For the past 16 years, the students from Storefront School have been going on an overnight trip to Montreal as part of their end-of-year programming. Storefront School is a program designed for students 19 to 21 years of age with intellectual disabilities. This unique program teaches independence and employability skills. Because the program is so different than traditional special education programming, the staff decided a way to assess the learning and continued growth of independence skills would be to go on a trip to a new city, see the sites,
and actually see how independent the student would be outside their regular environment. The students plan the trip in September each year by budgeting for the event. Students work in the community five mornings per week, 2.5 hours daily, for a seven- to eight-week period. Students and teachers embrace Smart Board learning techniques. Shalaw Hasan is taking an English course. His classmate 69-year-old Joan Dupuis wants to be able to include an Ontario Secondary School Diploma on her résumé as she considers a career change. Standing in the middle is teacher Francesca L’Orfano.

Over the course of two years at Storefront, students will participate in 10 work-experience placements. The lifeskills component of the program is delivered in the afternoon.

The aims of this program for the student are to:

 increase the student’s employability skills in order to function as a working member of society
 increase the student’s social skills in order to fit into the community and live the fullest life possible
 increase the student’s survival skills in order to function more independently in society
 develop the student’s communication skills
 develop the student’s self-image by exploring unique interests, abilities, strategies, and limitations