HJEC January 2024 Newsletter

What's Happening?

Promoting Job Readiness

As our students get older and participate in more vocational opportunities in and out of Hopeful Journeys, we want to ensure that they are equipped with the skills they need to communicate effectively within the workplace. SLPs collaborate with BCBAs and the Vocational Manager to support the promotion of vocational skills in a variety of ways.  

• Social skills: appropriate eye contact, orienting towards communication partner, greetings/farewells, extending greetings, back-and-forth conversations
• Gaining attention: interrupting appropriately (e.g. saying “excuse me”, calling a person’s name, tapping their shoulder)   
• Self-advocacy: requesting help, asking for clarification, requesting needed items at the beginning of a work shift (e.g. timers, schedule) 
• Individualized programming: working on specific programs that will help the students understand a variety of scenarios when at work:
• Job interview
• Problem-solving
• Perspective taking
• Appropriate interaction with employers/coworkers: reporting to a supervisor, asking and answering questions
• Individualized vocabulary for AAC users: Utilizing pre-programmed phrases with vocational vocabulary to help make communication effective and efficient.

Each day we work to explore our students' areas of interest and to build ‘job-ready’ skills in those areas. Our students practice these communication and social skills in our school store, on community trips, in mail delivery programs, and so many more! Our ultimate goal is to help all students generalize these skills in order to become as independent as possible within their future workplace and in the community.

By: Rachel Brown M.S., CF-SLP and Shauna King M.S., CF-SLP

Making Communication Work: Intraverbals

Up next for our discussion about early communication skills are intraverbals. You may not be familiar with the technical term “intraverbal”, but you likely have a lot of experience with it.  In technical terms, intraverbals are verbal behavior, either with a communication device or vocal speech, in response to another person’s communication. Intraverbals are most often used as fill-in-the-blank, nursery rhymes, and answering questions.   A common example of an intraverbal is if you are singing “twinkle, twinkle little ____” and you pause for your child to fill in the word “star.” Intraverbals can also be found in many question-and-answer pairs.  Some common examples of question-and-answer intraverbals are common knowledge questions such as: where do you sleep?- a bed, why do you go to the doctor?- to get a checkup, what does a cow say?- moo.  Many individuals may learn object associations (ex. shoes and socks, blanket and pillow, knife and fork) and functions of objects (ex. You dry your hands with a _____, you brush your teeth with a _____, soap is for _____)  with intraverbals as well. 

Intraverbals can be used to teach basic math facts, spelling, and common knowledge questions.  They can also be used to support planning skills such as preparing for an activity or trip.  A learner may be able to answer “What do you need to take with you to the beach?” or “What do you need to go shopping?” as intraverbal responses. With support to generalize these skills, the intraverbal could be an effective prompt to help the learner pack for a trip to the beach or grocery store. A learner may also be able to state a variety of fruits and vegetables when asked “Tell me some fruits” or “Tell me some vegetables.”  This could also generalize to the person being able to state what fruits or vegetables they need for a recipe. 

When teaching the basic verbal operants to learners, it is helpful to focus on mands (requests), echoics (repeating words and sounds), and tacts (labeling) first.  Mands often develop first as they help a learner get what they want, and echoics can help learners learn all types of language skills. Tacts are also taught before intraverbals as receptive and expressive labeling of objects in the environment is a natural way to teach language skills. Intraverbals often take longer to develop as they may not be linked directly to the learner’s motivation.  For example, if a learner is not interested in music, filling in the blanks with songs may not be very motivating and may take longer to learn.  However, a student who is interested in music may learn song fill-ins quickly.  Similarly, for learners who are not interested in a lot of verbal social interaction, conversational intraverbals may take longer to learn.  It is important to be patient and capitalize on your learner’s interests when possible to help them gain valuable language skills. Although each type of communication skill (e.g., echoics, tacts, mands, intraverbals) requires general considerations when designing programming, they all are likely most effectively taught when student-specific characteristics are considered to tailor instruction for each learner. At HJEC, a team of professionals (e.g., BCBAs, SLPs, and Special Education Teachers) design communication programming to meet the needs of each learner through assessment and collaboration with families and other stakeholders.

Mission Moment: Inspiring Hope, Building Potential and Creating Opportunities

Our Mission

Hopeful Journeys’ mission is to provide quality and individualized education to children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities.  We strive to build better futures for children and families by helping them to reach their fullest potential and enabling them to live more productive and independent lives.

To me, our mission means that every decision we make is to foster future independence for our students and their families and that we do everything possible to make it happen! -Alyssa Famiglietti, Clinical Program Manager

Student Spotlight: Drew

Meet Drew! Drew has been a student at Hopeful Journeys for 5 years now and has made impressive progress over the years. Drew comes in giggling every day and always has the biggest smile! Drew has made great strides using his AAC device to make independent requests, especially for “tickles”! Drew works on a number of academic skills as well. He practices following a “to-do” list by completing a zippering or bead-stringing activity, and he works on strengthening his bimanual coordination by opening a twist-off container and using scissors to cut straight lines. He’s also impressed the entire team by mastering several medical tolerance goals recently including tolerating a blood pressure cuff. This year, Drew has also started to work on his vocational skills. He practices sorting silverware, restocking his personal hygiene items, and clerical skills. Recently, he mastered a paper shredding program as part of his clerical skills goal! Drew enjoys going outside to the playground to play with the leaves and absolutely adores head rubs from his teachers! You can also find Drew on trips to the local YMCA for swimming, where he enjoys spending time in the cafe and checking out the fish tank! Drew also participates in several activities with his peers throughout the school day. He attends a social group each day where he answers questions about the day of the week and month of the year, as well as identifies what the weather is like outside! He also practices leisure skills such as board games, and social skills such as greetings and farewells. He also participates in group gym lessons where he plays various sports including soccer and hockey with his peers! Drew is such a smart, silly, and fun-loving kid, and we love having him on Team A!

Student Spotlight: Cullen

Team C is so excited to introduce Cullen for this month's student spotlight! Cullen has been at Hopeful Journeys since May 2016 and has been an absolute pleasure to have at our school. He started on Team C in July of 2023, and there has never been a dull moment since he joined! His impressive skills, along with his fun and joyful personality truly make everyone’s day a better one. You can hear his laugh from a mile away, and whenever you hear it you just can’t help but laugh with him. 

We have seen so much progress from Cullen in the time he has been with us. He has expanded his vocabulary using his PECS book, and does a wonderful job requesting breaks from work, the playground, the iPad, and time in the cluster! He also does a great job completing academic work in his classroom. More specifically, Cullen excels at matching numbers and naming objects. He completes vocational and independent living tasks all around the school; including washing dishes in the vocational kitchen and restocking the school store. Some specific tasks he really enjoys working on include medical and dental tolerance, where he can take a trip to our dental room. He works on tolerating a variety of different procedures, such as dental cleanings, taking blood pressure, and using a scale. He also loves engaging in his cardio routine, including walking laps around the hallway. He gets a good workout in, and this routine is where his popularity shows. He always has so many people stopping to greet him while he is out and about! Cullen is also working on attending community trips and is doing a wonderful job! Every month, he attends a trip to the grocery store, and he loves to walk around the aisles and explore the area. He also works on scanning items and paying using the self-checkout, which unsurprisingly, he picked up on right away! When Cullen is taking a break from being hard at work, you will often find him enjoying some time on the playground, hanging out with friends in his cluster, using the writing wizard app, or watching YouTube on his iPad.

Cullen has been such a joy to our school and has so many people cheering on all his progress. The relationships he has made with his teachers and friends over the years are truly amazing, and we all cannot wait to see what his future holds!

This is Us: Emily

Our daughter Emily has been attending Hopeful Journeys for 1 year and it has been a positive change for us as parents and her. We love the pictures and detailed report from Tadpoles we receive each day, and share it with close family members too. Emily is always happy and excited to go to school and has just started saying “let’s go to school” while waiting for transportation. The kind, experienced staff is so supportive and we feel relieved and thrilled that she gets just the right amount of learning new skills, behavioral support and love! - Maureen & Peter DelGreco

Self-Directed Services

Finding a post-22 placement for your student can be a daunting task, as there are many options: residential, day-hab, and community-based. Another option is Self Direction. Self-directed service delivery models allow the participant (student) and family the opportunity to create individualized supports based on their vision and needs. The individual and family have authority and responsibility over a budget and can decide who they would like to hire, when the supports will be provided, what the individual will do, where the supports will be provided, and how services will be arranged. The services are flexible and can be customized to meet the changing needs of the individual as they learn and grow. Self-direction services can be used for funding programs such as gym memberships or community programs (i.e. art/music) as well as assisting with funding direct care/job coaches to work with young adults. Self-direction can also be combined with other services! For example, maybe the participant will go to a community-based program 2 days a week, then you self-direct services for the other 3 days.

If your student is 16 years of age or older, it is strongly encouraged that you attend an informational session to learn more regarding self-directed services.   Sessions are 1.5 hours long, and you will receive valuable information on how participants and their families can design individualized services to meet their needs.    Please click here to see all available dates and times. This is something you do not want to miss!

A Visit from Santa

This winter has been filled with many fun student events during the school day. One of the most exciting for both students and staff was having Santa come to school! He joined us across multiple days to ensure everyone had enough quality time with the big man. Students were invited to visit with Santa one-on-one in any way that was comfortable for them. Whether this was a high-five, a hug, or simply a wave from afar, everyone enjoyed their visit with Santa.  

Many students even worked on their wish lists for Santa! For some students, this included telling a teacher what they hoped for and having a teacher write it down; for others, it required them to use their best handwriting skills to develop their letters. Students were excited to place their letters in Santa’s mailbox that he always brings to Hopeful Journeys during his visits.  This was a great opportunity for students to practice waiting their turn to see Santa, communicating with a novel person, and following teacher directions. 

Students were also given the opportunity to take a photograph with Santa. There were many laughs, smiles, and hugs during the photos. Many of the students were excited to tell Santa what they wished for for Christmas. During our holiday party celebrations, each student worked on putting together ornaments to give to their families featuring their fun photograph with Santa. What a great time!