American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Winter 2016 TRANSITIONS
The Transition Conversation: Traveling Hopefully
by Lydia A. Schuck
From the Editor: Lydia Schuck is a rehabilitation counselor and the parent of an adult blind daughter. She conducts federally funded research that aims to help school districts design transition programs for youth with disabilities. She is a past president of Michigan Parents of Blind Children and an active member of the Lansing Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. This is the fourth article in a series on transition that she has written for Future Reflections.
Parents and their children sometimes carry on conversations that continue over many months. They pick up a topic, explore it, and drop it again, only to return to it days or weeks later. This gradual exploration process gives everyone time to grow and build understanding.
Children learn about the world of work in the same way, a little bit at a time. The "take your child to work" movement has helped children understand the workplace. Children who are blind may need even more experiences to help them gain a real understanding of the working world.
When I taught seventh- and eighth-grade mathematics, I asked my students to devise problems based on realistic work situations. I found that they knew very little about the work their parents and other adults did every day. Many students knew what an orthodontist does, and many wanted to be marine biologists to "save the whales." Some thought they knew a bit about the life of a teacher. Students often knew their parents' job titles, such as investment banker or even supply chain management consultant, but had no idea what the work actually entails. They didn't know much about what happens behind the scenes at a hospital, bank, factory, or other workplace.
Young people's limited knowledge about the workplace can make it hard for them to engage in meaningful conversations about transition. Sometimes a student may announce a career goal such as winning the lottery or playing in the NBA. If he or she plays sports at school, the student probably has some idea of the work involved. However, she may not have any understanding of the odds against success in professional sports or buying a winning lottery ticket. How do parents and other adults help youth with and without disabilities to learn about work?
Building Career Awareness at Every Opportunity
Orientation and mobility lessons in the community, and even in the school setting, can provide important opportunities for incidental learning about work. Any family outing can function in this way as well. For instance, most students will know that a pharmacist works at the drugstore filling prescriptions and talking to people who purchase medications. But many pharmacists are also small business owners, supervising staff members who clean the store, maintain the merchandise, order supplies and medications, and run the checkout counter. A number of entry level jobs are available at pharmacies, banks, financial planning firms, florists' shops, and every other type of business.
The transition conversation can take place during every family outing or cane travel lesson. When you walk into a place of business, quickly describe the place to your child or student. "I see about eight people working today. The pharmacist is behind the back counter where the medications are dispensed, and it looks like there are two pharmacy assistants today. Wow, the phone keeps ringing. Good thing they have a person taking care of that. Now as soon as we find the cough medicine, we're going to check out up front where the cashier is."
You can have a similar conversation almost anywhere you go. Don't miss the opportunities! I even described farm fields when we were driving. I got pretty good at estimating the number of cows in a field as we zipped by.
Exploring Career Goals Together
The IEP document contains a place for school personnel to record the transition-age student's goals for adulthood. Your student or child will be asked about his goals in the areas of education and training, employment, and, if appropriate, independent living skills. The legal process for transition planning requires assessments to be performed that will help the child develop adult goals. However, not all school programs carry out such assessments.
You can assess your child's progress by continuing the transition conversation. Ask him to describe his goals once a year, and write them down. You will be able to look back and see that he is developing and maturing, year by year. Gently try to ask follow-up questions that will help him identify steps he could take now to reach his goals in the future.
Looking at long-term goals is helpful, but the student also needs to learn to identify the next step. She may be stumped by the question: What do I do next?
Education and training goals become more meaningful as students approach working age. Some careers will demand specific training. Some students with additional disabilities may not be able to complete the education required for a specific career. Here are some careers and sample follow-up questions.
Doctor or other medical worker
- "What kind of doctor would you like to be?"
- "Would you like to work with children or adults?"
- "How many years of college would it take for you to become a doctor?"
Teacher
- "Why do you want to be a teacher?"
- "Do you want to be like your math teacher?"
- "What do you think a good teacher is like?"
Chemist or other scientist
- "What is most interesting to you about chemistry?"
- "What does a chemist do in the laboratory?"
Warehouse manager or logistics support
- "What do people in those occupations do every day?"
- "Would you like to see if anyone in the NFB does this kind of work?"
Car mechanic or other hands-on occupation
- "What skills would you need to have?"
- "How about if we visit our friend's car shop next week?"
- "What part of that job do you think is most interesting?"
One young man told his team that he wanted to be a NASCAR mechanic. However, his intellectual disability prevented him from learning the things he would need in order to compete in that career. His parents asked him some more questions. They found out that he liked the way the group of NASCAR mechanics would all rush out to work on a car in the pit stop. He wanted to be part of a team working on cars. His family helped him find work at a quick oil change business, where he was welcomed onto its team.
We can learn a lot from this story. Don't automatically tell your child that his idea is unrealistic. Dig a little deeper.
What It Looks Like in Our Family
In our family the transition conversation has been a long-term process. Our child, who is now twenty-three years old, has several disabilities. Autism-related anxiety is her biggest barrier. She has great skills in literary, math, and music Braille, and she is a good writer. She plays and composes beautiful music at the piano keyboard. However, she finds many sounds intolerable, especially the noise of vibrating machinery and the sounds of babies crying. She cannot work for any extended period without help or interaction.
Our transition conversation has progressed to the point where our daughter has created a job goal of becoming a fiction writer. Her rehabilitation counselor has officially listed her as needing supported employment, which seems logical to all of us. The commission for the blind in our state has provided her with a BrailleNote, and she is taking a correspondence course on English composition from the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Her fiction is already off to a good start, as she has been writing stories for years. Online college courses or massive online open courses (MOOCs) are probably her next step toward her goal.
Our daughter has some very special interests, a common feature of individuals who have autism. She collects plastic animals and action figures to populate the stories she makes up for fun. She is furnishing a dollhouse. She buys her "favorites" at local toy stores and does a bit of buying online. She can search the web independently on her BrailleNote Apex. We help her buy some items. She is now selling her "not favorites" on a consignment basis at two locations. This activity helps her understand how retail selling works.
We also noticed how much our daughter likes to entertain guests, and we realized that she likes to interact with people in structured social situations. She likes to find just the right gifts for family members and friends. Over time her interests in writing, toys, and hospitality have led her to be interested in having her own hybrid at-home and online retail business. She wants to sell items related to her special interests and also to sell her stories and novels. It will take a long time for her to get up and running, and she will always require some outside support, but this is the life she wants to live.
"I really want to get off of SSI," our daughter tells us. We support her intention to do so, though she may not completely accomplish this goal. For a start, she will be enrolling in courses on small business offered by the Hadley Institute.
What happens if our daughter changes her mind? Her current path is pretty broad, and nothing she does now will be wasted effort. The most important aspect of our family's transition conversation is always to remain positive, with a hopeful attitude.
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, "All that is gold does not glitter, / Not all those who wander are lost." Transition to adulthood is a wandering process for most young people, with or without disabilities. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." We certainly want our children to arrive somewhere, but we can't make it happen. We can, however, inject hope into every step of the journey. We can help our children develop their literacy, technology, and travel skills. Young people may wander quite a bit, but we have to remember as they journey that blindness is not the thing that holds them back. They can live the lives they want.
References
IDEA language for goal statements for the IEP
<http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/transition-goals/6>
Stevenson, R. L. "El Dorado," <www.readbookonline.net/ReadOnLine/8384>
Tolkien, J. R. R. (1967). The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 222.
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