How can you connect this new skill to the student’s priorities? How can you assure ownership by making the development of this skill the student’s goal rather than just your goal for the student?
This intervention topic is a building block for ‘being a valuable employee.’ From one perspective, that is one vague concept! For some students, their perspective may be, “I do the job as I understand it and then I get paid.” The perspective of ‘making the boss happy’ or ‘making customers happy’ is sometimes not in their frame of reference. Yet those social rules are vital to post school outcomes and to career success. Consider creating a graphic organizer in priming sessions that shows the connection between specific behaviors for ‘making the boss happy’ and getting raises, getting more work hours, getting better jobs and related outcomes that would be valuable to the student. Consider using the self-assessments on career planning that you have presented to the student as a starting point in this process. If a self-assessment shows specific jobs and environments that would be desirable to the student, use the priming session as an opportunity to connect the student’s goals to good relationships with supervisors, with co-workers, and with customers. You can create a graphic organizer or list that shows how many different jobs are available if you are good at working around customers.
As a result of the self-assessments and a graphic organizer, you may then need a social narrative that connects the value of roles and expectations (in concrete terms) to the student’s goals.
As you introduce this skill, how will you incorporate (visually, thematically) the student’s unique interests?
Can you make it visually clear to the student who is resistant to change that his assumption is only one way of looking at things? Can your use of visual supports and self-assessments help get agreement that there is a problem, get agreement on the solution, and create the motivation for change?
Priming is a form of negotiation that can reframe and sharpen a student’s assessment of self. Below are the self-assessment tools that align with this intervention topic:
"Social Communication - Workplace Hierarchies"
Interspersal is a proven technique involving the presentation of familiar, higher success tasks with the new, more challenging task. When it is appropriate, are you varying the activities to maintain the student’s confidence and focus?
The development of the skill of defining roles and using those rules or expectations in interactions at work requires initial labeling of rules and practice in applying the rules. Again, building the rules is likely to require defining concrete things to say and how to say it. Repeated practice with scenarios may be a necessary initial step. Over time, practice interspersed in other work activities will be natural and necessary. Interspersal occurs in the workplace naturally in many jobs because the individual is completing assigned tasks, not constantly interacting. Consider this when planning practice of interspersal of this skill in school environments.
Before the student encounters a situation where he will need to perform this skill, how do you help the student prepare? How do you orient the student to the upcoming situation?
When working on a specific role and specific rules for interaction, the use of reminder cards, video models or communication scripts may be developed to support student skill in practice. Then using one of those tools either prior to or during natural interactions in the workplace can support student preparation and focus on the rules of the situation.