This year Mrs. Green’s class will be participating in the OWLS program. The purpose of this program is to help disabled students to develop independence in order to become gainfully employed. OWLS program has partnered with Valley View, Food Bank, and Truck Patch. OWL stands for Opportunity for Work-based Learning. The Arkansas Department of Career Education defines work-based learning as “an educational approach or instructional methodology that uses the workplace or real work to provide students with the knowledge and skills that will help them connect school experience to real-life work activities and future career opportunities. Some other schools that are adding this program include: Westside, Brookland, and Greene County Tech. Mrs. Green states her vision for the first year of this program is, “Gain experiences for my students, give them opportunities to be the best they can be, help them with their independence to be successful in whatever job situation they may experience, and make them the best employee that an employer could have.” SPARKS is Valley View’s personalized name for the OWL program. SPARKS is an acronym for skillbuilding, persistence, achievement, responsibility, knowledge, success. Interested people or businesses in the community can help out by giving opportunities for disabled individuals to gain work experience in order for them to be a productive citizen in our society. Our east project is over the SPARKS project, we are responsible for making outlines, take and edit video and pictures.We will also be going with Mrs. Green's class to the food bank, and Truck Patch. This is our first year in the OWLS program and we all think it will be successful. We will also have a logo, we are thinking of making a torch and have sparks coming out of it with the letters VV in front of it. We will have a an interview that you can watch and pictures from the Truck patch that we recently visited.
SPARKS Program
Anslee Wilson, Lisbet Mendoza