8/5/2019 Topic: Orientation Weeks Isaaic Patterson

HI Ms. Michels, My name is Isaaic and I am job coach in project SEARCH. During the three week orientation period, the staff would go over the departments/ opportunities that are available and provide the students with a description of the departments and the job tasks. Also, we did a department scavenger hunt. A signing a staff member to each group, having them go out into the organization to see if they ca locate certain areas. This will help them get familiar with the environment and learn the layout of the organization. The interns participated in ice breakers to help them connect, the team connect and to build rapport. You could also meet with each student to find out what they would be interested in interning so that it can give the team an idea of which placements would each intern learn the most skills. You can even allow them to choose their top three or four internship as way to include them in the decision making process to build rapport and to help the staff gain an idea of interest. I am not sure if your host site is having an orientation for your students but this is something else that you can have to student participate in to learn the ins and outs of the host site. Then you can use this as a guide to test what they remember from the orientation. The project SEARCH website has a lot of resources that you can use to help you with come up with things to do throughout each week. You can go over some of the policies for the host site and school district if you are working for school district. You can also use this time discuss the student handbook, over consent forms from the host site and school district because throughout the year student will be invite to different events that will some sort of media in attendance. Being able to have this early will give you an idea what student s okay with pictures ad being on camera and who is not okay with it. The team and I staggered students based off the date that each student were starting their internship. I hope that I was able to help you and provide clarity on what you could do during the three week orientation and how you can stagger starting your interns. Good Luck! Isaaic edited by isapat@bergen.org on 8/5/2019

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