Urban Skills Center is a unique co-educational high school for young adults with mild to moderate learning and behavior disabilities, age 18 to 22. The full curriculum is delivered through small-group instruction with occasional one-to-one tutoring as necessary. In addition, the school offers speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling as Designated Instruction and Services (DIS).

School is in session for 210 days on a traditional calendar that typically begins the day after Labor Day each September. The school day is from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. MWThF and from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesdays.  Alternative school days are also available from time to time on Saturdays, during winter and spring vacations, and during summer vacation that enables students with attendance problems many opportunities to make progress on their goals.

Urban Skills Center is a richly inclusive school because of the diversity of its students and because of its emphasis on the integration of its students in the San Diego community, including a variety of options of competitive employment. The program for a typical Urban Skills Center student includes only part of the school day on the campus; the remainder of the school day is spent practicing life’s skills in other community locations, including at job sites.

Urban Skills Center is a kind of continuation high school in that its students are 18 years and older and, because of their disabilities, they require extra time to obtain a high school diploma or to attain skills necessary for successful independent living in the San Diego community.

Urban Skills Center is a highly structured, Positive Behavior Intervention and Support school. We teach our students how to do the right thing and we frequently catch them doing the right thing and praise them for it. Urban Skills Center is a “zero tolerance” school. We do not enroll students who have been expelled for weapons or drug possession. We do not enroll students who are known to commit sexual assault, animal cruelty, or fire setting.

We know that a student’s educational and social success is greatly enhanced through effective collaboration and communication between the school, the student’s family, and the personnel representing the referring public school district. As is true of all TIEE schools, we at the Urban Skills Center are committed to increasing our students’ academic, behavioral, and social growth by creating and implementing systems that support meaningful collaboration with our students’ families.

Because all of our students are at least 18 years of age, some have become independent adult decision makers in charge of their own fate. Some live outside of the family home. Family involvement is, for these students, a matter for them to decide. We encourage family involvement but respect the decisions of these students. Other students are legally conserved, so IEP and other decisions necessarily involve family members or surrogate parents.

Student progress reports are generated quarterly and are sent to those parents who continue to have decision making authority for their children and to parents who are approved by their adult children. These reports are designed to provide clear and concise information on the achievement of each student’s IEP goals and benchmarks. Parents may also be informed of student progress on a more frequent basis through telephone contact.

Programming at Urban Skills Center is necessarily varied. Each year, several of our students are diploma bound and must obtain credits toward graduation as determined by their high school district. They must also pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). Our school provides the full compliment of courses leading to a high school diploma in keeping with the requirements of all San Diego area high school districts.

Because it is common for our students to be well behind their age mates in various academic areas, including the so-called content areas like history, science, and so on, we search for teaching materials that meet California textbook standards and have been designed in keeping with the principle of “big ideas.” These are concepts or principles that are highly general and which can serve as anchor points for many facts, concepts, and principles. For example, we like Douglas Carnine, Donald Crawford, and Mark Harness’s Understanding American History, because it shows how the “big idea” of “Problem-Solution-Effect” is generally applicable to many of the events in American history, making this subject much easier for our students to grasp than they otherwise would if merely told about the event and when it occurred.

In content areas that do not have materials constructed on the principle of “big ideas,” our teachers make every effort to organize their lessons to align with the California core content curriculum standards in ways that the “big ideas” are readily apparent, learned by our students, and used.

For many Urban Skills Center students, academics, in the traditional sense, are not as appropriate as more functionally relevant skills. Depending on a student’s IEP, the Urban Skills Center functional curriculum can include classes in money-management and budgeting, basic computer navigation, functional reading, health and nutrition, current events, and so on. For some of these skills, initial teaching is conducted in school simulations, and, subsequently, community outings are used to help transfer those skills to “real life” settings. This strategy is especially important for those skills called social skills, including being polite, helping others, congratulating others for their successes, and so on. At Urban Skills Center, social skills are taught throughout the curriculum and throughout the day because we believe that the future success of our students will depend on their social skill as much as any of the skills in the curriculum.

School is the best place to learn
We believe that the best place to teach skills, academic or vocational skills, is in school. School is where students can learn the parts of a task without having to complete the whole task. School is where the skill to perform complex tasks can be built up over time. School is where students can fail and be corrected. School is where relevant skills can be practiced again and again until they are mastered. But, school cannot accomplish all that is necessary to lead a student to become a quality employee performing a skilled task. To do this, some amount of training on real jobs is necessary.

Apprenticeships for a successful transition to work
Our view is that the best way to accomplish on-the-job training is to provide our students with a number of apprenticeships over time. This way, they can practice what they have learned in school in a variety of employment steeings, each with different tasks and requirements. Moreover, such apprenticeships permit our students to move from more intensive supervision to less supervision, from comparatively little independence to the nearly total independence that is required of competitive employment. Many of these skills are transferable across vocational settings, including paid employment, and this is highly desirable because it means that there are efficiencies in the training we provide both in school and on the job.

“General Task Strategies”
Urban Skills Center’s Vocational Education Services teaches generalized vocational skills which are then applied to specific vocational areas. Students are trained and receive feedback daily on several “general task strategies,” including how to start a job, perform a task, check work, ask for more work, and how to clean up the area at the end of the work period.

These general task strategies are applied to a wide range of tasks that can lead to many different employment opportunities for our students, including
Animal care;
Basic vehicle maintenance (e.g., checking fluids, tire pressure, cleaning);
General office cleaning (e.g., vacuuming, dusting, emptying trash, washing windows);
Clerical service (e.g., labeling, copying, filing, assembling materials, data entry);
Craft and product assembly;
Customer service;
Deliveries;
Food packaging;
Food service;
Library service (e.g., returning books to shelves, data entry, fixing materials);
Store clerking; and
Yard maintenance (e.g., trimming, raking, weeding, bagging).

Getting a job and keeping a job
Students are trained in career exploration and how to participate in and make a good impression at job fairs. Urban Skills Center students also learn how to apply and interview for a job; including filling out applications, writing cover letters; how to dress for the interview, how to introduce him/herself; and thank you letters). Heavy emphasis is placed on social skills related to job environments, so students
are trained in accepting feedback, following directions, having friendly interactions, and problem solving appropriately

A Portfolio of information
Each Urban Skills Center student creates an employment-training portfolio, which includes a resume, relevant personal information, copies of important documents, letters of recommendation, vocationally-relevant assessments, job training checkouts, and other evaluations. In addition, our more advanced students are given opportunities to mentor their peers and to train them in a variety of skills, including working in food service, working in customer service, ushering in the theatre, the skills necessary for maintaining employment, and tips on successful interviewing for a job.

A planful transition
Upon enrollment in Urban Skills Center, students are assigned to a credentialed teacher who, with the assistance our Vocational Services team and the student, her/himself, establishes goals and maps out a plan for meeting those goals over the course of the student’s tenure at USC. In this way, the vocational objectives for our students can be embedded in all of the student’s school day. By the time our seniors graduate, most have experienced a wide variety of apprenticeship opportunities, both volunteer and paid, including food service at The La Mesa Adult Enrichment Center or Mt. Helix Academy; customer service at SeaWorld, Edible Arrangements; yard maintenance at Children’s Workshop or Balboa Park; stocking/re-shelving at Goodwill Industries or The College Rolando Library; and many others as well.

In their senior year, students participate in a thoroughly developed transition curriculum that includes designing and writing resumes and cover letters; practicing interviewing; visiting community programs, like Community Options, Towards Maximum Independence (TMI), and Partnership with Industries (PWI); and certain life issues, such as transportation and housing. At the culmination of their senior year, each student will have completed a professional portfolio that includes a resume, sample applications, list of references, career interest surveys, necessary accommodations they might need on the job, and other relevant information.

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