Welcome back to our Transition Planning Series, where we have been discussing ways to put a student’s transition plan from their IEP meeting into action. In Part 1, we covered finding more ways to include your student in their own transition plan. In Part 2, we talked about ways to incorporate members of the broader community. In Part 3, we talked about implementing a transition plan throughout the year, and in Part 4, we will be focusing on how to continue a plan after high school.

Unlike many high school projects, which might have a defined beginning and end, a student’s transition plan is by design meant to cover what happens after high school and after a student is within your responsibility to check in on or offer assistance to. 

How can teachers best equip students for continuing on their transition plans, especially after working so hard to build up an investment in the process? While it may not be possible to check in on a student after they graduate, it is possible to leave students with the skills and tools to continue working toward their goals on their own terms.

So let’s look at some tips for doing just that!

In Part 3, we emphasized a cycle of checking in on goals, setting next steps, and reevaluating at the end of each month. While this routine is rather broad and could easily be subject to adjustment based on a given student’s needs and preferences, the most important component of the cycle in Part 3 is that it can be part of a long term sustainable routine of working toward goals, checking in to make sure goals are still accurate, and planning new steps for the coming month. 

Whatever shape your student’s routine may take, if you can work together to create something that feels routine and comfortable, it can go a long way toward encouraging them to continue the process on their own after graduation, even if their goals may change.

Another way to build investment in the time after graduation is to supplement discussions of goals for the school year with goals a student may have for after they graduate high school. 

These goals might be somewhat abstract and subject to change since they are that much further in the future! Nonetheless, identifying some things we might want to do in the short term after graduation and in the long term as an adult can help a student think through what steps they might most seriously consider after high school.

One fun project worth considering for students seeking out ways of staying engaged with their post-high school goals is creating a potential four-year plan that a student may hope to follow in their post-high school career. 

A four-year plan might include some short-term goals they seek to accomplish not long after graduation, some medium-term goals they hope to achieve within a couple of years, and longer-term goals they hope to know more about at the end of four years. A four-year plan is a helpful benchmark as it is the equivalent of time most commonly spent on an undergraduate degree, at the end of which would be a great time to do a major evaluation of how things are going and where they might want to go next. 

A post-high school four-year plan is likely to be more abstract than planning out the current school year. After all, students might be learning the skillset they need to better understand how to work toward certain goals, and students naturally gain and lose interest in things, and might not care as much about particular goals by the time it comes for them to actually work toward them. Which is why it’s important to emphasize one crucial component of any post-high school plan.

One reality of working towards our goals is that if we are successful, the steps we need to take to progress will inevitably change to reflect our progress and new needs. In that sense, trying to plan out an entire year of activities with a student based on one meeting can be an incredibly tricky and daunting task. 

Instead, we can check in at the end of each month to ensure we are on the same page about how things are going, make sure we still feel the same way about how our goals are prioritized, and identify helpful next steps to take. So, at the end of each month, consider starting this process all over again with everything you’ve learned from the last month!

The underlying reality of any planning done for after high school is that there is no guarantee a student will take any of the steps outlined or feel invested at all in the process. That is perfectly understandable, as any plan we create for students is only as good as it is useful for meeting their needs. 

The best we can do is create frameworks that offer students the tools to adjust their priorities on their own terms and use their skillset to work toward those new goals. The process of acknowledging that our needs and goals can change, in addition to brainstorming strategies for what to do when our priorities change, can go a long way toward encouraging students to keep at it, even if they no longer feel connected to their original goals.

We hope this post has offered some ideas on how to extend a student’s transition plan beyond high school and that this series has offered some helpful starting points for making a transition plan a more dynamic and collaborative process. 

If you would like to see us cover more on this topic, share your experience, or request we cover another topic, then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and stay tuned for a new series coming up soon.