The LT special education curriculum debuts new staff members for the Learning Independence for Everyday (L.I.F.E) & Work Skills class, a course within the L.I.F.E. program. While the structure of this program has remained constant for many years, the additions of vocational director Paul Petrik and teacher Tracy Kraus ensures a new start.

“The work skills program allows students to get hands on job skills, the experience of working with adults, following directions and learning the steps in a job sequence,” Petrik said.

Work skills is an optional yet highly encouraged two-period class that is offered to all students in the L.I.F.E program that can be taken any or all years of high school, L.I.F.E program coordinator Colleen Gibbons said. Students younger than 16 years old are able to learn good employee behavior at LT’s in-house businesses before entering the community’s work force.

“When students are freshmen or sophomores, they are not yet ready for an intense, off-campus job,” Gibbons said. “We start them in on-campus jobs to ensure they build the skills they need before leaving the building to more complicated employment experiences.”

At SC, students perform various jobs such as cleaning in the AP office, dusting shelves, wiping down tables in the cafeterias and facing books in the Library, Petrik said. A majority of the students in the program do not receive a salary. A few who work at SC are paid a small stipend, but the main focus of the program is to give the students a positive work experience.

“Some students who qualify to become Department of Rehabilitation Services (DRS) clients are paid $3 a day by the government,” Gibbons said. “For the students who aren’t DRS clients, I remind them all the time they are getting ‘paid’ in high school credit.”

Before leaving SC and working at job sites like Great American Bagel, Walgreens or TJ Maxx, students learn with provided in-house jobs in partnership with many departments throughout LT, Gibbons said.

“We asked teachers if they had any small jobs they needed done,” Petrik said. “We did this so kids have a change in their routine jobs and be able to adapt their skills to new daily job requests.”

The effects of this program are evident as Delaney Borzym, a graduate of the L.I.F.E & Work Skills program, credits many friends and job opportunities to this program at LT.

“I’ve worked at South Campus, La Grange Hospital, as well as Great American Bagel,” Borzym said. “It was really fun being a part of it and I met some of my best friends through it.”

There’s a lot of moving around and organization involved, but it all works out, Petrik said.

“This is the reason I went into Special Education,” Petrik said. “When they come back and tell you they did a good job, and you congratulate and reassure them, it’s a joy for them and maybe even more so for the staff, being able to see the kids grow. It’s a win-win situation.”