Looking to add some vocational skills practice to your high school or transition level classroom? Because students have different interests and different strengths, we practice a wide variety of jobs in my self-contained classroom. Here are 20 jobs you can add to your Special Education Classroom!
Custodial Area Jobs
Many of these custodial related jobs can be used in a vocational setting or in a home setting.
1. Cleaning floors
- Have your students practice using different tools like brooms, dustpans, swiffers, mops, and vacuum cleaners to clean floors.
2. Cleaning surfaces
- Students can wipe with sanitizers or dust tables and counters, appliances, stovetops, microwaves, and windows
3. Taking out trash and changing can liners
- I like this job because it has many steps! Students have to remove the old trash and take it out, then open a new bag and replace it. Using visuals for this job really helped my students!
4. Bedroom straightening
- If you have the space for a “mock apartment” in your classroom, students can practice these skills to keep bedroom areas clean. Making beds by changing linens or vacuuming rugs are just a few options.
Restaurant Related Job Tasks
5. Restaurant-related jobs: food runner
- If you have lunch in the classroom with any students, consider having a food cart and a food runner to help with serving utensils, filling drinks, and passing out lunch trays. This job could also collect dirty dishes to return to the kitchen.
6. Cleaning the restaurant/dishes
- Have your students clean tables off after eating times and wash dishes. Handwashing or dishwasher washing is an option. In my classroom, when we didn’t have a full size kitchen, I’ve used a smaller table top dishwasher with success. My students loved it!
7. Food preparation
- There are many small tasks for this type of job. Food preparation can mean getting ingredients ready for a recipe, but also students can work on other tasks like wrapping utensils to be used for meals, filling salt and pepper shakers, sweeteners, or condiment dispensers.
Coffee Cart Jobs
8. Barista
- On our coffee cart, my students have had great success brewing coffee in a traditional coffee pot. We’ve used visuals to increase independence for each step of the process. Our coffee is always brewed by a student barista!
9. Cashier/Money Handler
- On the coffee cart, we also have a cash register. Students take money from our patrons and make change when necessary. They can also practice matching like bills and coins.
10. Server
- A student server can pass out coffee orders by looking at a list. You can offer any variety of drink on your coffee cart, that way servers have a variety of drinks to pass out. In the past, we have sold coffee, hot chocolate, hot cider, sodas, and water bottles. Visuals were great for this, too!
Laundry Related Jobs
11. Washing and drying
- Include visual steps for students to load the washer, add soap, and start the wash, as well as move the clean clothes to the dryer!
12. Folding, hanging, and sorting
- I like this task because it can be practice for students in a vocational setting as well as their home setting. Folding clothes and then sorting into drawers or hanging clothes on hangers is a useful and important life skill.
Retail Related Jobs
13. Sacker for retail
- Students can use functional vocational skills to bag items for a grocery store setting. With practice, they can take this skill into the real world.
14. Cashier
- Have students work on money by pricing items with number examples, or scan items like a traditional cashier scanning at checkout.
Vocational Task Boxes
15. Floral Design
- Have students work as a florist by arranging fake flowers. They can use visuals to match the type of flower or color and fill orders. As a bonus, this task works on those fine motor skills!
16. Mail sort
- A task box made with laminated envelopes can provide opportunities for students to sort mail by characteristic, address envelopes and place stamps, or even work on their address for safety skills.
17. Matching supplies/gift cards/etc.
- This job helps students to practice grouping and matching skills so they can prepare to stock shelves either on the job or at home. The task above is from Chalkboard Superhero! There are many options for this type of stocking task; have students hang and sort items from a drug store, gift cards, or even pictures of clothing by size.
Other Types of Job Ideas
18. Maintenance related jobs: using tools
19. Environmental related jobs: recycling (sorting or taking out), gardening
20. Animal related jobs: classroom pet related jobs
Try some or all of these classroom jobs in your room! When you offer a variety of vocational tasks to try, students can compare to decide what they enjoy best. Then they will know more about what type of jobs would be appropriate for them after graduation.
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