On Your Mark, Get Set, Go
On March 3, 2006, Life Skills teachers from the entire MPLS district came together to begin a concerted effort to develop a districtwide transition based curriculum. The efforts begun that day led us in the right direction, but were merely a start to this critical effort. This website is an effort to allow Life Skills teachers to continue that process by sharing their ideas here. There are two ways to contribute.
Be a Contributor You may contribute to this website by posting material yourself. To do so, you must contact Jim Barnhill at james.barnhill@mpls…… who will give you specific details. For those who have not had experience in the blogging world, it is far simpler than you might imagine.
Make A Comment Comments are a fast way for you to say, "hey that worked for me," or "what if we tried this," or "you absolutely must try. . . " Comments allow all users of this site to quickly give their input. It is not intended for 1 page commentary, but for 'commenting.' If you desire to write longer responses, consider becoming a contributor instead.
May 6, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hey gang.
This is my first time checking out this site, and it seems to have a lot of good information. I was surprised that no one had commented on ANYTHING as far as i could tell. Being no wilting lily, I decided to make a comment of my own!
Who out there are offering all three levels of and one of the classes we are offering in Lifeskills? I would love to bounce some ideas around about how to maintain skill level integrity when we actually role this plan out. I think North has made a solid effort to put the plan in place. We are offering two of three sections in three of the classes. That is the best we can do, and we are willing to try it to keep quality control throughout the district.
We at North are also attempting to integrate with the DCD and the Resource programs to build a kind of special education continuum. Whet this means is that we have broken down a lot of walls between programs, stopped gate keeping, and agreed to use the entire special education department as a way of getting kids the help they need at their current skill level. We have made smaller “departments” within the special ed department based on courses, like math, english, etc. and are communicating as to who will teach what. This is very much like what we in Lifeskills have built.
What do you guys think about this? I am hoping to stir up a little conversation!
Hope everyone is well.
Less than 30 days people!
Best,
Chris
May 7, 2007 at 1:54 am
Chris,
at South High we do not need to provide 3 levels of coursework for some classes like “Post Secondary Strategies” for exactly the reason you mentioned below about North’s collaboration between spec. ed. departments. At South, Life Skills offers those classes that are more functional in nature; for the lowest skilled students. Those students on our caseloads who’s reading, writing, or math skills go beyond the instruction we offer, take higher skilled courses with resource teachers, so there is a continuum already in place.
In my opinion, we (Life Skills in the district) have included 2-3 levels of classes:
a. to show that there is a continuum necessary since our students do not all fit in a one size fits program.
b. in case a school does not collaborate with other special ed teachers outside of Life Skills, they may need a continuum for guidance.
In other words, we’ll never use Post Secondary Strategies 2 or 3 at South, because Resource handles higher level courses. In return, we teach many of the other Transition courses that Resource Teachers do not have the time in their schedule to teach. We teach resource kids too in the LS program, when they have transition needs on their eval/iep that is specific to the courses we are teaching. Another huge benefit to this is that it creates different mixes of students in these courses, ie. a Life Skills program that is truly self-contained will be very different from one in which students get to mix with others outside the program.
And now a question: You said, “We are offering two of three sections in three of the classes.” Which courses are you referring to? And can you say more about what you mean “about how to maintain skill level integrity?”
Thanks for the comment.
Jim