CIS Information Benefits Students with Special Needs, Too Teacher of the Month Using Grant Money to Implement eCIS New Tools Help Expand Options in Portfolio Management CIS Information Headed Home for 8th-graders Fall Career Development Workshop Wrap-up Save the Dates for Coming ICDA/ICGA and PTE Conferences

  
  

     Some teachers, parents, and advocates for Idaho students with learning challenges or other disabilities are just beginning to find out how eCIS and CIS Junior can be used by, and for, their students.

     CIS is sometimes the best-kept secret at the school as far as those who serve students with special needs are concerned. However, career development information is essential to helping ALL students make plans for their post-high school life.

     According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a student with a disability must have a plan for transition from school to post-school working, education, or training by their sixteenth birthday. This federal law requires the Individual Education Plan (IEP) team to address the student's future in four areas: employment, postsecondary training and education, independent living, and community participation. IEP team members, including the student, need to know his or her skills, strengths, interests, preferences, and personal goals in these different areas, and they need to know how eCIS and CIS Junior can make their job easier.

     Julie Byrd, Training Support and Marketing Coordinator at CIS, has found that most of eCIS is just as useful when addressing students with special needs as for any student, especially since its use can be customized to different situations. A few examples are:

	SKILLS features a button that will automatically fill in the SKILLS cards chart with choices that pertain to any chosen occupation. The student can then review that chart and make changes where they want to, or they can determine that the career doesn't fit their current abilities.
	Both the Job Search and the Keeping Your Job files offer easy-to-understand advice on how to work with others, good work habits, and communicating with supervisors. These files also offer self- and skills-assessment forms; forms to help with identifying problems at work; sample resumes, data sheets, and cover letters; and a simple "Compare Occupations" sheet.
	My CIS Portfolio encourages the student to keep brief notes on their thoughts about any information they've accessed.
	Information and Links for Idahoans Who Have Disabilities (found on the front page of eCIS) provides links to areas within the system of special interest to this population, as well as many sources of information outside eCIS.

     CIS Junior, recently developed for students at the 5th- to 8th-grade levels, is another valuable option for self-exploration activities and information. Designed around the questions "Who am I?", "Where am I going?", and "How do I get there?", CIS Junior can be used alone or along with eCIS to expose students to their own characteristics and to impart the importance of connecting those characteristics to the world after secondary school.

    If your staff includes anyone who works with students or clients with special needs or disabilities, please let them know about CIS and let us know who they are too. The information and activities in eCIS and CIS Junior will help them match students' individual characteristics to the world after secondary school, and will provide the answers necessary to assist with life decisions.

  
 
   Melody Moehlmann from Cole Valley Christian School wrote an award-winning grant to provide students with the assessments they need to prepare for the future.

    The grant was awarded through the new "Teacher of the Month" award program at Capital Educators Federal Credit Union. The awards are given to help teachers pay for programs, materials, special projects, or field trips for the students in their classrooms.

CEO Todd Erickson and BoardChairman Dr. Larry Neznanski from Capital Educators Federal Credit Union present the Teacher of the Month award to Melody Moehlmann.

     Melody teaches a new requirement at Cole Valley, a semester-long class called "Career Development", to ninth- and tenth-graders at the interdenominational school. Cole Valley Christian includes about 700 students, with a campus for seventh through 12th-graders in Meridian and an elementary school in Boise.
 

     Cole Valley, like many local schools, Melody says, has historically measured its success rate by the number of students who are academically prepared for college. However, with research showing that only a third of college-bound students actually earn a college degree, Cole Valley has "changed its focus to producing students who are informed about career decisions, and helping them prepare a plan that helps them establish and reach their goals," as she wrote in her grant application.

     According to Melody, an essential part of setting realistic goals is for the student to match their skills and strengths to their desires and interests.

     "We've done lots of assessment testing online," she said, "but eCIS is the complete package. Everything is in one spot." With the grant award, Cole Valley plans to purchase eCIS's IDEAS and Dependable Strengths optional modules. Both assessments have been programmed as components within the eCIS system, providing results that link directly to eCIS's occupation descriptions. With these optional modules integrated in eCIS, students can immediately go to related career information, instead of ending the process with a list of occupations. They can also change responses to different questions and see the effect the changes have on their results.

     "About 80 percent of everything we do is in eCIS," Melody said. "The sophomores start using it here and at home and add to it through their high school experience. Everything is on there when they need a resume or to apply for scholarships."

     Like many counselors and teachers, Melody has found that students' career interests are often limited to high-visibility jobs. "Unfortunately, the boy who grows to be five foot three inches, and the girl who barely passes her science classes, most likely will not make it to their dream job of professional basketball player or a medical career," she wrote in her grant application. "Our job as educators is to prepare students to enter the world as active participating citizens. We need to show students that they can match their desires with their skill set in order to find careers where they can reach their goals and achieve success."

     Melody is in her fourth year of teaching at Cole Valley. After receiving her degree in communication, she was a stay-at-home mom for 15 years, ten of them also working as a substitute teacher. She decided that she wanted to work with teenagers and at the age of 36 she went back to school and earned her teaching degree.

     "What a privilege it is to point teenagers in the right direction," she said, "and to help them get excited about their future!"

     With that kind of enthusiasm and focus, Melody is a terrific role model for her students. We at CIS are proud to provide some of the tools that help her do what she loves and meet her goals, so her students can meet theirs.

   

     Now you can oversee your students' or clients' career development progress much more easily and efficiently.
 

As you know, when your students or clients use their portfolio login to access eCIS they can save and later add to notes, assessment results, and research. You in turn, through the CIS Administration Tools site, can group users' portfolios into classes or other categories, helping you find portfolios faster to add, delete, or transfer portfolios or determine their progress on career assignments.      New this year are additional functions that let school staff upload their schools' class options, communicate with students/clients, use Excel to create many portfolios at once, and decide on one privacy option for your entire site.      Sound complicated? Don't worry -- 15 short video tutorials, linked from the Administration Tools home page, explain every step of all of these portfolio options. Even if you're new to My CIS Portfolio management, you'll be able to take advantage of any of the new functions as you need them.      Get to your Administration Tools page via the CIS Tools site, linked from the front page of your eCIS or CIS Junior--you'll find it in the My CIS Portfolio section.      Look for updates to the CIS Tools pages, too. You'll see links to other updated support materials, as well as a duplicate set of links to the video tutorials for all of the new portfolio management tools. Remember, this site is for staff only, and requires your site's CIS administrative user name and password.      Be sure to contact the CIS office if you need any help with the Administration Tools site, or if you have suggestions for or questions about CIS Tools.

 

  

     Be ready for questions about eCIS and CIS Junior from families of your 8th-grade students.

CIS products will be featured in an insert in the Parent Envelope distributed by the Idaho Board of Education and on the back cover of the American Careers magazine provided by the Idaho Division of Professional-Technical Education. The flyer and back cover let students and their parents know that CIS Junior and/or eCIS are available at most Idaho schools and that their counselor or teacher has login information. Both of these resources will be sent to schools in early 2009.      There are materials to help you promote use of your CIS in the "CIS Tools" pages in eCIS and CIS Junior. Print out bookmark templates, an article for your school paper or parent letter, and colorful handouts and flyers to remind parents that this resource is available for their students. Items on the eCIS Tools page marked with an "" icon were designed especially with parents in mind. There is also a limited supply of both eCIS and CIS Junior bookmarks at the CIS office--please contact us if you need more.

     The focus for CIS users at the recent Fall Career Development Workshops was detailed, in-depth training, designed for participants to replicate for fellow staff members at their school or agency.

      Nearly 350 counselors, teachers, administrators, and other professionals from dozens of state and private agencies, and staff members from hundreds of Idaho elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities attended the workshops. As in the past, the workshops took place at Idaho's seven technical colleges.

     The workshops' three CIS training sessions focused on strategies for using the system with adults, the wide array of new My CIS Portfolio organization tools, and on CIS Junior, another CIS system newly developed for students in Grades 5-8. Participants were asked to come prepared with their school's or agency's eCIS, CIS Junior, and CIS Administration Site logins, and completed orientation "homework" beforehand in order to make the most of the workshop time. As a result of requests by many past workshop attendees, CIS training time was increased and thanks to a new online registration process, a one-participant-per-computer format helped upgrade the quality of the training.

      Thirty-four attendees took advantage of the opportunity to receive one professional development credit from the University of Idaho for participation in the day's sessions.

     Besides CIS training, each Career Development Workshop included a presentation from Kristi Enger, Career Guidance Coordinator at the Idaho Division of Professional-Technical Education (PTE) on materials (including American Careers magazine) provided by PTE at no cost to Idaho middle, junior, and senior high schools.

     Staff members from the technical colleges spoke about updates to their programs and facilities during the lunch provided to workshop participants.

     We hope the changes to this year's workshops worked well for you, and as always, please let us know what kind of CIS training would help you most.

    The ICDA/ICGA (Idaho Career Development Association and Idaho Career Guidance Association) and Idaho PTE (Division of Professional-Technical Education) will hold conferences this spring and summer.

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