Special needs students in San Joaquin County get life skills through holiday program

For four hours, the Wentworth Education Center at San Joaquin County Office of Education transformed into a pop-up shop.

Hot chocolate bombs, paintings and ornaments were just some of the handmade gifts that special education students sold to community members and school employees during the county office's eighth annual Holiday Boutique this week.

Students who participated in Holiday Boutique are part of the San Joaquin County Office of Education WorkAbility I program, a grant-based program that provides employment opportunities for special education students.

Frank Souza, program manager for WorkAbility I, said Holiday Boutique started as a way for students to display the vocational skills they have been developing during the school year.

"Those skills are learning how to count money, talking to customers," Souza said. "They also worked on their fine motor skills while putting these different projects together."

"We wanted to get more involvement, get our students out there. Our students that are 18-22 are in community-based instruction, so we're trying to come up with ways to get the students to interact with the community, not just in the classroom."

Community-based instruction is a strategy or instructional method that is often used in special education classrooms. The goal is to provide hands-on learning opportunities to help students acquire the skills used in the world on a regularly scheduled basis.

Fifteen different classes participated in Holiday Boutique, including classes from Stockton Unified, Lincoln Unified, Lodi Unified, Manteca Unified, Tracy Unified, and County Operated Schools and Programs.

Jaspinder Sindhu, 21, is enrolled in Manteca Unified's Young Adult Program — a classroom and community-based program for students between the ages of 18-22, with an active Individualized Education Plan. He spent the morning selling baked goods such as brownies and cupcakes alongside his classmates.

"The best part was to see the smiling customers and see them be happy," Sindhu said.

Sindhu's teacher, Kim French, said the boutique was just one example of how her students practice life skills during the school year.

In French's classroom, students learn how to apply for jobs, budget, cook, meal plan and shop. Her students have mild to moderate disabilities, including autism, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities or other health impairments. The class, like others in the program, is meant to assist students as they transition from high school to adult life.

"They do sample bills every month, they write checks for it, we cook once a week because we have a kitchen," French said. "It's like Adulting 101."

Rose Lloyd is a paraprofessional in the Young Adult Program at Stockton Unified. She said participating in the boutique allowed her students to hone in on their communication and social skills, as well as practice calculating change.

The most popular item at their stand — affectionately named "Supreme Creations" by students — was DIY ornaments. "Hand-shaken" ornaments sold for $3 and snowman driftwood ornaments for $3.

The money made at Holiday Boutique goes toward classroom supplies and student activities, such as their annual prom and field trips to Dell'Osso Family Farm.

Lloyd said the students gathered driftwood for ornaments at the Delta and searched for design inspiration online.

"They come up with the ideas and then they present them to us, and we go through a stockpile in our classroom of all our donated goods, so a lot of this stuff was donated," she said. "It gives us the ability to have the items to be able to do it."

Students in Lloyd's class spent the past two months preparing. To make the hand-shaken ornaments, students squirted two colors of paint into a plastic bulb, and shook the bulbs until they made the design they wanted.

"It just gets their creativity going," the paraprofessional said. "It will hopefully help them in their forever jobs."

One of her students is certain it will.

Kassandra Barboza, 20, is planning to start her own micro business one day. Barboza hopes to sell handcrafted items, similar to the items she and her classmates sold.

Her favorite part of Holiday Boutique?

"Making people's days."

Souza encouraged local business owners to contact the county office if they're willing to have students from the WorkAbility program work at their business.

"The county office of education is the one who pays the students so the benefit for our employers out in the community is the labor is paid for by county," Souza said, "and they have the opportunity to work with somebody they may not have had the chance to work with before in the past."

Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Holiday pop-up helps San Joaquin County students with special needs