Schools

Life Skills Program 'Phenomenal,' Parkland Official Says

The Parkland/LCCC Partnership Academy for special needs transition students was more successful than originally thought, officials said.

A first-year special education program between the Parkland School District and Lehigh Carbon Community College aimed at teaching students life skills turned out to be "phenomenal," a district official said Tuesday. 

The success of the Parkland/LCCC Partnership Academy was reported to Parkland School Board members during their workshop meeting.

The project was created for transitional Parkland students with special needs between the ages of 18 and 21. This year, 11 students participated in the program and special needs teacher Dave York expects about the same number to participate this school year.

"It was one of the most unique and rewarding experiences of my career," York said. 

The program took students on a regularly-scheduled bus from Parkland High School to Lehigh County Technical Institute on Fridays, where they then crossed the street and attended the program at LCCC.

"One of the first things Dave did was to teach them to cross the street correctly," said Joe Davis, professor of teacher education at LCCC.

The program taught the students life and social skills on the college campus every Friday from 8 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. After that, students ate lunch with mentors and attended LCTI for work-study and other programs.

York said the objectives of the program were two-fold: to provide practical teaching instruction and foster authentic, genuine and natural relationships.

"We taught life skills, like going to the bookstore, the cafeteria, the fitness center," York said. "The incidental teaching was the best part. For the social problems, we had mentors who worked one-on-one with the students. They grew up a lot more than what we thought."

Davis explained each of the 11 students had mentors, all of whom were special education majors at LCCC.

"A lot of (the mentoring) was about how are you socially appropriate with social skills and about young adults dealing with school life," he said.

"At the last mentoring session, it was emotional," Davis said. "I told them it would be hard to let go. One of my mentors at the end said he was a grown-up."

Davis said the program was started with no cost to the Parkland School District, since it is a participating Lehigh County school. "We do it as a courtesy to the district. I had a small grant from the college for incidentals."

"It's been a godsend," said Board of Education President Jayne Bartlett. "People don't realize what it means to the parents and the kids."

"Nobody anticipated what we we saw. It was phenomenal," said Louise Fick, Parkland's supervisor of special education.

The program will be expanded to Thursdays and Fridays in 2013-14.

Davis said he would like to see more local districts participating in the program.

"I've been approached by several school districts in the Lehigh Valley to expand the program, but that would mean funding a part-time position," Davis said.

"We are the only community college in the Commonwealth doing this," Davis said. "East Stroudsburg and Lehigh have a program, but theirs is more structured."


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