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Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Areas of patchy fog. Low 27F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: December 27, 2024 @ 9:40 pm
Ashley, a Yankton School District student, is a student intern at Avera Sacred Heart Hospital through Project SEARCH, which places special education students in real-world situations where they learn all aspects of gaining and maintaining a job.
Ashley, a Yankton School District student, is a student intern at Avera Sacred Heart Hospital through Project SEARCH, which places special education students in real-world situations where they learn all aspects of gaining and maintaining a job.
Special education students enrolled in the Yankton School District (YSD) who are in search of a local program to help them learn job skills for life after high school no longer must look for one.
YSD and its partners have implemented Project SEARCH during the 2024-25 academic year for Yankton High School’s special education students ages 18-21 who are preparing to transition to adulthood.
Not all special education students are able to graduate with a high school diploma. Due to their disabilities, some students instead receive a certificate of completion but may also continue to attend high school until age 21. Schooling during transitional years includes classes in life skills and career skills and may include part-time internships or work.
“All interns are currently in a transition period post-senior year,” YSD special education teacher Chelsea Hauger told the Press & Dakotan. “We can provide services for students on IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) until age 21 in order to help them meet their transition goals, which are usually focused on independent living and job skills. Students who have completed all academic requirements for high school may apply for enrollment in Project SEARCH if they are still eligible to receive IEP services.”
PROJECT SEARCH
Project SEARCH, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a unique international business-led transition program committed to preparing young people with significant disabilities for success in competitive integrated employment. Designed as an internship program, Project SEARCH places special education students in real-world situations where they learn all aspects of gaining and maintaining a job.
“It provides individuals who want to work a chance to explore careers and develop transferable job skills,” Hauger said. “The ultimate goal: helping independent adults gain skills to work competitively in the community.”
Project SEARCH helps school districts tap into strategic partnerships with local businesses, post-secondary educational institutions, and organizations and state agencies that support adults with intellectual disabilities to create a vocational training program for interested special education students.
Project SEARCH broadens job options for special education students with specific skills training and on-the-job experience at a local business.
“The process of immersion facilitates the teaching and learning of new work skills on-site,” Hauger said. “The goal of Project SEARCH is to equip young adults with the skills they need to work in the community after completing the program. To do this, a series of internship rotations are developed for each participant. Placements are made based on individual interests, strengths, skills and department availability. Any on-the-job coaching, accommodations and adaptations they need are provided so they can thrive in their roles.”
YSD is providing Project SEARCH through a partnership with Avera Sacred Heart Hospital, Mount Marty University, Ability Building Services, the South Dakota Department of Social Services’ Division of Rehabilitation Services, Transition Services Liaison Project and other local and state agencies.
Avera Sacred Heart is the host business this academic year and is providing the Project SEARCH internships. Host businesses must have at least 200 employees to qualify. Project SEARCH is following YSD’s school calendar, running from August-May, from 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Mount Marty is providing the classroom space for YSD’s Project SEARCH program.
“Traditionally, the host business will provide a classroom space, but Avera just didn’t have a place that was feasible for us to use,” Hauger said. “Mount Marty offered us a classroom space and it has worked really well. Our classroom is in Bede (Hall), so the students interning in the hospital can just walk over and be from our classroom to their internship site in five minutes or less.
“We are hoping that once we get established at Avera, we may be able to work out some internships on the Mount Marty campus as well,” she said. “Ability Building Services is another agency that we are partnered with, and they provide the job coach for the program. We also work very closely with Vocational Rehabilitation (Services), and they cover a lot of costs, including uniforms for our interns.”
INTERNSHIP ROTATIONS
The first year of YSD’s Project SEARCH program has four student interns.
“Ideally, we would have around eight students every year,” Hauger said. “We can have a maximum of 12 students each year. They are currently in their second rotation and will remain in that internship (rotation) until (Feb. 21). Between each internship rotation, they have a transition week where we work on a lot of independent living and transition skills in the classroom. During their first transition week, we talked a lot about money and budgeting, we talked about the process of buying a car (and) we went to the laundromat and actually did laundry.”
Her two favorite activities that she and the student interns completed during their first transition week revolved around going to the grocery store.
“The first was a grocery store scavenger hunt, where we went to Walmart, and they had a list of items that they needed to find in the store (they were mostly staple items like bread, milk and cheese, but also included things like toilet paper and shampoo), write down the brand and the price, and then add up how much it would cost to purchase all of those items,” Hauger said.
“Then, right before Thanksgiving, they each planned out a Thanksgiving meal for six, including an appetizer, main course, two side dishes, two fruits/vegetables, two desserts and drinks,” she said. “So, they wrote down all of the items that they would need and had to find them in the store and add up the price to see if they could purchase all items for $100 or less. We talked about reading serving sizes and things like that to make sure that they would have enough food and things like that.”
The student interns’ current rotations, which run from Dec. 2-Feb. 21 at Avera Sacred Heart, include:
• Environmental services at the hospital, including cleaning patient rooms as well as some routine cleaning on the second floor.
• Nutrition services at the hospital, including working in the dish room and putting away clean dishes, helping to stock items inside the Northern Lights Cafe and helping to keep the dining area in the cafe clean.
• Maintenance split between the Majestic Bluffs senior living community and the hospital, including running the floor-cleaning machine, helping to pick up trash in the parking lots, detailing fleet cars and performing general maintenance throughout the buildings.
• Nutrition services at Majestic Bluffs, including working in the kitchen areas of the Avera Sister James Nursing Home and reading the meal cards to make sure each resident is getting the correct food/diet, filling drinks, bussing tables, plating food, doing food temperature logs, etc.
The student interns then will have a transition week in the classroom and start their third internship rotation on March 3.
“Each internship (rotation) starts off with one or two tasks and then continues to add to those tasks throughout the 10 to 12 weeks,” Hauger said. “The goal is that they will have enough experience in a variety of settings with those transferable skills that they can be hired in a variety of settings, not just at the hospital or nursing home.
“The staff at the hospital and nursing home have all been really great to work with and they have been fabulous with our students,” she said. “We are looking forward to being able to expand into other areas of the hospital and to keep growing this partnership between Avera and YSD.”
STUDENT INTERNS
In addition to interviewing Hauger, the Press & Dakotan reached out to YSD’s four student interns with questions about Project SEARCH. While one of them chose not to participate, the other three — Antonio, Ashley and Weston, who are all between the ages of 19 and 21 — were willing to work with Hauger to answer the questions. However, they requested that they be referred to by their first names only for this story.
Currently at Avera Sacred Heart, Antonio is working in food service, Ashley is working in environmental services and Weston is working in maintenance.
“There is some choosing and some assigning,” Hauger said. “We only have a few departments we are working with so far, so they don’t have a ton of choices yet. As we continue with the program and developing internships, we are hopeful that we can add a little more variety to the internships and they will have more choices.”
When asked what they enjoy the most about participating in Project SEARCH, each student intern had a different answer: Antonio said interacting with different people, Ashley said the people she has gotten to work with and Weston said seeing the residents at the nursing home.
“The experience has been good and fun (for them),” Hauger said. “They are learning a lot of new things.”
She said Antonio has learned self-confidence in his ability to perform several jobs, Ashley has learned how to socialize and interact with a variety of people and Weston has learned about working with others and following a work schedule.
“They have all learned a lot about money management through our classroom work and about how important confidentiality is, especially in the healthcare setting,” Hauger said.
When asked what kind of job they each were hoping to have after high school, Antonio said he wants to work in a position where he gets to be active and moving around and complete a variety of tasks; Ashley said she wants to work in a kitchen doing food prep, as she was in nutrition services during her first internship rotation and the cold food prep was her favorite part of it; and Weston wants to work at an auto body shop or continue working at Majestic Bluffs.
Hauger said each of the student interns have seen “remarkable” growth in their confidence through YSD’s Project SEARCH program.
“A lot of the individuals served nationwide in this program and their families are often told all of the things that they won’t be able to do, and this is a chance to show them and everyone else what they can do and be successful at,” Hauger said. “It is just amazing how this program has positively impacted so many people, and for us to be able to start this in Yankton is just a fantastic opportunity for all parties involved.”
When asked what he would tell his classmates, including underclassmen, who are considering participating in Project SEARCH, Antonio said, “You learn a lot of different things in the classroom that you didn’t even know you need to know,” referring to money and budgeting.
Hauger added, “We got these general responses from all of (the student interns): ‘You become a lot more comfortable working with a lot of different people.’ ‘Learning responsibility for yourself and the job you are doing.’ ‘Hands-on life and job skills.’ ‘And we’ve learned a lot about self-advocacy (how to advocate for themselves and their needs and when to do so).’”
She said the first year of YSD’s Project SEARCH program has gone well overall.
“Because this is a national program and there are other sites in South Dakota, we had a lot of resources available to us to make sure we got started on the right foot,” Hauger said. “I email one of the site coordinators in Sioux Falls pretty regularly when we have questions because she is part of an established site and also made the transition from teaching high school special education to teaching in a (Project) SEARCH set-up, which was definitely different than what I am used to.
“We are definitely still learning as we go, but those resources have helped us tremendously,” she said. “The students have really enjoyed their internships and getting to work in different areas and know different people. They are all starting to realize that they really are capable of holding a part-time or even full-time job.”
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To learn more Project SEARCH in the Yankton School District, contact special education teacher Chelsea Hauger at Chelsea.Hauger@k12.sd.us or Director of Student Services Jerome Klimisch at Jerome.Klimisch@k12.sd.us. The Project SEARCH website is www.projectsearch.us.
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