The program, helping these special needs students gain a viable skill so they can support themselves after graduation, a very good program! From the Newspapers, translated…
The handicapped students who goes into technical high schools can also learn a viable skill to live off of. The nine public and private technical high school in the city of Taipei set up the occupational programs, of them, Songshan Home Ec works hand-in-hand with Ai-Mart, to allow the second year special needs student to intern in the supermarket after their second year in high school, through the repeated practices of skills, they’d become, adept, and it trained them to have a viable skill which they can live off in the future. Seventy-percent of the technical high school students who’d graduated out are able to successfully find work after they are out of high school.
The mayor of Taipei, Ke in an interview after going to experience the internships commented, that he’d once gone on “Guess Who”, and a student with autism poured his heart out, said that there was a huge gap between what he’d learned in school versus the skills he’d needed after school at work, he’d asked the Department of Education to revise the programs in education, that after interning as a second-year high school student, they can connect and start working in the workforces immediately, and there wouldn’t be any discrepancies of what the students learned in school, versus what they are required to do on the job.
The special eds instructor, Huang said, the students from the combined skills classes reacted slower, and they don’t have good memories, and couldn’t internalize what they’d learned in class and apply to real life as well, but through continual practices, they can still have that skill for life, and learn to live on their own independently, they are even, able to operate motor vehicles to get them from place to place. She said, that high-fiving the student Wu, can help her reduce the nervous tensions, and as she’d started interning in the wholesales mart, she was too anxious, and would cry as she’d placed the apples onto the racks in the produce sections, and, with her accompanying close by, she’d slowly, adapted to the work environment.
In the past three years, of the 364 students who were trained in the program, nearly seventy-percent were able to find work, and, seven-to-ten-percent of the students out of the program decided to continue their education, and the remaining two percent may be living in assisted living, or returned to home where they’re looked after.
And so, the success rate of this program is quite high, considering that only twenty percent of the handicapped students gets placed, and this program allows the students to make a living on their own, use the skills they’d acquired through the internship programs, so they can, live using what they got, and it’s a very good program!
Life, the Obstacle Course 