Get a Job Curriculum

Focus on job interview skills. Objective: Prepare students with significant learning and behavioral disabilities, cognitive challenges, and physical disabilities for post-school work opportunities. Job-related social and self-management skills are essential for students with special needs. Workers with disabilities regularly lose jobs because of difficulties with social situations in job settings. To be successful in getting and keeping a job, students with disabilities need interview skills, social skills in a variety of areas, and most of all preparedness for the many and varied challenges of a job setting. As a result, they need lots of time to learn and practice vocational skills. This curriculum teaches such competencies as the ability to self-examine one's strengths and weaknesses, creative problem-solving skills, self-confidence and assertiveness, advocacy skills, and accepting responsibility. Coauthored by speech-language pathologist Corinne Thomas-Kersting and special education teacher and occupational therapist Dona Schumacher.