Lesson 4

Job Site Training - slide 1

Setting the Stage for Success

" A lack of learning in any particular situation should first be interpreted as a result of inappropriate or insufficient use of teaching strategy, rather than inability on the part of the learner."

- Marc Gold

I would like to start our discussion of instruction with some philosophical comments. I will tell you that the majority of my work in this area has been related to teaching individuals with intellectual disabilities to be successfully employed. A lot of the work strategies that we are going to talk about are real case studies. I am not making up these examples as we go across this particular lecture.

I will say that any of the concepts and ideas can be and should be tailor-made to the individual who you are working with. That is the important comment number one. Important comment number two, I'd like you to REALLY, REALLY remember this statement, is that although we are going to be talking about the employment specialist actually working with the customer, instructing the individual to complete the task, first and foremost in your mind is, "How will I get out of this workplace?" "What can I do that will facilitate learning in this particular individual but will make them independent, will not make them dependent on me as the instructor?"

This is really key for you to remember. If you go into a workplace and set up the work environment so that you become part of the task, you become part of the cues for the individual with the disability. You are going to find it very, very difficult to fade. Within any of the concepts that we are going to discuss, you need to remember that if I'm going to add something here and I am going to be the one to provide the instruction, how can I fade my intervention as quickly as possible? We'll talk about this concept as we move through this particular part of the lecture.
One of the first things that I like to think about within the context of designing an instructional program is, what can I do to avoid instruction? Now that might sound kind of funny as we start a lecture about instruction. But, what I want to do is see how I can look at this environment and set the stage for success with this individual and do as little as possible?
Some of the things that we're going to be talking about here are what's going on in this environment? What are the cues that exist there? What are the natural supports that exist there? How can I tap into all of those things and make the individual aware of those things while providing the least amount of assistance or instruction as the employment specialist?

Another little philosophical thing that I would like to touch on before we move forward is the quote that you see here on this particular slide. All too often, I think, when a person fails at a task, we blame that person for failing. In many cases, we should not place the responsibility for failure on that particular person. Sometimes we might ask ourselves, did we make a good job match to begin with? Have we maximized this person's abilities so that it is a good fit between the worker's abilities and the workplace? Is it a job of interest to this person? All of those things are going to be relevant features as we move through assisting the customer and learning the job duties.

Mark Gold, who you may be familiar with, really believed that the responsibility for instruction was on the person providing the instruction. So you or I as the instructor or the job coach, the teacher, whatever term you want to use, needs to take responsibility that we haven't found the best approach to assisting the person in learning if they are unable to learn the task. That is what this quote says to me. We need to brainstorm with the coworkers. We need to observe the work environment. We need to analyze the situation and figure out how we can set the stage for this individual to be successful in this particular work environment.

Mark Gold, if you are not familiar with him, was able to teach some residents of an institution, who had intellectual disabilities, how to assemble a bicycle brake by simply using a strategy call “try another way”. We are not going to dwell on Mark Gold's strategies or techniques at this particular point. But for me, the foundation of the work that he did as far as instruction is the foundation that we build our ideas today as far as instruction in the workplace. Let's get started and think about instruction.