EMPLOYMENT SKILLS

Research reports that young adults with learning and social issues find it difficult to make significant changes in transition without immersive support. The opportunities associated with seeking independent residence, gaining employment, attending post-secondary education and participating in meaningful adult relationships, are typically experienced as daunting and a basis for failure to make a successful transition to early adult life. This is why an alarming number of high school graduates with social and learning differences “fail to launch” and find themselves living at home with parents, unemployed, and squandering the skills and opportunities utilized by their neuro-typical peers. The toll of this cycle presents a drain on their family, public assistance resources, and their own sense of self-worth. Through the Employment Skills Program, our students will be given the opportunity to have meaningful and gainful employment after high school. These opportunities mean that our graduates will not become statistics of our government’s social services system but rather young adults with a sense of purpose and belonging in the community.

The Employment Skills Program is pivotal for our students to successfully transition into the real world. The classroom component of the Employment Skills Program focuses on applications, interviews, professionalism, workplace internships, and the hidden social rules of the work environment. In addition, Gateway is committed to ensuring that every student graduates with appropriate financial acumen, so students are equipped with the financial skills for gainful employment.

Gateway Juniors and Seniors are exposed to numerous work-readiness opportunities from electrical, technical, and mechanical training to intern positions in hospitals, hotels, restaurants, and hospitality environments. This process also allows students to develop work-related social skills through interactions with coworkers, customers, and managers. Gateway has an on-site commercial-grade kitchen, which teaches culinary skills as well as environment awareness, job expectations, task analysis, and professionalism.

Gateway has an equipped on-site kitchen to facilitate My Day Café, a program developed at the Gateway Academy. My Day Café teaches kitchen and cooking skills, aspects of teamwork in a restaurant/hospitality setting, and the basics of project management.

Chefs from around the city come to demonstrate cooking skills, teach our students kitchen protocol, and encourage them to try new things! The students learn cooking, budgeting, food prep, kitchen safety, and event planning in this class. As the students learn kitchen basics, appropriate relationship skills are formed as they work on specific projects. Each student takes on the roles of Project Manager, Sous Chef, Dishwasher, Budgeter, and Cleaning Supervisor. As they experience each role, they learn to negotiate, manage, organize, and work as a team. This program prepares them for the Internship and Job Acquisition phases of our program.

Gateway is committed to ensuring that all our graduates leave with appropriate financial acumen, so students are equipped to handle basic financial skills they will need to manage their earnings and pay bills associated with independent living. Upperclassmen take a Personal Finance course full of financial planning, costs of independent living, and budgeting. Bankers, real estate agents, accountants, and store managers bring their expertise to the classroom during class lectures, business visits/tours, and activities that facilitate deep learning. As they secure a part-time job in the community, the financial learning is tied directly to their paycheck earnings and withholdings. Many of our more savvy math students take Advanced Finance. This class gives them an understanding of the financial community and how the world economy impacts them personally. These students engage in trading stocks and following the Markets.

How do educational institutions equip students with the skills to be digital citizens, while ensuring their safety online?  At Gateway, we understand that locking down student devices and restricting and filtering internet access makes it harder to provide hands-on practice of evaluative skills. However, we also know that as educators, we have a responsibility to keep students safe from scams, phishing, and oftentimes, their own inability to control impulses and decision making. Many of our students need to be directly taught skills using consistency and repetition before they have mastered the skills, particularly in a digital environment. Digital citizenship is the norm of appropriate, responsible technology use and all Gateway students take a Digital Citizenship course prior to graduation. Preparing students for the reality of the world, outside the walls of our school, means supporting our students in becoming web savvy and responsible digital citizens.  

Young adults with autism had lower employment rates and higher rates of complete social isolation than people with other disabilities, according to a report published in 2015 by the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute. Two-thirds of young people with autism had neither a job nor educational plans during the first two years after high school. For over a third of young adults with autism, this continued into their early 20s, the report found.  Young adults with autism were less likely to be employed than their peers with other disabilities, with 58 percent employed. In comparison, 74 percent of young people with intellectual disabilities, 95 percent with learning disabilities, and 91 percent with a speech impairment or emotional disturbance were employed in their early 20s.

Young adults with learning and social differences often end up dependent upon their families or the state for support as adults because they have not been given the opportunity to develop the skills needed to hold a job commensurate with their intellectual functioning. Gateway works closely with every student to ensure that he or she develops the skills necessary to become productive citizens and to transition successfully to life as an adult. Many of our students will continue their education in a college environment or vocational training program, while others will focus on work in the community; all graduating students will be prepared to have the social and vocational skills to be independent and successful in an appropriate learning or career setting.

Gateway expects each member of the senior class to obtain and hold a part-time job before graduation. These jobs are acquired by the student. The staff supports the student in the search, application process, and interview process but does not make the connection. 

After participating in Culinary, Personal Finance, and Internship programs, each Gateway Senior is equipped for the part-time work world! Our team then supports the student as they adjust to the job requirements and expectations through onsite student coaching, company management coaching, and consistent evaluation. Gateway students are holding part-time jobs at Kroger, Office Depot, the YMCA, the Upholstery Shop, Home Depot, and other area businesses. Our seniors graduate with a diploma and part-time job experience!