out to talk to them twice a year, and back and forth, just sort of build rapport with the IU and the Department of Education. I went to the secretary of the office one day and this lady comes running in all wet, it was raining that day, and one of the vans broke down. And she's like, I've got to get another van. There's a problem. And I talked to her and said, who, what do you do here? And she told me what she did, and I've worked in this business for 35 years doing job placement, worked with these people with special needs. I couldn't believe it. I talked to her executive director, her boss, and I said, you know, can we use her? Can we have her talk to people around the state because this is one of the best pound for pound programs I've ever seen? I'm not just blowing, I've got to blow her horn. It's hard work. It's very hard work. You've got to get your top, everybody at the top of the heap in your districts and in your areas to buy into this. They support her 100%. Am I correct? The businesses support her 100%. This is working for our students and our children. Dr. Diteman, any comments? DR. DITEMAN: I just want to say that it's fantastic. You know it's 20 years ago, back when the transition requirements were an idea for the first time, 1990, and, you know, it's just one of the fantastic, I can't say you're the only program in the state, it has a really great program to . . . FRANK DINATALE: Okay. So thank you all for coming today. This sort of the program is packaged. I mean, they're willing to help you out, you know, just contact them. Again, thank you very much, I appreciate your time.