Community-Based Instruction (CBI) is a great way to help students make the connection between what they’ve been learning in class and the real world. Many of our students need intentional learning opportunities to use the skills they’ve learned in a realistic way. We are all about taking our students into the community to provide well-planned and well-structured lessons.
Chances are, you don’t have someone to help you through the planning stages of a really good series of CBI trips. We thought we would take you through a rough outline of our planning process, down to a general script of what we say when we contact local businesses about scheduling visits.
Brainstorming Phase
We start in the brainstorming phase. What skill, or skills, do we want our students to learn and where are a few places they can realistically use that skill?
If we are teaching money and creating shopping lists, we could go to almost any business; Target, the grocery store, an ice cream shop, Home Depot, a working farm, a restaurant, and about one hundred other places! Money and planning for a shopping trip is a skill set that accommodates most of our CBI experiences.
If we are teaching about the community, we may try to visit a local police station, the hospital, a local government building, or the library.
If we are learning about ecosystems we may check out a local park or nature center.
Think about what your students are doing in upcoming science and social studies lessons and the brainstorming process gets even easier. Layer in current information from functional life skills assessments and the ideas will start to flow. Don’t limit yourself or assume anything is off the table. Just get your list of potential Community-Based Instruction trips from your head to some paper.
Take Action
Once you decide where you’ll be going on your first few trips, it’s time to make some calls. Sure, there are some places you can go without contacting the business first, like the grocery store or Target, but we would recommend you call first anyway. We’ve gone into stores a few times and had melt downs or other unexpected problems. It was always a smoother road back to success when the store knew who we were and why we were there.
Not to mention – making phone calls helps us to make stronger connections with local businesses. Some of our best activities have resulted from a simple phone call to notify a store we were coming. You never know when a store manager will enthusiastically offer to take your students on a tour. They may even demonstrate how they make cupcakes, and hand out freebies afterward! Our business connections have lead to donations of business’s time and sometimes essential materials that we don’t know how we ever survived without (hello steel kitchen island for cooking class!).
Making the call is easy. Here is the gist of what we say when we cold call these businesses.
“Hi! I’m calling from _____ school. I am a special education teacher working with students in ____ grade. I was hoping to speak with someone about scheduling a trip to your business.”
At this point, you’ll be connected with the right person or get a name, number, and/or better time to call back.
When you get a hold of the right person, we tackle the rest of the conversation with a version of the following:
“My students are working on ______ and I was hoping to help them practice using these skills in a more realistic setting, like your business. My initial thought was that our students would come to the store and _____. Is this something we could do?”
After that we have to let the conversation take on a life of it’s own. You may even want to throw in an example of other successful trips your students have taken and why it was a powerful learning opportunity for them. Most people are excited by the chance to be inclusive and to participate in these trips. Just be sure to prepare a kind response if someone refuses to cooperate.
Other Ways to Reach Out
Your students’ parents may work in businesses that can help you students achieve their learning goals within Community-Based Instruction. Use these connections to build stronger connections with local businesses. Next time you’re in Home Depot, strike up a conversation with the store manager. Chat about what you do and a “thought you just had” about bringing your students by. You never know which conversations with people in your community will bring innovative ideas and opportunities.
Is Community-Based Instruction new to you? Check out this website for general information about this teaching strategy.
Going out to the community is still a bit out of reach for many of us. Create some mock-community activities and keep practicing important skills within your school while you wait for the “all clear.”
