Taft Middle School Special Needs Students Learn About Life

Thursday, May 5, 2005

Brenda Jennis teaches children at Taft Middle School who have learning challenges but, she is determined to prepare them with ‘life’ lessons so that they can be as productive as possible after they graduate from high school. 

That led her to create LIFE (Learning Intriguing Facts about Education outside the classroom). She wanted them to learn life skills such as handling money, writing resumes, figuring mileage, getting their State identification and especially holding down a job. The latter led to a partnership with TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and Burlington’s stores where management agreed to let her students work in the stores for a few hours a week. The program has been a tremendous success with the students learning ‘real life lessons,’ acquiring identifiable skills and gaining a feeling of accomplishment. The culmination of the program is the awards dinner when the students will be presented with Certificates of Achievement. The LIFE program debuted at the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year and has now been made a permanent part of the Special Needs curriculum at Taft.