Etiquette Lunch

Today SVA had an etiquette lunch activity where staff and students were taught (or reminded) the proper way to dine. We reviewed what cutlery to use when, how to butter your roll, napkin use, proper table conversation, etc. Everyone dressed up and was on their best behavior. The lunch was an amazing four course meal prepared by our kitchen staff: salad, soup, entree and dessert. Thank you to Ryan Hawks, Gordon Adams and the kitchen staff for putting this activity together!(pictured above: Marty, Chase, Charles, Erin, Leon and Doug)

SVA Receives National Accreditation

This past January, ScenicView Academy was extremely proud to accept a plaque recognizing it as only the second school west of the Mississippi to meet the high standards of the National Commission for the Accreditation of Special Education Services (NCASES). NCASES’s stated mission is to ensure that standards exist which permit special education agencies to voluntarily validate their performance through measuring it against national standards. Specifically, this meant that ScenicView had to demonstrate its compliance with 292 carefully worded objective measures of excellence to a site review team of experts in the field of special education. If you really want to get an idea of the monumental scope of the task, you can check out the actual standards at www.napsec.org/ncases_standards.html.

Preparing to pass our site review (which took place last November) was a complex process that took several years. Back in 2005, as we read through the NCASES requirements for the first time, we wondered if that process would even be worth the effort. Would meeting the standards take us in the direction we wanted to go, or would they force us to transform into something we didn’t want to be? Worse—would they just take up resources without resulting in any significant changes at all? At the time, ScenicView was a fledgling program in the middle of constructing a new building, solidifying a team model, and gaining official tax status as a “school”. We decided that the timing was just not right yet, and filed the standards away as something to ponder on for a future date.

By 2008, however, we felt ready to revisit the idea of NCASES accreditation. The program improvements over the previous three years had made us fairly confident that the process would be a positive experience with the potential for significant benefits.

Completing our year-long self study provided tremendous opportunity for self-evaluation and internally initiated program refinements. The nerve-wracking three-day visit of the Site Review Team provided outside, expert review of our program, validation for our treatment model, and myriad suggestions for further program refinements. And although the process is behind us now, ScenicView continues to reap ongoing benefits from all the hard work we put in. Thanks to our new accredited status, we look forward to national recognition as a quality agency, enhanced fundraising and recruiting capabilities, and (most importantly), an enhanced ability to achieve our mission and vision of helping students with learning disabilities lead interdependent and fulfilling lives.

With the successful achievement of accreditation, ScenicView joins a select few organizations nationwide which have merited this distinction. Becoming accredited is not a one-time shot, however. ScenicView will have to heed our core value of “Never Be Satisfied” and continue improving in order to pass its reaccreditation visit four years from now. Still, it is an exciting achievement that represents a significant step forward for our school, and we would like to extend a very special thank-you to all the staff, students, board members, and parents who helped make this success possible!

Employment News

The Employment Unit is proud to introduce two new strategies to assist students in their preparation for the world of work. These include new vests for students to wear to work and a standardized employment assessment system to measure students’ readiness for work.

Last November, the Employment Unit implemented a new approach to recognize our students who are working indoors by having them wear blue vests. Students were asked to give input as to the style and color of the vests and if they would wear them. The students voted on the vests and most were supportive of the concept.

By wearing the vest, students look more professional to represent SVA. This is good preparation for students who will eventually work off campus on jobs which require the wearing of vests or other uniforms.

All students working indoors wear blue vests to identify they are on the clock. These students work in a variety of settings such as custodial, workroom assembly, maintenance, library and commissary. This helps staff and other students remember not to interrupt those students who are at work. Students wearing the vests are reminded to continue working and to take care of personal business after their work shift has ended.

The above follows our intent to help with three valuable Employment SkillSets: 1. Filter out distractions and stay focused on tasks; 2. Continue working until the job is complete; 3. Demonstrate effective work communication skills.

We appreciate the support from the students and staff to implement the new vests for students working on campus. Visitors have commented on how professional the student workers look wearing the blue vests with the SVA logo.

To enhance the professionalism of services provided to SVA students, the Employment Unit staff has received training to use the CASAS employment readiness assessment system. CASAS is an acronym for Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems. This is a set of standardized assessments that is used nationwide in over 30 states in adult education and workforce skills training.

Within the CASAS system, there are three different types of assessments that SVA is using. These are: Employability Competency System (ECS), Workforce Learning System (WLS) and Workforce Skills Certification System (WSCS).

In the ECS, students are evaluated based on a work maturity checklist. They are evaluated in areas of: career awareness, resume preparation, cover letter preparation, filling out applications, interviewing, work maturity on the job skills and job experience/training.

With the WLS, students are given a skills appraisal and then tested in vocational reading and math levels to determine what types of jobs they are qualified to do. As students work to increase these levels, they can be given additional testing to measure their progress.

The WSCS is a capstone program that assesses students’ readiness to join the workforce in a variety of industries. In addition to their academic levels, students are assessed in areas of critical thinking, problem-solving and occupation-specific skills. This provides valuable information to inform potential employers about a student’s skill proficiency.

These assessments provide objective and measurable norms for giving students feedback about their readiness for competitive employment outside of SVA. This feedback is very valuable in the career counseling process to help students make decisions about training and their choice of occupation.

We hope this information is helpful for you to better understand the services which are being provided to assist your student in their preparation to enter the world of work.

Go Team Go!

Congrats to the SVA Special Olympics Volleyball Team! They took gold in their division at the state championships today!

(pictured above: Aaron, Will, Lance, Tad, Johnny, Robert, Laurel, Scott, Heidi, Michael, and Daniel)

SVA Library Project

“Wow! This is a real project!” This statement was made by Joanna Posey as she looked into the library for the first time during her ScenicView tour last August. Joanna, a teacher endorsed in library-media by the Utah State Office of Education, saw the potential and labor needed for our library to be more functional and accessible to the school community. “A school library has the distinction of serving students in providing quality literacy materials and serving the teachers in maintaining materials used in their skill development classes,” states Ms. Posey. As a result, she and her student assistant, Jared F., have worked tirelessly in entering subjects and summaries for each of the books into the electronic catalog, weeding out books that were falling apart, covering older paperbacks with laminate, upgrading software, and placing barcodes and new spine labels on new books. This portion of the multifaceted project will be completed in a few months.

The decision was also made to merge the student library with the staff’s professional development library (housed in separate locations). This merger will enable all of the ScenicView instructional, student literacy, and professional materials to be placed into one checkout system and in one location. The combining of these resources will not only enable a periodic inventory to be more accurate, but it will also allow our ScenicView library to grow and support the entire ScenicView community at the same time.

In order to accommodate these changes, in library function and access additional students will be able to learn new employment skills. This training program will eventually enable the library to be open for longer hours. However, these changes will be gradual. Last September, a library survey was distributed to the community. Students and staff members listed several ways the library could improve in operation, accessibility, and acquisitions. Currently, those requests are helping to guide the direction of the library’s expansion.