NE Metro 2nd PAES Lab
NE Metro, Intermediate School District 916, services 10 member school districts of the North East Metro areas of the Twin Cities metropolitan areas of Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota. After much deliberation and planning, ISD 916 purchased PAES this past fall for their Work Experience & Life Skills Program at WELS-North School. This was the fall of 2010. As it turns out, this will soon be there "first" PAES lab, as the district announced plans in April, 2011 to open a "second" PAES lab one year later, for their Career and Tech Center which is housed on the East Campus of Century College, also in White Bear Lake, MN. Read on to hear more from Sara Gilberg, Wels-North PAES Teacher, and read the student and faculty survey from Barbara Mosher-Glansman, Work Experience Coordinator that helped lead to the decision to further expand PAES within the District.
Sara Gilberg, Wels-North PAES Teacher
916 NE Metro Intermediate School District
White Bear Lake, MN
(January, 2011)
“The program is working very well for us. We run 3 sessions a day, and we have at least 1 teacher,(myself) and one EA assigned to the lab. The program is fun for staff and students, and we are all enjoying it. Our population is mixed level 4, EBD, ASD, OHI and DCD. We use the program daily and we treat it as a preliminary work site. The program provides a wonderful assessment, and the students learn a lot about themselves and their abilities. They are exposed to many life skills that they will be able to carry into their independent lives.”
Barbara Mosher-Glansman, Work Experience Coordinator
NE Metro PAES Student & Teacher Survey Feedback
December, 2010
The PAES lab at 916 has been up and running since the beginning of the school year, and continues to prove its success. Barbara Mosher-Glansman, Work Experience Coordinator and her students conducted student and faculty interviews this past month to help summarize their success.
Student comments:
Students participating in the PAES work lab are in agreement that what they like best about working in the lab is that they can work at their own pace and get to try out several different kinds of jobs in a variety of career areas. They also enjoy working independently and are learning new things and enjoy the hands on job experiences. They are discovering what skills they are good at, as well as learning those skills they struggle with or don't enjoy as much. Students also said that they are learning how to work, and what is expected of them while they are at work. By understanding how they do in each skill area is helping them identify the career areas they may want to go into later.
Faculty comments:
Staff is in agreement that the PAES lab is beneficial for student learning because the wide variety of hands on jobs positively engages and motivates students to participate. Prior to implementing the PAES work lab in our district, student training, exploration and evaluations were limited to volunteer and in-house work-like opportunities that did not provide the extensive hands on skill assessment and exploration that is offered in the PAES work lab system. The structure of the work lab and the variety of jobs in the different career areas allow students to show significant progress in learning how to be more independent and how to follow work procedures. Students improve their ability to stay focused on tasks, problem solve more independently and recognize when they need assistance. The volume of reliable data gathered on student performance has significant influence on the decisions being made for a student's future vocational programming and job placements.
