In addition to the instructor’s background knowledge of the student’s abilities, what information can selected questions from the self-assessments provide? How can you individualize the Career Planning Self-Assessments based on your knowledge of the student? You have options of 1) Family and Consumer Sciences: Food Services or 2) Family and Consumer Sciences: Child Development. How can you break them down to prevent the student from being overwhelmed? Use your background knowledge to select items from the self-assessments that will support job and career path development before job training or job seeking.
Use the student’s self-assessment of his strengths and his projected interests to narrow down and define potential jobs that will benefit the student.
Family and Consumer Sciences Interests – Food Services
——————————————————————————————
Getting the Job Match
What is the balance of variation and routine in duties or tasks in job training or in paid employment that will support long-term success for the student? Some of the tasks should engage the student’s interests. He should find satisfaction in the completion of at least some of the duties.
Is your experience that the student may fit in a restaurant food preparation position with very concrete duties? Or is this student capable of more complex customer service or childcare interactions? It is important to pay attention to the number and complexity of duties that are available in the specific job description. Restaurant kitchens are varied and quite different in some aspects of operation. How frequently does the menu change? Are there set responsibilities that will be consistent? How much task change can the student handle?
Aim at a job in which the student can quickly perform over 80% of job duties independently. This is the aim because Job-Keeping issues, or ‘soft skills,’ are often the major challenges that will require direct instruction, visual supports and emphasis. For the 20% (or less) of job duties that are a challenge, make sure that the student has emerging or partial abilities with those job duties.
If someone has to teach the student multiple concrete job skills for longer than a few weeks, is this a good job match? Ongoing monitoring of concrete job skills and job-keeping behaviors will be necessary to assure quality and improvement. However, ongoing teaching of multiple skills in a work setting is not consistent with independent work skills.
The instructor should determine if interaction with customers is too much of a challenge in initial job training. If childcare is a student interest, how will the student handle emergency situations? Can the student use specific rules in dealing with hygiene and childcare? Entry level restaurant positions often involve a combination of cleaning and maintenance tasks, possibly involving food preparation and handling. Can the student learn and apply rules of hygiene and safe handling of foods? There are age requirememnts associated with the use of certain machinery so be aware of those.
Contrast the social skills required for customer service with the concrete requirements in food preparation and restaurant maintenance. The food service industry is ideal for increasing stamina in standing and moving activities, in following a schedule or to-do list to complete concrete specific tasks, in building a host of those job-keeping skills that are so crucial to effectiveness in adult environments. In many situations, there will be opportunties to carve out a job training or paid position that emphasizes a combination of food preparation and cleaning/maintenance chores.
Childcare is not often a target for career planning for some students because of the advanced social judgments required. Single mistakes in childcare can lead to termination or to serious concerns. Not everyone has the ability to cope with tantrums and child interactions, and to resolve disputes. However, addressing the student’s perceived preferences requires attention in the self-assessment process. Moreover, carefully controlled volunteer positions may assist the student in using experience to re-assess their preferences and strengths. There are concrete tasks within childcare facilities that may fit the abilities of the student. Those concrete tasks may provide a chance for the student to see the other responsibilities and help with the self-assessment process.
It is often critical to not only observe the skill in that setting, but to also go through the steps of the job yourself and list the steps as a result of performing the task. Listing the steps of a task allows you to identify the potential trouble spots and to develop visual supports that will support student independence. Doing this before expecting the student to perform the skill or task will prevent student, supervisor and instructor frustration and potential failure.
The instructor may feel like she does not have time to do this. Not doing so leads to failed job sites. If your goal is positive post-school outcomes, find a way to at least observe the task being performed and make the task analysis before expecting the student to perform it.