“Thanks again for all that you do to support transitioning students and their families. Have a wonderful summer and we’ll see you in the fall!”

Those were the closing remarks from our last Tuesday’s Transition Tips before the summer break. By the time you read this, your break has ended and you are now deeply embedded in another school year. Let us learn together how to use your student’s summer experiences as content for the transition portfolio.

The transition portfolio includes four domains:

• Student Information
• Student Learning Characteristics
• Academic Skills
• Employability Skills

Summer experiences may well fit into any of these domains as an artifact. For example, a summer job could represent Employability Skills, a camping trip might apply to the Student Information domain (hobbies, interests). Volunteer work, and even unstructured volunteer work, could be an artifact in the Employability Skills domain.

You can develop an artifact in various ways, such as through a narrative document, a captioned photo, or a video with a spoken explanation.

Consider having a post-summer topical conversation with any student requiring a transition portfolio. That conversation might provide additional insight into student interests, additional career pathways exposures that may have occurred through the summer, or interests/hobbies the student may have engaged in during the summer.

Topical question prompts might include:

• What was new for you this summer?
• What did you want to do this summer but couldn’t?
• What surprised you about your summer activities?
• What was the best or not-so-great thing about your summer break?

If you have any questions, join us during our FREE open Transition Office Hours every Thursday from 2:30–4:30 p.m. Eastern. We encourage you to take advantage of this resource.