School-to-Work Experiences: Curriculum as a Bridge

Because workers must be prepared to constantly update their skills and reeducate themselves for new skills, lifelong learning must be a goal for every teacher and student. The curriculum provided during educational experiences should pave the way for attainment of this goal. This is particularly true for deaf and hard of hearing students. School-to-work (STW) has become an umbrella term for activities, experiences and opportunities that prepare students for the world of work, such as youth apprenticeships, mentoring, internships, job shadowing, career exploration, and integration of academic and vocational curriculum. This article provides historical background on STW, laws shaping requirements for STW programs, and research supporting STW components. Recommendations are provided for curricular elements of an STW program, and trends in STW are forecast. The transition from school to work can be difficult. Job seekers must have well-developed literacy, communication, and technology skills to enter a vocation and remain on the job. Schools that give students meaningful preparation canease this transition to the world of work. For students who are deaf or hard of hearing, achieving skills that will give them entry into an increasingly technological and competitive workplace will require the assistance of transition teams. The school-to-work transition is complicated by hearing loss. The reduced exposure to conversational partners and the general lack of meaningful social interactions, along with limitations on acquiring information incidentally, often cause children who are deaf or hard of hearing to begin school with poor conversational skills, limited vocabulary, and restricted conceptual knowledge (Luckner, 2002). The manner and pace of curriculum delivery create additional external challenges for cleaf students. Teachers in the upper grades tend to use more symbolic language about things that are removed from the context of specific experience. In these grades, students are required to perform academic tasks at metalinguistic levels. Hearing loss can significantly affect an individual's life, in particular communication, socialization, learning, and work. The challenge for teachers is to render deaf and hard of hearing individuals more successful at overcoming these effects and thus enable them to find meaningful work, a crucial factor in leading a fuller life. Why transition planning? During the developmental years, adolescents shape their identities, gain independence, and prepare for adulthood (Luckner, 2002). Furthermore, federal legislation requires transition planning, given students' need to prepare for increasingly complex work environments. The transition from school to work may be a lifelong quest for a deaf student. The effects of deafness can include problems with communication access or the lack thereof. Whatever their level of communication, deaf students face impediments to full integration into American working society because they lack the same level of English literacy as their hearing peers. Deaf education's primary goal should be to narrow the English-literacy gap between deaf and hearing students entering the workplace (Allen, Rawlings, & Schildroth, 1989). Other effects of deafness may include social skills unlearned or not taught; a lack of the information needed to benefit from training and then get and keep a job; a lack of knowledge of accommodations necessary to perform certain jobs; and reading, mathematics, and reasoning skills insufficient for competing in the job market (Allen et al., 1989). Curriculum must directly address these challenges. Students who are deaf are expected to "overcome" barriers of communication and limited access to language, and to become working citizens to the greatest extent possible. Traditionally, deaf workers were expected to be able to find work that required labor or repetition, without heavy language requirements. …