It may only be September, but students attending Perryville High School and Perry County Middle School are already well into classroom projects that will be an asset to them long after they leave their school days behind.
Workplace-readiness support
While it may look like a game, Perryville High School students enrolled in the Pre-Employment Transition Services program are learning vital workforce skills as they spin the wheel and answer questions during a recent session in Amanda Oberkirsch’s high school classroom.
Pre-ETS Specialist Annie Appleton visits the class weekly to help students prepare for life after high school. A recent activity centered on self-advocacy.
“Students practiced self-advocacy skills today by participating in the ‘Floor is Lava’ activity, in which they took turns using a spinner to move to the coordinating color of a steppingstone to answer the questions about their personal preferences and abilities,” Appleton said. “If the student arrived at a stone occupied by another student or struggled to navigate the path, they were encouraged to make an accommodation for themselves or ask for/provide help to one other.
“Students did not all take the exact same path, and some even took a completely different route to the finish line. The group engaged in a discussion about self-advocacy and the importance of making your needs and accommodations known so you can be successful at a job. The ultimate goal of Pre-ETS is to empower students toward successful futures.”
According to Oberkirsch, her students are developing confidence and workplace skills.
“Pre-ETS provides many learning opportunities for my high school students,” she said. “During Job Shadowing work-based learning, they learn about different jobs within our community and get to try out some of those jobs. It helps build confidence in them and they learn skills needed for employment. Job Olympics gives my students a chance to show off what they are learning in their functional program. They compete against other schools with programs similar to ours.”
Pre-Employment Transition Services are provided to PHS students through the University of
Missouri-Columbia and a partnership with Vocational Rehabilitation. Pre-ETS are available at no cost to Missouri high school students with disabilities in the following 5 service areas:
Job Exploration, Workplace Readiness, Work-Based Learning, Self-Advocacy and Post-Secondary Counseling. Students participate in job shadows, career/interest inventories, the Job Olympics, and meaningful hands-on learning opportunities to help them develop and achieve goals. Through early intervention and collaboration, Pre-ETS supports students and their families during the transition process to help students develop positive post-secondary outcomes.
Learn more about Pre-ETS at https://bit.ly/3MQ4NSB.
PCMS class programs disaster-aid app
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an app that allowed any volunteer to help The American Red Cross and emergency services triage sick people after a hurricane?
Well, students attending Perry County Middle School came up with one!
As part of Robbie Riehn’s STEM class at PCMS, students have learned to use code to create an app that provides information on the symptoms of common diseases found in a hurricane-recovery zone. Coding creates a set of instructions for computers to follow that translates human-language instructions into the language of computers and mobile devices like phones and tablets.
“My students used the MIT App Inventor to create the app, which allows someone to choose from the different types of diseases associated with natural disasters like hurricanes and flooding,” Riehn said. “Our app allows you to choose water-borne diseases, vector- (insect) borne diseases, and diseases associated with crowding. The students created those buttons which take you to a list of that type of disease, such as cholera, dengue fever, or malaria.”
“We then programmed the app to be clickable, so it will open an audio file that gives the symptoms and other information about those diseases,” said eighth-grader Elijah Richardet. “Anybody can listen to that information and know where to direct that person for help in the disaster center.”
The STEM class is Mallory Esselmann’s first experience with coding.
“This has been really interesting,” she said. “I am liking all of it.”
According to Riehn, the project is progressing well.
“They’ve all learned how to make the audio play in the app,” he said. “Our next step is to program the audio to stop playing!”
