- Hello, and welcome to the pepnet 2 webinar series. Today we are going to talk about effective transition services, the taxonomy for transition programming... and capacity, and what is it, and how can we use it? When we think about transition-- the idea of transition came around in the 1980s, so in the 1980s was really the beginning of basic research, basic ideas about transition, or what we want our students to do after they graduate from high school. So then, moving into the 1990s, is really when more rigorous studies, more research was done for transition and the impact on outcomes. In the 1990s, the taxonomy for transition programming was developed, and this taxonomy really set the foundation for effective practices in transition as we move forward. With the addition of the taxonomy, we started looking at transition as a more global picture instead of just a transition class or a one-time experience for a student in high school. So the idea of transition-focused education became the buzz word for describing transition and what we do in high school for our students with disabilities. So transition-focused education is really looking at the-- the complexity of transition, that it has to be something that happens over time for a student, so having different experiences, different things happening in high school-- that it's gonna have an impact on what they do after high school. And then also, it requires a really broad perspective, So having all of the people that are gonna support that student bring different experiences to that student, having all of those people together to have a combined global approach to transition education. Why is transition-focused education important? As we think about what our students are gonna do after they leave high school, we really need to make sure that what they're doing in high school is meaningful, intentional, and is gonna have an impact on what they do as they go into college or employment or whatever they decide to do after they leave high school. So it's important to connect the academic. It's important to connect the curricula in their extracurricular experiences, making sure that it's a well-rounded approach for our students. And additionally, transition-focused education also puts a focus on the quality of life outcome, so it's not just about getting through high school. It's about what's gonna happen after high school, and making sure that's quality for our students. So in the 1980s, we had the introduction of the idea of transition. In the 1990s, it really became an emphasis in research, and started to show up in legislation, that we needed to have more of a focus on transition. So in the 2000s is really when legislation changed and started putting an emphasis on what-- how we could count transition and what we could do in order to have a bigger impact. So with that, we identified some critical relationships between what's happening in school and the impact on those outcomes for our students. So the first relationship, or interrelationship that we noticed as we have-- as we're thinking about transition and the impact for our student, there's really a connection between a quality IEP-- so what's happening, what kind of plan is put in place for a student. if a really quality IEP is in place for a student, then we are seeing that students are staying in school and they're graduating, which is really important. And then all of those together connect to our students achieving their post-school outcome. So if a student has a plan that they want to go into college after they graduate, that's in their IEP, they're having experiences in high school that have-- that get them ready to go on to college, and then they're achieving those post-school outcomes. Another critical relationship that we notice in transition-focused education is having-- making sure that we have a very well-developed transition education and services option for our students that also brings in developing their student IEPs, making sure that those IEPs are really reflective of their choices and what they want to do. Then that all comes together to have an impact on what they do after they leave high school. So the relationship between a broad array of transition education and services combined with their IEP, and that all has an impact on what they do after they leave high school. So how do we work on transition-focused education? There's a tool out there called the Taxonomy for Transition Programming, and it has five different areas that represent best practice for students and families and teachers when they're working on transition-focused education. The taxonomy was developed in the 1990s, and it's based on research that was collected across the country from teachers, educators, other professionals, on what they were doing in their high schools that was effective, that was working for their students. So there's five different areas for the taxonomy. Those areas are: student-focused planning, student development, interagency collaboration, family involvement, and program structures. The first area for the taxonomy is student-focused planning. Student-focused planning is really about what happens for a student over time, what they're doing each year in high school. It's really the process of developing their IEP so it's intentional and thoughtful for them. The next part of the taxonomy is student development. And student development is really the pieces, or the day-to-day parts of what the student is doing, so their classes, their curricula, their experiences that they're having that get them ready for experiences after high school. Interagency collaboration is really having the right people in the right seats. So how--who are we bringing together that's gonna have an impact on that student's plan while they're in high school and after they leave high school. So that's agency people, that can be educators, that can be parents, everybody coming together and having an impact on that student's plan. Family involvement is really the thread that connects everything. If we have families involved in what a student's plan is, what they're doing in high school, it helps just bring everything together. And finally, program structures. Program structures is the foundation that all of the rest of these components work on. So we're thinking about a school that's supportive of students with disabilities, a school that has systems and programs in place to support the success of their students, and then really, how we build what we want in order for students to be successful. How do we implement transition-focused education? It doesn't happen in a silo. We want to make sure that we have transition-focused education happening for our student so they can be successful. In order to do that in a very meaningful way, we also need to build capacity. Building capacity means looking at what we're already doing, and then how we can make that better, so I went out and Googled different definitions of capacity, and they all include changing, they all include people, they all include making sure that we're having an impact on systems and making those changes. So when we think about capacity and transition-focused education, we really need to make sure that we're working on building the capacity in order to implement transition-focused education. So what does that look like? That means making sure that our teachers, our educators, our parents are informed, they have the knowledge that they need and that they have that knowledge in order to have an impact on what they're doing with our student. And so making sure that we're using capacity and transition-focused education--those combined-- mean that we can have an impact on what we're doing for our student as they leave high school.