New Learning Labs Teach Montco Special Needs Students Work And Life Skills
WEST NORRITON, Pa. (CBS) - The Montgomery County Intermediate Unit has two new learning labs to help special needs students go from the class room to the work room.
One lab is set up as an apartment, the other as a workplace, both teach 18 to 21-year-olds the skills needed for independent living.
Dawn Grant is a job coach in the apartment program, which focusing on such skills as bed making, cleaning and computer skills.
She says the program helps them with things like, "finding a job, finding an apartment, grocery shopping, cooking, banking, transportation, so they learn to ride buses and get to and from jobs."
Matt, 19, is excited, "Learning how to live on your own, going out to places."
The other lab looks like a work place. And job coach Catharine Miller says students may learn skills for up to 264 different jobs, ranging from food services in the kitchen, to computer technology to working with tools in the shop. "Some of the basic-level jobs, learning with the wrenches to take nuts and bolts off, the electrical. They learn to wire up a doorbell, to wire up a light fixture."
Reported by Lynne Adkins KYW Newsradio 1060
