National Miaoli Special Education School’s Extension Allows Special Education Graduates to be Under Employed
National Miaoli Special Education School’s Extension Allows Special Education Graduates to be Under Employed
(Graphic/Indigenous Peoples and Minority Groups and Special Education Section Zeng Fanji and Shi Yuquan)
National Miaoli Special Education School (NMLSES) added the junior high school, stretching the teaching department downward to the compulsory education stage in 2012. The school actively promoted the friendly campus plan, life education, and inter-school integrated education courses, introduced community resources for courses, and positively broke the “isolated” and “closed” image of traditional special education school and strengthened the connection between special education and common education. Apart from jointly promoting the Chinese cuisine cooking and car washing courses with National Miao-Li Agricultural and Industrial Vocational High School (NMLAIVHS), NMLSES also worked with Yumin Vocational High School to establish retail service course, creating an integrated education environment and committing to make the best development opportunity for students.
NMLSES attaches great importance to student’s adaptive ability and digging out their learning potential, and focuses on career education and guidance. It designs many lively teaching activities and makes use of media teaching to improve students’ concentration and learning achievement. The adaptive course teaching aimed at promoting the learning effect of functional subjects. Diversified club activities and services provided by relevant professional teams as well as the integration of significant issues with teaching will lay a solid foundation for student’s learning.
To cultivate transferable skills for student, the communized teaching was implemented in accordance with school grade, changing from community-based instruction to field trip of other counties or cities, learning table manners at restaurants, guiding supermarket shopping, operating on the ATM at post office and the training of taking different public transportation. NMLSES adopts the real sit1uational teaching to avoid the difficulty of generalization learning for students with intellectual disabilities and to emphasize that life is learning and adaptation equals is the goal. In addition, it encourages students to take certificate examination, such as professional certification of Chinese input test. It is estimated that there were 33 students having passed the certification in the 2009-2011 school year. Six students have passed the Class C Skill Test for Chinese Cuisine Cook in the same school year. Students’ practical operating skills have been intensified. NMLSES provided seamless transition service for third-grade students. It cooperated with enterprises, plants and institutions nearby, such as Jinhongguan Bakery, Weichia Supermarket, CPC Gas Station, and so on. The employment rate of NMLSES was respectively 35%, 34% and 38% from 2009 to 2011. Through the involvement and cooperation with the labor and administration system, the target of “graduation is employment” has been achieved.
Apart from student employment, the school also pays attention to the development of personality. It introduced a couple of goats respectively named Happiness and Warmth, which gave students a chance to witness the circle of life and enabled them to love themselves. Liu Fu-Jung, the principal of NMLSES, expressed that, most special education students had difficulty in communication and were unable to interact with other people; not only can animals play a role in the interpersonal communication and create more communication opportunities for students, but also show a significant therapy effect for students with emotional disturbance and other disabilities (e.g. physical disability, autism, etc.).
Most people believed that special education students needed care and love, but they didn’t expect that these students could give care to others. The principle of NMLSES Volunteer Support Group is to cultivate students’ altruistic spirit and encourage them to help others. Apart from encouraging students to help clean community roads, it will make regular cooperation with the Department of Social Welfare to do some cleaning for the old solitary people in community or to offer local and continuous service in the institution or associations for the socially vulnerable groups in the future. On this year’s Mothers’ Day, volunteers of the Volunteer Support Group went to the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation and sang the song Grateful Heart to mothers on the scene, giving them a warm and moving Mothers’ Day. Hsu, Ya-Wen who was a fresh student of the vocational high school participated in this activity and said that I felt happy to help other people and I hoped everyone could lead a happy life.
In the future, NMLSES will continue to work towards the direction of integrating social resources, implementing adaptive teaching, enhancing students’ life and working skills, evoking students’ personal potential, creating a high quality campus environment, cultivating the ability of adapting to modern society and achieving the education objective of balanced development.
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