We are already one month into the 24-25 school year and the energy in the building feels strong, connected, and productive. The first 2 weeks included orientation which allowed for student interest surveys to be conducted, build relationships with students from all across the district and staff, and practice our routines and safe community habits. Starting in week 3, students have individualized schedules that support their unique goals. Your child is learning hands-on skills in the areas of post-secondary skills, independent living, and employment within the community and Focus Beyond building.

Our School Store is a perfect example of one of our student opportunities to gain customer services skills, social skills, and independence. The School Store was recently updated to include flexible seating options with a design that mirrors community settings such as a restaurant or college gathering area.

Greetings! Please allow us to introduce our VRS (Vocational Rehabilitation Services) Counselors assigned to Focus Beyond. We look forward to collaborating this school year! More info to come.

Clarissa Kostka- Clarissa.kostka@state.mn.us

Jenni Wagner- Jennifer.spanger-wagner@state.mn.us

Kelly Perkins- kelly.perkins@state.mn.us

Analynn Schwarz- Analynn.schwarz@state.mn.us

At Focus Beyond, we strive to help all students gain a deeper understanding of and passion for life-long learning. To accomplish that goal, we rely on community partnerships and the expertise and experience of our staff. Our students quickly learn that there are many training and career preparation opportunities in addition to college. Future Newsletters will focus on training and learning opportunities in St. Paul and surrounding areas.

Today, our focus is The Focus Beyond Individual Career Assessment Course.

The Individual Career Assessment course is an option for Focus Beyond students. Most of the students who take this course have some in interest attending college in the future.

There are two sessions during Fall Semester and two during Spring Semester. The sessions meet either Monday/Tuesday from 12:00 to 2:00 or Thursday/Friday from 12:00 to 2:00. Some of the sessions are longer because of the travel time to the various sites.The class includes career exploration, interest surveys, career assessments, program observation(s), samples of college-level work, differences between high school and college, self-advocacy, and tours of St. Paul College, Metro State College, and other colleges and post-secondary programs, and more.

The students are referred by their IEP case manager. Please do not hesitate to contact Craig Olsen at craig.olsen@spps.org, for further information.

Image Information:

Pierre Young, who is now a staff member at Focus Beyond, participated in the Individual Career Assessment course when he was a student at Focus Beyond. Pierre went on to complete a two-year degree at St. Paul College in Graphic Design and graduated from Metro State University with advance degrees.

The communication theme for October is FEELINGS! The number one thing parents tell me is that they wish their child could say how they feel. Check out lots of great activities to practice this in the virtual room.

Focus Beyond strives to continuously build programming that grows and adapts to our students. One of the ways we measure our progress is through the School Continuous Improvement Plan or SCIP. Our goals outline evidence-based practices that our adults engage in to impact the student learning outcomes. As an SPPS program, we utilize Title 1 funding to support building positive school and district culture, implementing culturally responsive instruction, and life, college, and career transition readiness through the following adult actions and student centered measurements.

All school documents can be translated or interpreters made available upon request. Please contact Micaela.Smith@spps.org

SPANISH

Todos los documentos pueden ser traducidos o interpretados oralmente si usted lo solicita

HMONG

Tej ntaub ntawv tom tsev kawm ntawv uas xa los rau nej, peb yuav pab txhais thiab nrhiav neeg txhais lus rau nej yog nej hais qhia peb

SOMALI

"Dhammaan dukumiintiyada iskuulka waa la turjumi karaa ama waxaa la heli karaa turjumaan haddii la codsado"

KAREN

Newsletter Translation

Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-5997.

SPANISH

¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-5997.

SOMALI

Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-5997.

HMONG

Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-5997.

KAREN

ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-5997 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.