The Connection

“There is always something new that science can discover, and all the facts that you take for granted can be completely wrong.” So writes author Mark Haddon in his novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” The characters in Haddon’s novel, adapted into the Tony award-winning play of the same name, discover that many of the facts they take for granted are completely wrong, especially the limitations they place upon themselves and each other in reaction to the developmental and cognitive challenges faced by the main character in dealing with our world as currently structured.

Cooper Middle School teacher, Lucy Chaplin continually looks beyond the limitations placed upon her students because they also face developmental and cognitive challenges in dealing with their world today. Chaplin scopes out potential work environments that would benefit from her students’ strengths. She approached a manager at Boston Market in McLean and together they provided the opportunity for Chaplin’s students to assist Boston Market employees by assembling 500 setups of napkins and utensils on-site at the McLean location. The Cooper students were not discouraged by the repetitive nature of the task and paid the same attention to detail from first to last.

THAT KIND of community-based instruction is part of the career and transition services provided at Cooper. Although the Fairfax County Public School Fiscal Year 2015 Program Budget eliminated the Work Awareness and Transition (WAT) teacher allocated to Cooper, Chaplin and her fellow teachers, Rachel Miller and Christopher Lalande, continued to use the WAT course curriculum as a resource, including instruction in acquiring work skills and life planning. With regard to workplaces in general, Miller says that “we need to be more open and adaptable [since] we all learn and express ideas in different ways.”

One such progressive workplace is the high-end, retail boutique, Ramble On Pearl in Boulder, Colo., where all the usual retail associate duties -- greeting and checking-out customers, assisting customers with apparel choices, as well as folding clothes and stocking shelves, are shared between young adult apprentices with developmental and cognitive challenges and more senior employees with years of retail merchandising and sales experience, working side-by-side. The retail store was established, designed and staffed specifically for the purpose of “showcasing the employability of our apprentices to future employers” and introducing customers to their employees’ potential. The retail sales revenues support the job training and placement program. Apprentices are paid minimum wage. The boutique is operated by a nonprofit organization, so vendors also benefit from discounting their wholesale prices or donating merchandise. Manager Adrianna Barcaro, who was hired for her over 10 years of retail buying and merchandising expertise, said that “when you come to any space with a different purpose, [your] mentality has to change,” but her management duties remain much the same as in running any other business – making sure that all her employees are a good fit for the work environment, playing to their strengths and empowering them to work independently, while delivering good customer service and value.

THE TEACHERS at Cooper Middle School are laying the foundation for their students to be able to work and live independently by teaching them the vocabulary and communication skills used by the general public, as well as specific skills that can be used on the job, in the home and out in their community. In addition, they are giving our community the opportunity to learn that although we might use different language skills and have different ways of learning and completing tasks, we can work alongside each other to find personal fulfillment, to contribute to our community and, as teacher Lalande says, to each attain a level of independence and “ live life according to [our] ability.”