“It was a wonderful opportunity that we got to take advantage of for our son David because he’s at the school and yet he’s going out into doing internships out in the community in real world, real life situations,” says Maize High parent, Ayn Wilson.
Project Life is a program offered at Maize district high schools that provides an alternative education pathway for students with disabilities and special needs. Students in this program are able to work with specialized instructors to learn hiring, employment, and life skills in addition to their educational graduation requirements. Project Life teacher and instructor Dru Walter, walks through an average day with her students.
“They will come in. We will have our education time in the classroom for about an hour, then the students get ready and they leave for their first job site. They go to work for two hours in the morning,” Walter explains, “Then they come back, they prep their own lunch within my classroom. They have a little bit of a break time and then they go back out for another internship in the afternoon. Then they come back, they do chores…to make them more independent, and then they leave for the day.”
Students gain knowledge to become skilled and hirable workers, develop more independence and be able to take care of themselves. Students are able to try out different jobs and explore their own personal interests and talents in a variety of career fields.
“We have a continuum of services where the kids can kind of test, ‘Do I like this type of job?’ ‘Do I not like this type of job?’ So then when they start searching for employment within the community, they know their likes and dislikes so that they can be more employable,” Walter said.
Project Search, a similar program to project life that students participate in after high school, provides pathways to specific paid internships that students can do. They can choose a career path and learn specifically about advancing in that field. These internships are in a variety of different fields such as cooking and baking, janitorial work, customer service, and more.
Nonetheless, the consistent goal amongst all project life groups is to adequately prepare special needs students for independent living and important adult skills. The traditional expectation of immediate high school to a higher education pathway is not as heavily encouraged, and instead, students are set up with experience and opportunities to begin working steady paying jobs directly out of high school.
“We wanted David to learn work skills, and as all children of parents, parents aren’t always the best teachers of the work life balance and everything…so we were excited that he’d have that opportunity through the school district to learn many work skills,” Wilson said.
Project Life allows Maize students with differing abilities and needs to learn about their personal strengths and weaknesses. It allows students to feel capable and gives them a unique opportunity to find and advance in their talents.
