Make Learning Meaningful and Promote Independence for Students with Complex Access Needs

- So hopefully along the way you're asking yourself, is this meaningful? What does that even mean? It means thinking about if a skill is generalized and if it supports a student in their post-secondary goals. How can we relate the content or the lessons that we're teaching in a way that supports a student's post-secondary outcomes? That's a question you should be asking yourself all the time. Remember, we're preparing our students for post-secondary education, independent living, training, and employment. And in order to learn the skills that they need, we need to make sure that it's meaningful in the classroom. What we teach a student from K through 12 is what they take with them for the rest of their lives. Number one is to think about your level of independence. Are your students independent in the things that they're doing or do we provide them with a lot of extra support? Remember independence is the goal. We want our students to be as independent as possible. So that means we have to teach things like self-help and advocacy skills to our students. We're preparing them for their post-secondary. So how can you improve those skills as part of your classroom procedures and expectations? It's something you're gonna want to think about. How can you put things into place in your classroom that will support student independence? The second thing is cues and prompts. Are you providing too many cues and prompts to your students? Remember, you're not gonna be there in the post-secondary to provide those cues and prompts and our students have to learn how to do without. So you need to be mindful about fading cues and prompts over time so that your student becomes more independent. A great way to do that is to add in supports that a student can take beyond the classroom. Things like tasks strips, timers, schedules, and supports that go beyond the classroom. The third thing to think about are your classroom expectations. Do you have high expectations for your students? And do you have the expectation that a student is gonna generalize a skill beyond the classroom? When you set out your classroom expectations, is it all about compliance? Broaden those expectations and think about what a student is really capable of and how that translates outside of the classroom? The fourth thing is level of support. Are you providing the same level of support for a student all day or are you adjusting that level of support based on the situation? Because that support matters. You wanna make sure that you're providing level of support that the student needs. And also that that level of support is consistent in different situations and among staff. A high level of support versus a low level of support might be appropriate, but you wanna make sure everybody's on the same team. Acknowledging a student's level of independence, how you use cues and prompts, your classroom expectations, and the level of support that you provide are all meaningful. And they all need to align with the student's post-secondary goals and outcomes.