The Way to Work: How to Facilitate Work Experience for Youth in Transition

This practical guide helps educators, transition specialists, and employment specialists facilitate individualized, person-centered work experiences and jobs for high school students and young adults with a wide range of disabilities. Readers will get the specific, ready-to-use guidance they need to uncover students' strengths, needs, and interests through formal and informal assessments; promote students' social skills for success in the workplace; recruit employers and help them accept and understand disability and accommodations; help students decide when and how to disclose a disability to an employer; guide students in advocating effectively for job accommodations; involve families in the work experience; help employers and employees develop mutually beneficial partnerships; support and mentor young people in the workplace; and build their own knowledge of legal considerations. To help with every step of facilitating meaningful employment, readers will get examples of model programs, stories that illustrate what works and doesn't work, more than a dozen photocopiable tools and forms, and end-of-chapter "Learning Labs" with reflection questions and thought-provoking activities. Teachers and transition specialists will rely on this strategy-filled guidebook to connect students with the early work experiences they really want¿and make lifelong career satisfaction the rule, not the exception, for people with disabilities.

Richard G. Luecking, Ed.D., is President of TransCen, Inc., Rockville, Maryland. He is the co-author of Working Relationships, also available from Brookes Publishing Co.