 Hi, it's Sarah Burns and I'm with the Provincial Low Incidents team with Elbert Education and today we have a presentation on transition planning with Jacqueline Meeks and I'm just going to give a little bit of an introduction and then pass the mic over to her. Jacqueline Meeks is a mother and a published author who holds a master's degree in counseling, studies and biological sciences. She is a certified teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing teaching at Queen Elizabeth High School in Calgary, Alberta. This program currently housed 52 students who are deaf and hard of hearing from grades 7 to 12. She has called this school her home and helped develop the program over the last decade. Jacqueline has also worked in a regular classroom and as an itinerant teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing in northern BC. For the past few years her focus has been creating connections within the community to help students to transition more successfully into the world of work and or post-secondary education while developing student resilience and addressing mental health concerns. Today we have Tracy Hetman as our interpreter and the technology support is with Terry Alexandra and Mike Johnson. So I'm going to hand the mic over to you Jacqueline. Thank you so much. So transition planning we've we kind of do this multiple times throughout kids lives and the biggest one is of course leaving us for leaving high school moving into the world of work or college and we a lot of us know about the main two ways to leave high school which is either a diploma or the high school certificate of achievement but there's also the high school certificate of completion. As our program has grown we've kind of found some more students who fit into that high school certificate of completion zone they're not always what is described by Alberta education because what we're finding at least and I am sure this is also happening in other areas is we have a lot of kids who are coming in who don't have either English they're signing their their refugees from other countries they might not even have any educational background we've had students who have never attended school before and those students because they are working on completing a bunch of different things at the same time might not actually be able to complete the requirements for a high school certificate of achievement or a diploma so I'm kind of going to go through talk about each one if you have specific questions please fire them up and I will answer whatever I'm going to start with a diploma and just kind of talk about some of the transition things that we've found that you might not have in your head as being important pieces for our kids and then tie that into the next level as we move down because they all the diploma kids still have the same kind of things that some of the certificate of achievement kids have next slide please so when we're looking at the diploma level courses you guys who teach deaf kids already know this but our biggest struggle with these kids is always language vocabulary last year I taught a I taught English 20-2 and English 30-2 to a small group of our students in sign language because they really needed someone to kind of break down what they had missed and so because they didn't have enough exposure and enough time to read one of the things that really helped bolster their ability to decode themes and motifs and illusion and get more examples in was movies so they don't have time to read enough novels and keep up with their homework so at that point as a stopgap measure my assignment for them was let's watch as many movies as we can and then be able to pull in the themes and the motifs and the illusions what does that specifically allude to when we looked at something like Macbeth for example my students didn't know what the medieval era looked like and so we watched Monty Python which sounds a little odd but it's we were able to talk about the humor in it and it also shows some actual issues from that era right there's the plague there are the nights all of those kind of motifs are in that movie but we had to make things very clear so my kids didn't understand why something's funny they're like I don't get why that exaggeration is funny so we had to be very very specific and purposeful but in explaining that humor really helped them to be able to make those connections which is important for transitioning especially with things like social media to be able to understand things like memes to be able to understand facebook statuses all those things that you don't really think about those are our kids's way of communicating that's our world's way of communicating snapchat instagram all of those things that they're not able to fully take advantage of and so when we're thinking about transitioning and we're thinking about classroom skills it's also those other real life things how are they using those effectively and how are they understanding them effectively things like the theme of monopoly or clue those popular games come up a lot in references in other movies in tv shows in memes and so instituting things like gameplay so we play games on friday in my classes playing monopoly they might have never played it they don't know necessarily how to count things back or what what's the point of that or even how to trash talk a bit what does that mean you know when somebody calls you a sucker what does that really mean and having some of those conversations make the ability to fit in and understand work and all those other pieces around us much more full and rich and we also found that like completing of forms there's a lot of forms to complete at all these levels so there's the job applications there's the scholarship applications there's the applications to college and university and making time and making it purposeful that we make sure that they understand and have help completing those forms when they need them and they just get in the habit of you know what all these forms are very similar making sure that that that's all clear because it's not always the same language as we use in the classroom I don't think that the interpreters out of focus I think maybe my organization didn't seem clear is there something in particular that oh is she out of focus like in the camera is that what you mean all right so timelines for diploma students sometimes our kids get missed because a lot of the announcements for grad stuff is over the PA system and we have made a very concerted effort to make sure our kids are included in everything graduation graduation photos seem pretty simple but often our kids aren't told what to wear or that they can have their friends in the pictures with them or their family in the picture with them and to make a point of booking it at a time and having conversations with their friends ahead of time for those pictures so what I mean by that is the cap and gown photos so the cap and gown photos they're not wearing their fancy grad dress but they still have to in ours wear a white collared shirt but they can have their friends there they can the boys can wear a suit and tie and do some without the cap and gown the girls can wear a nice dress and include their mom or their best friends after the graduation photos there is often also here at least there's the PowerPoint for the graduation and again they often miss our kids and so making sure that our kids provide a baby picture a quote and I have purposefully sat down with the kids and said okay do you listen to music who's your favorite band okay let's go find some just popular quotes by that band read through them which ones you like that's a good quote they don't even know where to start right so sometimes just here's the deal it's not something profound you don't have to sweat it it's not your life message at the end of the day all are your quotes I know mine does not hold relevance to my life now but making sure that they're included and it's relevant to their life at this time and that they're not missed out and in that we've also had students who again making sure that they understand the graduation is a milestone because if they don't feel a part of the school because they're not socially involved especially if they're a signing kid in a school that's hearing and they haven't been able to be involved in some of the sports teams and other things that they understand some of these milestone moments what they mean and again that ties back to that English and those themes of those milestones of graduation in how many movies in how many stories and being able to understand that if they haven't experienced it and so last year I actually stepped in and one of my students he calls me his other mother I went to graduation as his parent and I even participated in the mother-son dance with him because I didn't want him to miss out on something that's a milestone scholarship applications start pretty early they are most of them are very similar in their story and having that practice of writing making sure that we kind of include that if there's a way to include it in an English assignment and working with the classroom teachers if you are not a classroom teacher would be very helpful for our students but also in that understanding and accepting the disability which sometimes our kids don't accept I've been having a lot of conversations with one of our students who happens to be deaf, blind, transgender and gay all of the boxes and so understanding that owning who you are and explaining how you've overcome any of those challenges what have those challenges been can really open up some doors and how to word it in positive ways requires a few conversations ahead of time and I think a big part of that self-acceptance can be one of the reasons that we find some of our students don't want to leave right because school becomes home right they're comfortable they have access to everything they know their way around and the big world is scary and they're not sure who they are or how they fit applying for college and university there are often free application days that fit with the open house of the college or university so state when they have their open house here in Calgary in February it is free to apply and they waive that application fee during their open house and so also the making sure that we don't narrow our focus and apply for enough schools that we're not only applying for one so that we have an alternate plan we've met multiple times with the student advisory board here at our colleges and university and they would like students who need different accommodations to make sure that they're booking an appointment by March so they might not have their acceptance yet for that school but they still need to already be on the school's radar so that they're looking for interpreters that they know that they need alternate testing locations FM equipment whatever it is that the students are using even if they have not yet been accepted can we have the next slide high school certificate of achievement so these are the students who the only difference between a diploma and a high school certificate of achievement is English 30-2 and social 30-2 you can have any level of math or science and achieve either one but a certificate have a high school achievement specifically means that those students are not able to complete the English 30-2 curriculum or the English social 30-2 curriculum some of our parents have more stereotypes about not receiving a diploma and what that means for kids futures than maybe our students do there are opportunities to upgrade your English and social there's also opportunities to apply later as a mature student and overcome not having had a diploma the main requirement though too for a high school certificate of achievement is that they have to have work related five credits of career technology studies at the 30 level and they have to have work experience at our school we don't have a lot of options that are specifically employable there are a lot of options though within the locally developed courses that you can choose self-study or personalized project options in order to fulfill that need if the school doesn't offer something in the line of what the students looking for we've been working to build some community networks in order to have job placements for our students but it can be quite daunting there are a lot of community organizations who just don't know what our students need and either they feel overwhelmed on their own and don't want to spend the time or they just are resistant because there there are fears around safety that we know are not relevant but the company may not know many of our students therefore complete their work experience in the school so we have some students who are working in the library we have some students who are working in the office doing filing photocopying laminating we have some who work as TAs we've also sent some over to the elementary school and if we had a couple students then we could partner with for us it was the senior citizens home that is nearby and that provided a lot more opportunities because they could experience being porters like in the hospital they could experience helping in the laundry taking people to their hairdressing appointments and other things partnering during crafts all of those kind of activities that actually do have more of a work experience field than helping out in the school what we've really tried to do is hold a couple companies that we're willing to work with us and make sure that we place someone from the school there every year even if it's not a dhh student so that we don't lose the bond between the school and a company that was were willing to work with us we've set up an annual event here at the school called endless possibilities and we open it up not only to the Calgary board of education but also to all the surrounding school districts and we've attempted to make it all the ages but it is more high school focused we invite all of the organizations that fit with our students to the event and it's helped us open community organizations eyes as well because when we initially started it and I invited the autism association they said well your kids aren't our kids and I'm like oh no they are we have multiple students with autism and we invited Calgary transit to come and they offer a course on how to ride transit and initially they were like well we don't know how to work with your kids and we said well can you come meet them can you come tell us about that course and and we will at first figure out the logistics of it and now that they've come they've been able to develop strategies as well to work with our kids and work with them outside of school so really broadening that understanding of these kids are all our kids and that it's not one thing only that it's a whole bunch of different things and that being deaf and hard of hearing isn't always the main barrier for these students that endless possibilities event has become real exposure not only for the students and their families but also for the professionals I find new organizations every year I reach out to the ones who I was in contact with the year before and some of them close some of them are dependent on federal government or provincial government funding and depending on where things are at they might not be able to support us but as I search through the community and make more and more contacts each year we are broadening our scope and finding a lot more possibilities next slide please so the certificate of hard school completion I kind of gave you a background that this is something that's growing for us at our school especially with an increased population of refugee students and students who have not experienced a traditional educational setting we're finding that those students who experience multiple challenges so being a refugee not having English not having ASL maybe never having any language at all really struggle with a lot of things so they can come in and not be able to sit in a class because they haven't experienced that before and high school classes are long right there's been no build up to that and all of those kind of variety and not being able to truthfully fit into a class even though the work might be modified just the setting alone can be a lot for them to adjust to so what we've kind of looked at with these students these are our students who are not able to be successful yet in traditional high school classes and when I say that we offer both a congregated setting that is at grade level and an integrated setting that can be at grade level so our site is very unique in that being congregated with a teacher of the deaf at this site does not mean that you are not able to be successful at grade level courses so my students who I taught Hamlet and Macbeth to they completed their diploma exam they passed their diploma exam but in order to be successful they required a teacher of the deaf who was able to identify that not only did I have to read through and talk about the illusions and the metaphors and the similes and the rhyme patterns but that I also had to make explicit the humor and that I had to make explicit the illusion and build in all of these connections and tell them all of these background pieces and I have a class right now of grade eight oral math and science they are also at grade level but the reason that they aren't integrated again is because I make all of the language pieces explicit so when we look at percentages and we're doing our word problems I am breaking everything down I approach everything as explicitly cognitively visual and how can we turn this language into a visual how can we make it less abstract and I'm able to address the pieces that are missing I'm also able to anticipate what is possibly missing in their experiential background and bring that in so that they can have a better understanding and develop more examples for science in order to have a deeper understanding and I know that a lot of schools can't do what we do here we are blessed in that we have five teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing on site plus there's itinerant teachers that support the CBE kids who are not here and so we are dedicated to this site to those 52 kids we also have five interpreters four at assistants and a deafblind intervener we have worked to develop a specialized DHH report card to address the needs of these students and we have in order to do that we've used the lexington school for the deaf's cognitive breakdown of cognitive skills so that we've looked specifically at cognitive development when we are working on these students who are coming to us possibly without any language or formal education experience and looking at developing those cognitive skills through language in order to move them off that report card if possible it's really really skills based in our focus and we work on developing as many options because this is such a diverse group it can be students with cognitive struggles who have been born in Canada but fall below the first percentile or it can be students who are refugees without formal education experience this has been the area for me of the greatest learning in the last few years and one really important thing in this group is that parents are aware of the timeline if a student is falling into this range if they are not able upon graduation to be independent and they're not able to be independent because they'll be taken advantage of because they don't have the understanding the Alberta government this is a blessing a hundred percent but it is very very hard to become a guardian of an adult we do not take rights away from adults in Alberta so parents must begin by age 16 they need to have all the paperwork in line to be able to apply for the first kind of phase of the developmental disability it can require a record of Jacqueline we're having difficulty with the audio right now can you continue speaking and we'll see what we hello hello hi Jackie we're having some difficulty with the audio can you hold a moment for sure your audio that we're having difficulty with so we need you to speak a little bit okay I can keep speaking until you need me I could sing but that'd be terrible for anyone who can hear okay maybe recite do you want to talk about the it's about what the parents needed to do before the age of 16 is where it started going right so the the PDD funding requires that parents prove that there's a reason why this child cannot be independent so it doesn't have to be an educational psychology report if the student isn't able to complete one because maybe there's not enough language um even though there is the unit and other nonverbal scales if a student is from another cultural background where they haven't experienced our educational assessments they might not be successful in those nonverbal assessments so even though you think oh nonverbal means we can use them on anyone they're still culturally specific the other way around this is to get letters from a physician and there are some specifics about what that letter does need to include and how it needs to um lay out why this disability would put that child at a disadvantage clinical social workers and psychologists can also provide a letter so if it's a mental health concern that they cannot be um independent and when I say can't be independent I don't mean they can't live on their own I don't mean they can't work I mean that they don't understand the system well enough not to be taken advantage of right so someone might be able to scam them out of their money or something like that so they need someone for a little while at least to help them learn the system so at 16 they also have to already have opened a bank account we have a lot of kids in grade 12 don't have a bank account they've never used a debit card their parents take them places there and and I understand it I understand the need to feel like we protect our children um but missing out on that doesn't give them more confidence to go into stores on their own doesn't give them more confidence to head out and meet up with friends and so it keeps that sheltered experience kind of going so parents knowing that they have to have had set up a bank account even just with 20 bucks in it and been taught how to use a debit machine that kind of thing is really important and if they apply for fscd funding or they qualify for pdd funding that money has to go in to the child's account and they also have to start the process of getting together the documentation to apply to be a guardian of that child if the child turns 18 they will not be able to become guardians for that slide can we go to the next one um oops back one I think um so I asked a couple of our kids who have left us about what it was like to leave us um and they were terrified of leaving their friends they were terrified of leaving us um we have lots of kids who come back on a regular basis I have a student who came in the other day and he's like I need to apply for state can you help me me or I just wanted to say hi they're feeling quite lonely it is hard for them to reach out and I know that we say oh you know they're surrounded by hearing kids all the time this is their life it's been their life all along um my room in our school is like our mental health room I the kids call me their emotional support animal and they come in here often and express their hatred of hearing people and it's not a hatred it's just a frustration right it's uh it's just so hard to interact with somebody who doesn't get it and they make fun of me not really being a hearing person um but going from the joy of being surrounded by a team who gets you and other kids who get you and easy access without having to pre-book an interpreter or arrange it makes life a lot easier here than out there and if they've been sheltered and they weren't given access to a debit card early and they weren't going into stores on their own and they weren't allowed to ride their bike down the street and go to Safeway and pick up milk for mom because they might get hit by a car those fears have been so ingrained because they haven't had the practice that they're just anxious about trying to experience it next slide please I asked my kids what was the most uh influential community service that they found because I worked so hard on this endless possibilities thing and is it really making a difference um and they are very different students who answered so one is a signer and two of them are signers one married another signer one of them is single and the other one is hard of hearing so they see things a lot differently but social media is their world it's the kids at school's world and understanding things like snapchat and memes and all of those things become so important because that's just how they communicate and connecting with other deaf people and finding a community outside of this school that gets you is really important so um one of our students has been blessed to have traveled the world with um the deaf Olympics in badminton and we've been able to connect with them the ADSA Alberta Deaf Sports Association and they'll often help with transportation in order to get students places so we spent sent five kids last year to Montreal in order to join the Canadian Deaf Games and ADSA was able to help with some of the funding to get them there and then once they arrive it's all set up so they get picked up from the airport there's interpreters there everything they all stay at the same hotel they go to the same restaurants um but the kids had to be really kind of encouraged and connected as a hearing person um it's taken a little work for me to get connected into the community just because it you know I spend my days here and I spend my work day here but at the end of the day I leave and I go back into the hearing world um so part of that endless possibilities event and finding out what is available out there um has been me becoming more involved and aware of what is out there for the deaf community what social events are happening and making sure that all the students are aware of that and taking access of it and that parents are aware of it and that they feel safe and secure because sometimes the parents won't reach out to the organizations but they'll reach out to me my heart of hearing kid said that he relied on his own family he was also self-reliant and he super was so he didn't use anything but it's funny when he was here at school he would have said he's not part of the deaf community he's not part of us but we did connect him and make him aware of deaf in here Alberta and he's now aware that they have great resources and he started to use them so we do see not in this school because there's so many of us but um when we have students come from integrated settings into us they are very strong in their difference between I'm not deaf I'm just hard of hearing whereas in this school everybody's deaf and hard of hearing and we just we are all one and we're all on a spectrum and some days we sign some days we talk it just depends on who you are I might sign for a kid one morning and by afternoon I might be talking for that same kid and it might go the other direction right they get tired at the end of the day and they're like could you please sign so it it it's more inclusive here and they've kind of accepted being part of our community and it helps that our community is growing but I think it is that that speaks volumes of the fact that even the heart of hearing kids even if they are just hard of hearing and my FM is working and that's enough for me I've got this down pat that they're still aware of what's out there if things change can we go to the next one um so Student Success Center that's at universities and colleges for writing and academic support and accommodation centers those are the places that have to be contacted in March before even their application has been accepted to make sure that they're prepared for our students specifically these kids this is from the two boys who are currently at university studying engineering they are brilliant uh there were a few courses that they were specifically appreciative which was the prep 101 the tutorial classes and the professor's office hours next slide so I asked this kids if there was a teacher who impacted them of course it was not me it would never be but um they really appreciated our faith in their success and our constant focus on their development and helping them to kind of break down those barriers one of the things I'd also kind of say that we've really noticed um is the importance of teaching accommodations so when you're looking at them going on to to college and university and also being successful in their courses we make these accommodations available to them but we don't always teach them how to use them so when I taught social studies 30-2 to a group of our students their accommodations that we had were a reader ascribe interpreters um I always add frequent breaks to their accommodations because here's the deal if you're gonna write an exam for six hours you need to be able to leave the room and you need to be able to leave the room and take a breath and come back and have something to eat so by putting frequent breaks in there our students aren't penalized if they need to get up go for a walk and come back just because they've been sitting so long so they have to go with someone on that walk for a diploma exam um but they are able to go for a walk they're able to go to a space and eat their lunch off of camera because they have to be videotaped during their exam and that doesn't punish them for their time that the problem this creates financially is that it can mean that you have to book interpreters for beyond the six hour exam right because the exam should have ended at three o'clock but the kid took a bathroom break a walk break a lunch break and now it's not gonna end until 5 15 so you have to make sure that you kind of plan that in but that has been a real um important issue to recognize for our kids and it has really helped them on their exams to be more successful but in teaching them how to use their accommodations you can't have an accommodation that you're not fluent with and expect it to be successful so that 30-2 year for those social studies kids every single essay they wrote I had them sign it or talk it somebody scribe it their scribe read it back to them and then them edit it every single long answer question short answer question so that they had practiced it so much they had the system down pat and so then what happened was when we scribed it we had the person who was typing their essay connected to a big TV so that the kids could see the screen what was being written what they had said or signed right there in front of them in real time and edited at the same time and they'd be like no stop I didn't mean that go back and they made a point of like frequently stopping their scribe hate read that back to me now that paragraph and it really has increased our students success on exams um and our students are becoming more brazen and willing to take more risks um and feeling like they can compete with the hearing kids and that they can fit in next slide again DHH support staff they feel that we make an impact and like I said we are super super blessed and I know that that's not always the case next slide so in our focus these kids have been out of us for a little while so we have made some changes since we've had them and we've been really good about sorry I will I'll be quick um the the hardships and and what it is like but how much responsibility there is after school um can be quite shocking for all of them especially if they again never had a bank card not have a debit card not been able to go to the store all of those things all of a sudden high school is over and there is so much responsibility that they just weren't prepared for I'm gonna call that a quits you guys can read through the rest of the um PowerPoint on your own but this way I have a couple minutes for questions if there's any thank you Jack thank you Jacqueline it's um Sarah Burns I'm I'll wait a few seconds for some questions from the the people who are listening I know I do have a question and it came quite early on in your talk about the timelines for diploma students you mentioned you have meetings with university or college advisory boards I'm just wondering at what point during the school year do you begin those meetings so we have gone out and met with a few of the schools and they've said that they want the families to book them by March so they want them to are you meeting are you meeting with them we have already met with all of them and at some point like I've met with um Mount Royal I've already met with state um U of C and we've gone through the list of their concerns about our students and we've said okay for the students who are who are applying what are your concerns what have you noticed what are you seeing what would you like us to do differently when do our students need to contact you and hearing Calgary they have asked that our parents and students get in touch with the admissions by March to make sure that they have everything but we've met with them over the last couple of years to establish that relationship thank you that's um good clarification about that because I think that's proactive part um we've worked hard on that yeah I'm not seeing any questions now is it okay for um individuals to reach out to you at CBE of course and I do have um some of those that information like I have a guideline for health professionals about fsa fsd funding or the pdd timeline that um the children's link has given me um if that does fit to any students that you teach that you would like a copy of that I am more than happy to pass that on it's not from me but um I know they have told me I can share it what why don't you share it with me and I'll send it out to the plc perfect I will do that thank you so much for your time and all your efforts in pulling this together um again I want to thank Tracy Hepman for doing the interpreting and uh Terry Dillag Alexandra for doing all the technical support we have um our next plc is in January and it'll be on working together with indigenous um groups in Alberta so thank you so much and drive safely have a good um holiday season did you merry christmas or happy holidays to everyone