Cupertino High Students Run Disability Job Preparedness Program

Cupertino High School FBLA's (Future Business Leaders of America) Partnership With Business Project has recently started a job preparedness program for students with different abilities in San Jose. This year's project has partnered with InFUSE, a nonprofit dedicated to helping children with different abilities integrate into our communities, and the students have been collaborating with the nonprofit since August to promote and expand InFUSE's services. During this project, the high schoolers organized a variety of events and performed a multitude of tasks, ranging from organizing fundraisers to conducting competitor analyses. The students also organized a Disability Awareness Week at Cupertino High School to raise awareness at their school of the various disabilities children have and ways their school's students can help these children become more involved in the community. During this week, they put up posters around the school regarding the respectful language to use when talking about or to someone with a disability, handed out ribbons of various colors to represent different disabilities and put up posters to give information on the disabilities, organized a guest speaker event with the founders of InFUSE, and set up activities to help students understand what it is like to have a disability and promote InFUSE.

The most recent development to this project has been the initiation of a new program at InFUSE. This pilot program is the Job Preparedness Program, which is focused on preparing the older students of InFUSE for seeking jobs once they graduate high school. The 6-week-long program covers many different topics, ranging from effective speaking skills, to writing résumés, to collaborating with a team in a workspace.

The program is currently focused towards the students at InFUSE who are in 12th grade and will soon be looking for jobs. There are 6-10 students participating in the program currently. The Job Preparedness Program is open to students from outside the InFUSE community, and was promoted within Cupertino High School, as well as the Evergreen school district. Each session of the program runs for an hour every Sunday, with volunteers from the Partnership With Business Committee creating specialized lesson plans for the students and teaching the topics themselves.

The first session involved a series of educational games and activities to teach the students the importance of communication in a collaborative setting. The students then watched a video at the end of the first session which highlighted the importance of communication and collaboration in a workplace and had a discussion on what they learned throughout that day's session. The second session focused on speaking skills. The students chose one of three topics (about the importance of time management, collaboration, or organization), and drafted a speech about the chosen topic. They were provided with the framework for the speech and were helped to fill in the worksheet. They then focused on speaking and presentation skills and delivered their speech to the rest of their peers and their parents at the end of the session to demonstrate what they learned. The third session is scheduled for Sunday, February 16th, and the students will create their own résumé to apply for their dream job. At the end of the 6-week program, the students will participate in mock job interviews with the students from Cupertino High School, putting together all the skills they learned throughout the program.

With the program running successfully so far, both the parents of the students and the Partnership With Business project members can see a visible difference in each of the students at InFUSE. They hope to continue this program in the coming years and make a lasting impact on InFUSE and the students with different abilities.