Breakout Sessions

This hands-on workshop helps educators and transition providers support justice-affected youth by discussing real-world scenarios, myth-busting, and sharing direct contact networks. Attendees will discuss agency responsibilities under IDEA and Section 504 across detention, DJJ, and alternative settings to ensure continuous, efficient, and practical special education services.

Move past the paperwork. This interactive session provides a boots-on-the-ground approach to transition IEPs, shifting from procedural compliance to meaningful, outcome-driven planning. Discover practical strategies to align present levels with postsecondary outcomes, utilize diagnostic data, and implement tools that drive real student impact.

***This session has been moved to Tuesday, September 29th, at 1:40 PM in Regency F.

Join Clemson’s Student Accessibility Services staff for an interactive session designed specifically for high school special education teachers and administrators. This session equips you with the essential information, resources, and practical strategies needed to improve postsecondary education outcomes for your students.

When transition planning feels like a ghost town, it may be time to put boots on the ground and round up families. Explore practical, relationship-based strategies for engaging rural and reluctant families, building authentic partnerships, and moving families from the tumbleweed to active participants in their child’s transition journey.

This session will explore the major components that comprise executive functioning and how they can come alive in a classroom to support students toward independence. Participants will discuss ideas for practical strategies to strengthen skills such as flexible thinking, planning, prioritizing, and inhibition control. Participants will learn how to embed executive functioning supports into daily instruction while gradually fading scaffolds to promote student autonomy.

Special Olympics South Carolina Unified Champion Schools empower students with disabilities by building leadership, communication, teamwork, and self-advocacy skills while fostering inclusive relationships. These experiences strengthen confidence, increase school engagement, and improve readiness for employment, postsecondary education, independent living, and meaningful community participation after high school.

Blazing the AT Trail: From School to What’s Next is an interactive session focused on helping educators prepare students to become confident AT users and self-advocates during transition. Participants will explore how the SETT Framework can be revisited as students encounter new environments, tasks, expectations, and supports. Through case studies, group discussions, and practical activities, educators will examine AT considerations across employment, postsecondary education, training, and community settings—and leave with strategies they can use immediately to help students advocate for the tools and supports they need.

Saddle up and join us as we take a closer look at the Post-Secondary Independent Living Skills Goal(s) section of the transition IEP. This session will be facilitated by Ginger Daniel and Elizabeth Moore from the Office of Special Education Services at the SC Department of Education and Dr. Jennifer Wall from the Transition Alliance of South Carolina (TASC). Together, our trail guides will help you navigate the compliance landscape, determine if a student needs a PS Independent Living Skills Goal, and give you the tools to help students rope in success on their journey toward independence.

In this session, participants will use four lenses—Stability, Connection, Engagement, and Achievement—to look beneath the surface of student disengagement. Together, we will explore how factors such as students’ sense of safety and stability, relationships and belonging, experiences with learning, and perceptions of competence and success can influence whether they choose to show up and participate in school.

This presentation explores how teachers can prepare families for life beyond high school through early transition planning, family engagement, self-advocacy, and connections to community resources. Participants will gain practical strategies to build confidence and support meaningful adult outcomes.

Many youths with disabilities struggle with learned helplessness or being stuck in a cycle of low expectations and minimal skill gain. This leads to low employment rates and youth not feeling empowered to achieve their individual goals of autonomy. This interactive session will focus on five practical tips developed by the disability community, supported by best practices, and tested in the classroom and with families and individuals, that encourage autonomy. Teachers and parents can use these tips to create an environment that promotes independence in all youth, regardless of their knowledge base and support needs. These can be implemented at low or no cost, can be done in almost any classroom or home, and modified to suit the specific needs of the individual.

This session focuses on how South Carolina High School Employability Credential (SCHSEC) teachers can transform real-world mathematics into meaningful instruction that prepares students for employment, independent living, and community participation. Participants will explore how to plan, prepare, instruct, and assess lessons based on the standard of applying formulas to solve practical problems, including determining the amount of paint needed, calculating container capacity, navigating with digital maps and understanding distance and movement while driving. The session emphasizes explicit instruction, hands-on learning, visual supports, workplace-based scenarios, differentiation, and performance-based assessment. Most importantly, participants will learn how to move beyond teaching formulas as isolated academic skills and instead teach students how to apply the “Big Idea” mathematical reasoning skills to make decisions, solve problems, increase independence, and develop the employability skills needed for success after high school.

In this session, we will provide a brief overview of the core elements of multi tiered systems of support for behavior (MTSS-B) with examples of how one local high school adapted the framework to best meet the needs of all secondary students and their staff.

Discover practical strategies for improving student attendance through effective Attendance Teams, data analysis, family engagement, and targeted interventions. Using the Fishbowl Method, participants will collaboratively examine attendance challenges, identify root causes, and develop actionable solutions that support improved attendance outcomes and student success.

Drawing on the the National Dropout Prevention Center’s five Trauma-Skilled resilience factors —connection, belonging, achievement, autonomy, and fulfillment—participants will reflect on what is currently sustaining them, where their resilience may be getting depleted, and the personal, relational, and workplace conditions that can make a difference. Through reflection, conversation, and practical application, educators will leave with a clearer picture of their own well-being and realistic ways to strengthen resilience—without adding another item to an already full plate.

This presentation provides an introduction to Orientation and Mobility (O&M), highlights the essential role of O&M professionals, and shares practical strategies for reinforcing O&M skills in everyday environments. Attendees will explore examples from two South Carolina community-based programs that promote independence, confidence, and meaningful O&M skill development.

An interactive Breakout Session that prepares teachers on how to pursue statewide advocacy for their students through the State Plan on Independent Living. Come join AccessAbility as a Trail Boss that navigates the Frontier of Advocacy and Independent lIving to deliver youth voice to the big rodeo!

How do we help students access grade-level mathematics without lowering expectations? This interactive session puts “Boots on the Ground” by focusing on practical, classroom-ready strategies for teaching Math Essentials II – Algebra I, while also revisiting key concepts and instructional practices from Math Essentials I – Geometry.