Hutt Valley High School (TLIF 4-057) - HVHS ‘SNAP’: Sustainable Networks and Pathways (for students with special education needs) Publications
Publication Details
Project Reference: Hutt Valley High School (TLIF 4-057) - Staff in Hutt Valley High School’s Tautoko Learning Support Centre were concerned that while they were generally able to work with whānau to access some form of short-term training for their graduating students, these often failed to evolve into meaningful long-term pathways.
Author(s): (Inquiry Team) led by Heather Lear and Nick Larkin
Date Published: August 2020
Overview
Sustainable Networks and Pathways (SNAP) was constructed as a counter to this. It is a three-year, collaborative, personally tailored transition programme that is intended to build students’ confidence and resilience and provide them with purposeful, meaningful, long-term work and the ability to participate actively within the Hutt community.
Students leaving school often become reliant on disability benefits if eligible and do not have the opportunity to feel that they are earning their own living. We need to provide them with ways in which they can use their time productively by gaining new skills and potentially supplement their own income.
Final project report
The programme succeeded in improving student learning outcomes in terms of a range of academic and social learning outcomes. Students have grown in confidence and are more engaged in their learning and more in control of their future pathways. They have career goals that are both realistic and aspirational.
A key part of the programme’s success has been the coaching and mentoring programme, especially the use of student mentors. Their inclusion has had reciprocal benefits for all participating students. The programme has also built deeper relationships with whānau and raised awareness of how the expectations of whānau and teachers can inhibit or encourage learner’s growth and development. The greatest success was when everyone worked together.
The inquiry story
Hutt Valley High School’s Tautoko Supported Learning Centre (SLC) caters for students with high learning needs. This inquiry focused on six students in their last two years at school and is intended to follow them in their first year away from school. It involved their teachers, the school’s support staff, fellow students, parents and whānau, and members of the wider community. It also had strong support from the school’s senior leadership team.
What was the focus?
Traditionally, students attending Tautoko SLC are encouraged to expect that they will have the same opportunities for work and further education as other students. They all leave school with work experience, a CV, and job search skills. However, school leavers have often found that the promised opportunities are not there, or not maintained beyond an initial period. Those without ORS funding are particularly vulnerable, as they do not receive ongoing support from external providers and are often left relying on a benefit. Students and families know this. Consequently, students have tended to become withdrawn and disengaged from learning in their final year at school.
The National Transition Guidelines set out best practice principles for ensuring students with additional learning needs make a successful transition to life beyond school. These include the expectation that there will be a planning process for each student that begins early and involves collaboration between them and their families, school, and community. This TLIF project was intended to help realise these principles. The project’s leaders developed the following innovation statement:
We would like to know if providing a school/community-based, personally-tailored pathway two years prior to transitioning from school and one year post-school will have an impact on Tautoko student learning outcomes in terms of greater self-confidence, personal ownership, engagement, and academic success for each student with special educational needs in their senior years at high school and one year post-high school.
What did the teachers try?
SNAP was intended to wrap scaffolds around students so that they could identify, work towards, and achieve goals that were both aspirational and realistic. It was constructed using a Human-centred Design Approach. This means keeping the people for whom an innovation is being designed at the heart of a collaborative process that involves designing and trialling new ideas, accepting and learning from failure, and ongoing planning and improvement.
Coaching and mentoring were central to the approach. Each of the SNAP students was assigned two student mentors from the wider school. The mentors interacted both formally and informally with the SNAP students, attending the same form class and going on excursions, such as rock climbing and ten pin bowling. Each SNAP student also had a mentor from the support staff. All the mentors were professionally trained in the GROW coaching model. The plan is to establish community mentors by 2021 so that the students will continue to have support after they have left school.
The students, teachers, and whānau involved in SNAP collaborated to ensure that each student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) was focused on their aspirations and that these were translated into worthwhile and sustainable goals. The student and staff mentors also had a voice in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings, sharing their perspectives and insights.
The teachers used an adapted version of the Autism Programme Quality Indicators Survey to develop and trial their own SNAP Milestone data tracking sheet. That data provided a talking point for discussion at both IEP and SNAP team meetings.
In their first cycle of inquiry, teachers worked with students to determine their strengths and interests and explore the potential to develop these into pathways towards careers and other community activities. They then developed opportunities for the students to inquire into, understand, and begin to develop the literacy and numeracy, practical, and social skills necessary to pursue some of the options they were interested in. Teachers helped students to reflect on and evaluate their findings.
In the second cycle of inquiry, the SNAP students were supported to home in on one or two of the pathways they had begun to explore and to develop the specific transferable skills needed to pursue them further. These were different for different students, according to the strengths they already had and the options they were interested in pursuing. They ranged from building teamwork skills, to learning how to use public transport and the local library, to learning how to use a phone and operate apps like Uber. The students worked towards related unit standards and one student, having discovered that his chosen career required the ability to drive, began work towards getting his learner licence.
The teachers wanted the students to build relationships with potential employers and other useful community contacts. These were fostered through opportunities for work experience and volunteering activities.
What happened as a result of this innovation?
SNAP had significant benefits for the SNAP students. These included greater self-confidence, agency, perseverance, and guided control and ownership of their learning pathways. Students went from not having clear goals, or having vague or unrealistic goals, to exploring a range of possible vocations and developing skills to achieve them. For example, students who were interested in coffee making completed a barista training programme, took part in work experience at a local café, and continue to practise their skills by making coffee at fortnightly SNAP morning teas.
Of the six SNAP students, one left during the year and is now receiving support from external agencies. Another left at the end of the school year, with a planned initial pathway that includes continuing with the EarthLink training programme that he had begun in Term 4. He will also continue with his voluntary placements with the SPCA opportunity shop and at Te Omanga Hospice garden. Having been a self-described loner, he has gained social skills and was able to reciprocate the support from his mentors, when one of them was as nervous as he about rock climbing. He has a portfolio of evidence about his achievements that include the New Zealand Certificate in Skills for Living. Both he and his mother feel confident about his future. In an unexpected turn, the closer relationship that developed in discussions revealed that she had not been receiving a Disability Allowance for her son. She now has access to this. The SNAP team will continue regular check-ins with this young man and his mother for the next year.
The four other students have chosen to stay at school for another year. Both they and their parents say that they have felt well supported and that the students’ relationships with their mentors make them feel special. The tracking tool shows that students feel more confident and have greater ownership of their learning and career pathways. They are setting the realistic and aspirational goals that were hoped for and are willing to persevere to achieve them. Students have evidence of their improvement in terms of a range of skills, including soft skills such as the ability to communicate and manage time. They have new friendships, and one student was welcomed into her mentor’s dance class. The greater integration into the wider school community one of the great successes of the programme.
The data collected in this project informed student learning at home, as well as at school. For example, while a family wanted their child to eventually move into supported living, completion of a life skills checklist revealed that he had not yet attempted many of the foundation skills necessary for this. At the SNAP family meetings, the student’s mentors played a big role in helping his parents understand that he needed opportunities for greater independence. They also helped foster these at school and in the community, for example, getting him accustomed to public transport. This student has become far more confident as he has grown his skill set.
The initial plans proved too big to complete in the first instance, and the team focused more on the in-school mentoring model. The project leaders found that the SNAP student, two student mentors and the support staff mentor formed a tight-knit, collaborative team that had the best interests of the SNAP student at heart. The relationships that were established between the SNAP students and their mentors meant the mentors were able to make valuable contributions at IEP meetings.
The team had hoped that this would benefit the student mentors, as well as those being mentored, and this proved to be the case. The mentors valued their relationships with the Tautoko students and had developed new friendships. They felt that they had grown in their communication and relationship abilities, had learned more about themselves, and were more confident. The family of one mentor was so impressed that they provided a trophy to be awarded to the top SNAP student. In addition, three of the student mentors decided that they would like to work in this field when they left school. This was a positive and unforeseen bonus of the programme.
In 2020, three new Tautoko students joined the programme, and 14 student mentors entered the coaching programme. The school set aside timetabled time for support staff mentors to engage and intends to continue to grow the programme. While the TLIF project is now complete, SNAP is continuing to be developed, with innovations introduced, despite the interruptions of COVID-19. These include introducing the Duke of Edinburgh programme and having students make programmes for the Positivity Radio network.
What did they learn?
The Human-Centred Design Approach was successful in enabling the inquiry team to move through a rapid and collaborative ‘fail and learn’ process. In particular, the team learned that the GROW coaching model needed to be adapted for their students. Feedback from both the Tautoko students and their mentors revealed that coaching needed to be slowed down to enable students to think through their responses and that it was important not to be too confrontational. Sometimes it was best done while students were engaged in other activities, rather than sitting down, face-to-face.
The mentors learned that both their expectations and those of parents and whānau were often too low, and that this led to reduced opportunities for the Tautoko students to practise skills independently and improve. Higher expectations could be scaffolded with supports such as visual checklists that break a task down into steps. This could also be transferred to work situations.
While it was always intended that there be reciprocal benefits for mentors and mentees, the success of these relationships was unexpected. Tautoko students found themselves more accepted and valued across the school, and the mentors discovered skills, talents, fulfilment, and even potential careers. It was important to offer professional development in coaching to all mentors.
The support of family is vital, both for the sake of individual students and for the programme as a whole. Indeed, it was important for the project’s leaders to reach out across the school and local community for support and new opportunities.
The project team’s research and their own local experiences highlighted systemic barriers to the transition to work that need to be addressed across the community, through programmes such as Enabling Good Lives. There remains an ongoing issue for many students who are not ORS-funded and do not get transition support from providers. The team believes that until there is systemic improvement, spreading good transition practice across the country, it will be necessary for schools, families, and communities to fill the gap.
Inquiry team
The core inquiry team was led by Heather Lear and Nick Larkin. The wider team included Tautoko support staff and the student and teacher mentors.
The project’s critical friends were Professor Jeff Sigafoos (Victoria University Education Faculty) and Susan Arrowsmith (Leading Learning). Dr Colin Gladstone (freelance consultant), and Kirsty Ferguson (Ferguson and Associates).
The project was supported by the following members of the local community: Chris Bishop and Ginny Andersen (Members of Parliament), Lower Hutt Rotary Club, Jason Hall (Ripe Coffee), Lucy Knowles (Hutt City Council), and Michael Gray (Buzz Cafe).
For further information
If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leader, Heather Lear, at heather.lear@hvhs.school.nz
Reference list
Autism Programme Quality Indicators Survey: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/autism/apqi.htm
British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development. Transition planning for youth with special needs. Vancouver: Ministry of Children and Family Development.
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Cleland, G., Gladstone, C. & Todd, C. (2008). Preliminary findings of the stocktake of transition of disabled students in Canterbury. Christchurch: Wayne Francis Charitable Trust.
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Enabling Good Lives: https://www.enablinggoodlives.co.nz/
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Ministry of Education (2011). Preparing to leave school: Information for parents and caregivers of young people with special education needs. Wellington: Author.
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Nova Scotia Department of Education (2005). Transition planning for students with special needs: The early years through to adult life. Nova Scotia: Author.
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