Michael

I work with the students in our school's Life Skills program. The term life skills is used to describe a program of study in which the student is to learn basic skills in order to survive in life. In my classroom I have life skills students with mental retardation, life skills students with autism, life skills students with PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorders), and life skills students with multiple physical and mental disabilities. These are the four primary life skills areas.

I have found that there is one thing that improves a student's chance for success no matter what level or department they fit into. That one thing is collaboration. When I taught in the regular education setting I thought that collaboration was discussing a student in the faculty room over a cup of coffee. Collaboration can be that, but it is a whole lot more. In the field of life skills education, one student may have as many as nine professionals working with them during the school day. This is in addition to the parents and doctors and therapists outside of the school.

I learned much about collaboration when I had Michael a student. Michael had two loving parents and 14 professionals working with him to help him succeed in life. As Michael's teacher, I "collaborated" with the staff in my building and put together a plan to teach him. After several weeks without success, we "collaborated" again, but the meeting quickly degenerated into a complaint session in which each participant tried to say the lack of success was not his or her fault.

Feeling frustrated, I called Michael's parents and invited them to a meeting to discuss our options. They were at a point of despair. This life-skills class was their last hope to keep their son out of a residential placement. They asked us to please try again.

What we did not know at the time was that, while things had not changed much at school, Michael's behavior at home had improved greatly. After learning this, I started talking to the parents about other people who were working with their son. During the next few weeks I found that we were trying to reinvent the wheel by developing an educational program without enough facts about Michael. Now we were finally collaborating. We found one person who had seen Michael in all settings, and had her observe what worked and what did not. Then, we called everyone together. This meant having a meeting with sixteen to twenty people in the same room.

Within days, Michael's behavior in school and out changed greatly. He knew that we were all working together, and it provided consistent boundaries for him. He still had his moments of trying behaviors but they were few and far between. We were finally able to begin truly working on academics and life skills. At the end of the year Michael's parents noted that this was their son's best year in school. It was due to a team effort through collaboration.

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