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EDMOND — Life after highschool has taken years of household planning for Sahara Dodd.
Sahara, a freshman at Deer Creek Excessive Faculty, has Down syndrome and issue verbalizing. Her mom, Monique Dodd, stated the household has lengthy thought-about Sahara’s instructional choices — probably a vocational college — and potential job alternatives she might pursue.
The query for the Dodd household isn’t whether or not Sahara will construct job expertise, however relatively which of them.
“I believe one of the crucial necessary issues that folks want to recollect about our youngsters is that they’re teachable,” Dodd stated. “They’re capable of just do as any common scholar might do, and typically they’re higher at it than the common scholar.
“She shall be among the many public and study to contribute identical to different members of society.”
The transition from highschool to grownup life is central to Deer Creek’s particular training program, and the district says it has invested on this initiative in a means few college programs have.
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To raised develop impartial residing expertise, Deer Creek is constructing a 4,000-square-foot Transition Heart geared up with house and work simulations — a facility the district believes is the primary in Oklahoma for a Okay-12 college district.
College students will study to prepare dinner for themselves, do laundry and preserve their private well being as soon as it’s completed this spring, barring delays.
“You possibly can solely create a lot in a classroom, however if you happen to had an precise home setting, you may accomplish much more,” particular training instructor Nick Pettit stated.
How this system works
To develop marketable expertise, Deer Creek connects particular training college students with native companies, postsecondary colleges and authorities companies that supply job coaching. They’re additionally linked with packages and duties inside the highschool that relate to their aptitudes and pursuits.
Brighton Squires, who has an mental incapacity, graduated from Deer Creek final 12 months. Throughout her junior and senior 12 months, the college helped her be a part of a culinary arts and hospitality certification program at Francis Tuttle Know-how Heart to contain her in an trade suited to her robust social expertise. She’s now in job coaching at an area hospital.
“The (Deer Creek) program could be very intentional about ensuring that the scholars with particular wants maximize what they’ve to supply,” Brighton’s mom, Heather Squires, stated. “No matter their strengths are, they may entry these, discover out what they’re and actually work with that.”
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After graduating highschool, Brighton nonetheless wanted to develop information essential to reside on her personal, stated Squires, who nonetheless belongs to a dad or mum group supporting Deer Creek college students with particular wants.
What some youngsters study in per week might take years for Brighton to grasp. That makes important duties like grocery procuring and tying shoe laces a problem, Squires stated.
The Transition Heart will create an setting the place college students study to look after themselves, stated Olivia Seefeldt, a particular training instructor at Deer Creek.
“Proper now, we don’t have an enormous kitchen. We don’t have an actual mattress. We now have laundry machines, but it surely’s not the identical form of really feel as if you happen to had been in an actual home,” Seefeldt stated. “It’ll simply be capable of give us more room and extra space to show them issues we want we might train them now however we simply don’t have the house to do it.”
Extra to come back sooner or later
The middle is the product of bond funds and greater than a decade of fundraising. By the district’s early estimate, its yearly finances might exceed $669,000.
Constructing the power was a objective all through the eight-year tenure of Deer Creek’s newly retired superintendent, Ranet Tippens. Now, it’s starting to take form.
The district invited college students, mother and father, academics and others concerned within the venture to signal beams supporting the constructing at a ceremony Dec. 14.
“This has been a long-standing dream,” Tippens stated throughout the occasion. “Our dream is nearly to be actuality.”
Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers Okay-12 and better training all through the state of Oklahoma. Have a narrative concept for Nuria? She might be reached at nmartinez-keel@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @NuriaMKeel. Assist Nuria’s work and that of different Oklahoman journalists by buying a digital subscription right this moment at subscribe.oklahoman.com.
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