Learning for life.
Headline TKTKTKTK across two lines can go here.
While our students’ dreams and goals for the future vary widely, they all share a desire for connection, purpose, and independence.
For some of our students, this means enrolling at a college or university. For others, it means entering the workforce and enjoying the greater freedom and autonomy that comes with young adulthood.
Orchard Friends’ Transitional Learning Program is designed to prepare students planning to pursue a vocation after graduation for the many new challenges that await them.
Offered as an alternative or supplemental track to our K-12 academic track, our Transitional Learning Program teaches 15-to-21-year-olds a wide range of on-the-job and practical skills vital to independent functioning.
By teaching the real world in real-world contexts, creating opportunities to gain hands-on volunteer, internship, and work experience, and fostering positive experiences in the workplace and in our community, our Transitional Learning Program ensures our students have the skills, experience, and confidence to succeed.
We bring the world into our classroom.
We want to give our students the world—full, free, and confident access to everything life has to offer. To do this, we begin by bringing the world into our classrooms, where we lay the groundwork for the skills our students will need as young working adults.
We use our in-class time to teach traditional academic subjects through a real-world, hands-on lens. For example, in math class, our students learn to save, budget, and manage a bank account by adding to, withdrawing from, and monitoring a bank account run through our school. In language arts, we practice speaking appropriately to a manager, interviewing for a job, and engaging with customers.
Preparing for life after graduation also means mastering a variety of practical life skills, from cooking and grocery shopping to transportation and time management to health and hygiene. For this reason, we also offer classes explicitly focused on practicing these vital skills. This might look like meal planning—which includes making a list, navigating to the grocery store, buying ingredients, and preparing a recipe as a team in our school kitchen—learning to work the washer and dryer in our school laundry facilities, or calling to make a doctor’s appointment.
From helping to plan field trips to running our school store, every in-class lesson is paired with hands-on practical application. The result? Not just learning for life–learning that comes alive.
“Quote from Pam--why OFS created the program, philosophy behind the program's approach to skill development.”
— Pam Carpenter
The real classroom is the real world.
While our Transitional Learning Program starts in the classroom, it doesn’t end there. From coached work experiences to volunteering opportunities to field trips designed to bring in-class lessons to life, we believe that the real classroom is the real world.
By supporting our students as they practice foundational skills for adult life, we’re not only opening the door for future employment–we’re teaching them how to stay active, engaged, and socially connected in a world that can feel overwhelming and inaccessible to neurodivergent individuals, paving the way for a future filled with purpose, connection, and independence.
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Four afternoons a week, we transport our students to coached work experiences at Milanese Pizza, Shoprite, and the Riverton Public Library. Onsite, our students are stocking shelves, fulfilling online orders, baking cookies, assisting customers, assembling pizza boxes, and more! We are always on the lookout for new community partners to give our students as many different work experiences as possible, especially if a student has expressed an interest in a particular field.
The same faculty who teach our students in class coach them during these work experiences. Having a familiar teacher onsite not only helps to ease the transition between the classroom and a real-world setting, but also enables students to ask questions and request help if needed. It also positions our faculty to reinforce key in-class learnings in real time, helping our students to internalize these critical skills.
Coached work experiences are a vital opportunity to put all of our in-class lessons to the test in a safe, supported, and confidence-building way.
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Just as we do with our coached work experiences, we pair in-class learning with field trips and volunteering opportunities inspired by our students’ interests. For example, our students recently took a trip to Wardentown on the light rail. In just one outing, we practiced math skills (allocating funds for tickets and lunch and calculating trip times), social skills (ordering at the restaurant, buying tickets at the train station, and spending time in new public spaces), and executive functioning skills (developing an itinerary, navigating to our destination, and time management). By linking these lessons to trains–a particular area of interest for many of our current TLP students–we generated an additional layer of excitement and engagement that ensured our students will remember both the trip and the takeaways for years to come.
Heading to introduce spotlight stories
Taking on the world.
Our TLP students graduate from the program feeling confident, prepared, and ready to take the next right step for them.
For past students, this has looked like entering the workforce or enrolling in further vocational training; moving into a local apartment and living more independently; or living at home and working part-time hours.
One of the most important things our TLP program does is to ensure that our students graduate with an actionable plan in place that aligns with their interests, needs, goals, and current abilities.
This is vital because as neurodivergent individuals, our students are at a higher risk for isolation, disconnection, and unemployment or underemployment. Teaching our students how to stay connected, how to overcome anxieties about engaging with the world, and how to find and keep meaningful employment protects against these risks, boosts self-esteem and self-efficacy, and creates a strong relational foundation that lasts a lifetime.
Likewise, social support structures for neurodivergent children and young adults drop off sharply after high school. For many neurodivergent individuals, this is far too soon.
Our TLP faculty and staff work with parents and students to create a post-graduation plan that bridges this gap. This can include identifying supports that exist in a student's local area, completing any necessary applications for post-graduation programs or jobs, and ensuring that each student’s post-graduation plan is in place and ready to go well before graduation.
“Cole knew he wanted to enter the workforce after he graduated high school, and my husband’s friend, who owns a bakery and knew that Cole loved to bake, reached out and said ‘I’ll hire him!’ We were so excited; it was the perfect opportunity.
It was important to us that he go through the interview process: to have Cole dress professionally and go to the store to formally interview for the position—and he did! Orchard Friends really built up Cole’s self-confidence. They showed him that he is capable of doing anything. There is such a need for this school. Cole wouldn’t be where he is today if it wasn’t for Orchard.”
— Pam, Cole’s mom