Teaching Pre Employment Skills to 1417 Year Olds The

Autism Works Now!® Method

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Contents

Foreword by Temple Grandin

Preface
Introduction

Part I: UNDERSTANDING AUTISM WORKS NOW® METHOD

1. The Importance of Work
What is meaningful work?
Why are friends important in a job search?
How are individuals with autism affected in their ability in finding and keeping a job?
How is autism treated and how can the basis of those treatments assist individuals with autism
in the workplace?
What are hard and soft job skills and how do these skills affect individuals with autism in the
workplace?
What more can be done to help individuals with autism succeed in the workplace?
Why is it important to teach workplace readiness skills to middle and high school students with
autism?
How can we address the unmet needs of middle and high school students with autism and their
ability to secure and sustain meaningful employment?
How does the AWN Method accomplish these goals?
Why are participants in the AWN program called candidates?
What is the format of classroom meetings?
What is the format of field trips?
How is this book formatted?
How does the book accommodate for the needs of middle and high school students with
autism?

2. Matching the Job to the Individual and Filling in the Blanks

Why is it important to match an individual with autism to a job that is suited to their interests,
skills, and abilities?
 How do you determine an individual’s interests, skills, and abilities?
How do you use a candidate’s preferences in exploring possible job options?
What workplace paperwork is covered in the workshop?

3. Getting Organized with Google

How do you help candidates improve their executive functioning skills?
What are the various Google apps used in the Workplace Readiness Workshop?

4. Dress for Success

Why is it important to discuss dressing well on the job in a workplace readiness program?
How important is dress when going for a job interview?
How do you teach candidates the concept of matching attire to the culture of the company?
How do you teach candidates the importance of wearing clothes that fit properly?
How do you teach candidates about dress variations within a company’s culture?
How do you provide candidates with additional information on dressing for the workplace?
Do you incorporate social media in classroom instruction?

5. Interview Essentials
What are the biggest fears people have about job interviews?
What is the most important goal for a job interview?
How do you teach candidates the key steps in preparing for an interview?
Is there any additional information that is covered in the workshop during Interview Essentials?
What else does the workshop provide to candidates to help them generalize the information
about interview preparation?

6. Landing a Job
How do you teach candidates how to network as part of their job search process?
What is an informational interview and how can candidates use it in their job search?
How do you help candidates create a professional online presence?
What professional and personal social media sites do you recommend to candidates?
Which social media sites do you recommend for your candidates?
What other online resources are there to search for employment?
What is the biggest difference between having a personal job referral and applying for a job
posted online?
What other employment services are available to individuals with autism?

7. Connecting and coworkers

How are social communication skills affected in individuals with autism?
How do you teach candidates appropriate workplace social communication skills?
How do you teach candidates the importance of making a good first impression at work?
How important is it for candidates to socialize with coworkers outside the workplace?
In relationship to work, why is it important to teach stress management to individuals with
autism?
Why is it important for candidates to learn about the organizational structure of the company
where they work?

8. Understanding the Workplace

 How do you teach candidates about the hierarchy of jobs within an organization?
What information is covered about the role of a human resources department?
Which state and federal employment regulations are covered in the workshop?
What is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?
What disabilities are covered under the ADA?
How does the ADA affect individuals in the workplace?
Under the ADA, what is considered reasonable accommodations for employees with autism?
What are examples of accommodations that would be considered reasonable under the ADA?
Can an employer discriminate against an employee because of a disability?
What questions and actions can and can’t an employer ask of an employee with a disability?
Is an applicant or employee required to disclose their disability to their employer?
When and to whom should an employee disclose?
What needs to be considered in regards to a reasonable accommodation?
What do you instruct candidates to do when they experience a violation of their rights?
What information do you provide on the topic of conflict resolution in the workplace?
What is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument for conflict resolution?
What is the Interest-Based Relational Approach to conflict resolution?
What information does the workshop cover in regards to dating coworkers?

Part II: WORKSHOP STRUCTURE

9. Behavior, Behavior, Behavior
What should a behavior plan look like? Tools for challenging behaviors
What is Positive Behavior Support (PBS)?
Determining the function of the behavior
Implementing PBS strategies: “The Big Three” components of PBS

10. Group and Candidate Requirements

Setting guidelines
Candidate requirements

11. Classroom Requirements

Room set-up
Wifi
Equipment

12. Classroom Meetings

Class structure
Part 1: Agenda and Introductions
Part 2: Roundtable Discussion
Part 3: Prepare and Practice
Part 4: Recall and Review

13. Field Trips

Choosing a business
Scheduling a field trip
Field trip preparation
 During the field trip
Follow-up

14. Instructional Materials

Organizing candidate binders
Worksheets and study guides

References
Index
Foreword
TEMPLE GRANDIN

My sense of identity is based on my work. This is normal for lots of people.

Many common surnames are also the names of occupations such as Cook,
Mason, Carpenter, Smith, and Farmer. Being successful in my career has
given my life purpose. I am what I do. When I was in my twenties, I wrote
an article on how I made a slow transition from the world of school to the
world of work. Too often students with autism spectrum disorders autism
spectrum disorder (ASD) graduate from either high school or college and
they have had no work experience. Work experiences should begin long
before graduation. Students need to learn how to do tasks that are on a
schedule. To be most effective, the tasks should be outside the immediate
family. I want to emphasize it is never too late to start. If you are working
with either a high school or college graduate who has not learned basic
skills, he or she needs to be gradually eased away from the couch or the
video games.
Mother knew how to stretch me, to try new things that were just outside
my comfort zone. At age thirteen, she set up a sewing job with a freelance
seamstress. Today, middle school-age children could walk dogs for the
neighbors or do volunteer work at a church or community center. At age
fifteen, after I had gone to a boarding school, they gave me the job of
cleaning the horse stalls. I loved the responsibility of taking care of the
horses. The following year I spent the summer at my aunt’s ranch. Mother
gave me a choice; I could go for a week or stay all summer. It is important
to give the child some choices and I ended up loving the ranch and staying
all summer. In college, I did two internships. One was at a research lab
where I ran experiments. During this summer, I had to live in a rental house
with another person. The other was at a summer program for children with
autism and I lived in a rented room. These internships were set up through
local contacts. Throughout both college and graduate school I was doing
freelance sign painting and learning more work skills.
During my career as a designer of livestock facilities, I have worked
with many skilled trades people who were either dyslexic, had attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or were mildly autistic. They got and
kept their jobs because they had both paper routes as young children and
vocational training in high school. Parents need to work to get vocational
skills back into the schools. Today there is a huge shortage of mechanics,
welders, electricians, and plumbers. I worked with skilled trades people
when they were building big Cargill and Tyson beef plants. These were big
complex projects that required lots of brains to build them. My job was to
design the cattle handling facilities. I have designed the front end of every
Cargill beef plant in North America. A vocational career may be appropriate
for about 25 percent of students with ASD or ADHD. Do not get hung up
on labels. In fully verbal students, the diagnoses may switch back and forth
between ASD and ADHD.
Parents and teachers must avoid the tendency to over protect and shelter
students with ASD. I am seeing too many middle school and teenage
students who have not learned basic skills such as shopping, because the
parents always did it for them. This book has lots of advice on practical
skills that students with ASD need to be taught. One basic skill that should
be drilled in before graduation from high school is how to be on time. When
I went to college, I had many social difficulties but being on time was not
one of my problems. Once I had decided that I was going to study, I was on
time. My science teacher gave me a reason to be motivated to study.
Studying became important when I had the goal of becoming a scientist.
In conclusion, students must be willing to walk through the door of
opportunity, when it opens. When I was asked to design the first dip vat
(these are the projects that were shown in the HBO movie) I said yes
because I wanted to prove that I was not stupid and that I could do it.
Sell yourself with a portfolio
I sold my design services by showing off a portfolio of drawings and photos
of completed projects. The work must be neatly presented and you should
always have it available on your phone or tablet. You never know where
you might meet a person who can give you a job. Do not put too much stuff
in your portfolio. You want a 30-second WOW when you show it to
somebody. You need to target your audience. For example, do not show
weird science fiction drawings when you are selling graphics to a client
who has a car dealership. During interviews, I would open up my portfolio
to sell freelance jobs. I learned to sell my work instead of myself. Having a
career has given my life meaning. People a long time ago named their
families after the names of occupations because it helped define who they
were.
Preface
JOANNE LARA

Let’s get out there and show people what people with autism can do!
Temple Grandin, Temple Grandin and Friends:
Autism Works Now! Event 2015 Los Angeles
Human resource interviewers should look beyond the resumes of
individuals with autism and Asperger’s when searching for qualified
employees. With 50,000 individuals on the autism spectrum each year
graduating from United States high schools with approximately an 80
percent unemployment rate, this population has proven to excel in
‘splintered skill’ sets, meaning they are often good at one job. For instance,
they can excel in jobs such as computer graphics, computer science, coding,
analytical calculations, patterns and inconsistencies, engineering and such,
all highly regarded job qualifications that are specific to many employers’
needs. The ASD population enthusiastically wants to work, be self-
sufficient, and be contributing members of their communities.
If we begin to see job qualifications through different lenses, if we can
reward individuals on the autism spectrum who have special talents in given
areas, we can put to work these enthusiastic youths to work in often detailed
types of jobs (in which they excel), and it’s a win-win for everyone. Their
problem is they often can’t get through an interview because of their social
difficulties, so human resource interviewers need to ferret out their interests
and the kinds of things they not only like to do but can do beyond most
expectations.
 Prior to 1975, very few people were even thinking about how students
with autism could be brought into the workforce because individuals with
disabilities were not allowed to be educated in the public schools in most
states in the United States before that time. The truth is that—after nineteen
years of the institution of the Individual Transition Plan (ITP) being enacted
as part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 1997
(with 2004 subsequent transition revisions)—only a small percentage of our
youth on the autism spectrum are transitioning into jobs in their
communities, even though the primary goal of the ITP was and still is to
assist our students into transitioning into the workforce after high school.
The IDEA 1997 and 2004 transition revisions were both well-meaning
and direct descendants from the 1975 Public Law 94-142, but the program
has to be viewed skeptically at best because less than 20 percent of all
graduating students on the autism spectrum have jobs—even
inconsequential jobs after high school—and the percentages become worse
over time. Most go home and end up staying there, which is a human
tragedy, anyway it’s viewed. Sadly, this is known as the “School-to-Couch”
model.
While unemployment for our youth with autism hovers at 80 percent, it
is time that educators present a truthful idea of what the student is capable
of doing for a living, which means that we might want to re-think the way
that we are interpreting the ITP transitioning process, jobs, social
opportunities in the community, and living accommodations after high
school all together in this country. One of the reasons for these dismal
statistics may be the lack of realism on the part of the Individualized
Education Program (IEP) team members when they focus on the Person
Centered Planning element, which concentrates on where the student’s skill
set in core reading and math actually lie and how this skill set can equate to
a paying job.
IEP team members and, especially, parents often want to honor a
student’s dreams but—when that student’s case history indicates that he/she
will not be a scientist, an astronaut, a veterinarian, or have a three-picture
deal at Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood – we must ask ourselves if we
are really indeed serving the student by entertaining these fantasy dreams of
improbable employment. In reality, the student may be able to work in a
vet’s office or neighborhood shelter, gain employment on the Warner
Brothers’ lot, or work in a hospital, but the IEP team needs to be addressing
practical job options for students who are not going to transition into a four-
year college or a two-year community college. The students should be
directed down a path that will give them a realistic idea of job options when
they transition out of the public school setting.
The downfall of not entertaining realistic job options early on in the
academic years is that, often, the student becomes attached to the fantasy
job and the impractical idea of where he might actually fit in the job market.
In the case of his/her vision of becoming a scientist, a vet, or an astronaut,
the student can often be reluctant to want to pursue or seek jobs outside of
these unlikely positions, even though other jobs could better meet his skill
set and lifestyle, further contributing to the existing 80 percent
unemployment statistic.
For the student who wants to be a scientist, why not have him/her
research jobs that are available in a university science department? Or
companies that do medical research? Or organizations where he can still be
working in the area of her interest?
It is in the IEP team meetings that we need to begin to present a more
realistic approach to job options for the student and begin to help him
understand where he fits into the workforce. We stand a far better chance of
getting the outside community employer’s and stakeholder’s support to help
our youth be successful if we are realistic in how the student and the team
view the student’s potential, weighing in on his past success in the academic
institution as a barometer for his future success. In addition, we all need to
understand that there is a lack of vocational education in the middle and
high school setting. Vocational education used to at one time be prevalent
across the United States in all public schools; woodworking, metal working,
car repair, bakery skills, care detailing, horticulture, animal husbandry—
these courses could be found in any high school. The Smith-Hughes Act of
1917 was the law that first authorized federal funding for vocational
education in American schools and explicitly described vocational
education as “preparation for careers not requiring a bachelor’s degree.”
Vocational education was not designed to prepare students for college rather
it was to prepare the student to work in a job force that required a certain
specific skill set.
 What happened to vocational training? In the late 1990s and early
2000s, the standards and accountability movement in the school systems
was taking hold, so the states had begun to write academic standards or
goals for what students should learn and, in the process, what wasn’t critical
to the learning and, in many cases, what was needed or not needed to obtain
funding of the educational process. Then in 2001, Congress passed the “No
Child Left Behind” Act. That law required states to test their students every
year and to ensure that all students would eventually be proficient in math
and reading in exchange for federal education funding. This was the
beginning of the end of vocational training in this country (American
RadioWorks 2014).
The majority of vocational schools didn’t meet the academic faculty
“highly qualified educator” requirements in order to meet the No Child Left
Behind criterion. While vocational educators had the skilled labor experts to
teach the skills like metalworking, woodworking, horticulture, bakery,
culinary arts, car detailing, cosmetology, and so on, the instructors
themselves did not have the diploma in the discipline to fulfill the No Child
Left Behind Act’s standards. So, the very skill sets that could most benefit
our youth on the autism spectrum, because what they would learn in
vocational training could be turned into meaningful jobs, are basically no
longer available in the public school setting in the United States.
In other words, for those students in the academic school setting and
who have an IEP (a document that is developed for each public school child
in special education) a member of the IEP team can assess and tell us what
the student is good at or could be good at doing that would allow him to get
a job once he graduates from high school. However they cannot teach him
that skill set because the majority of the schools do not have the vocational
centers any longer that provide the facilitation to educate the student in the
skill set that the assessment indicates would serve him best.
In addition, the vocational programs (e.g. computer science; animation;
art; home economics; shop; drafting; advertising/layout/design;
photography; economics, banking, budgeting, etc.) that go hand in hand
with teaching independent living skills currently only exist in the
Moderate/Severe Special Day Programs. These programs are typically not
available for our Asperger’s and higher functioning students with autism,
who can also benefit from vocational training if they are to live self-
determined lives after high school.

What can be done?

• The ITP must be started early in the schools—at 14 years of age—
but parents need to have a vision for their child’s future beginning in
kindergarten and the early elementary school years. Everyone who
is a member of the child’s team, including the student himself, needs
to be creating an idea of who this person is, what his capabilities are
in his home, his community and what is his place in the world now
and in the future. We do it for our neurotypical children. Why are we
not doing it for our children with autism? Because we feel guilty?
Because we ourselves are not certain that indeed there is a place for
him in the community? In the job force? If this is the case, then we
must work harder, yell louder, make our voices heard, that we want
our youth with autism to have realistic choices for employment,
options for social activities and outings in the community and
alternatives to the ‘School–to-Couch’ living model.
• If there is an opportunity to bring back vocational programs into the
public schools—even if your child isn’t oriented toward vocational
education—support the effort, because it will benefit jobs for
thousands of individuals, whether or not they’re on the autism
spectrum.
• At as early a time as possible while the child is still in high school,
parents will need to evaluate and consider vocational schools for
their post-high school graduate, linking his interest and job skill sets
to what is offered in vocational schools.
• Many of the subjects that provide great jobs and incomes are taught
in junior colleges, such as agriculture/plant management;
cosmetology; nursing assistant/home health care; computer science;
automobile mechanics; restaurant/food services. If they don’t exist
in your community, consider other close-by communities, because
many junior colleges house specialty programs, depending upon
 their locations (e.g. some of the best schools in
cuisine/restaurant/food services are in major metropolitan area
junior colleges).
• Look at specialty schools like the Art Institute and Design Schools;
retail training and management programs; accounting, electrical,
plumbing, and a host of other high-end salary possibilities.
• Check out programs that transition students after high school into
the workforce or into college, if that’s the goal, where learning to
keep a budget, take care of themselves, and live independently are
cornerstones of the program.

Why aren’t our students on the autism

spectrum ultimately transitioning into jobs
when the ITP should work?
In June 2014, only 19.3 percent of people with disabilities in the US were
participating in the labor force—working or seeking work. Of those, 12.9
percent were unemployed, meaning only 16.8 percent of the population
with disabilities was employed. By contrast, 69.3 percent of people without
disabilities were in the labor force, and 65 percent of the population without
disabilities were employed (United States Department of Labour, Bureau of
Labor Statistics 2017). We may need to ask ourselves: what is wrong with
the current education picture? We spend an enormous amount of time
assessing, teaching reading and math proficiencies, and making sure that
the student is prepared for life after high school only to find that the
statistics are against him. To summarize, the options after high school for
our youth fall into four categories.
1. attend a special day program in the community where they generally
develop life skills, go out into the community as a crowd, and often
work either independently or as a group in a supported job
environment
2. enroll in a community two-year or four-year college program with
support provided by the regional center and the university or college