Adrienne Ross - Special Education Life Skills
A little about me!
Hello, my name is Adrienne Ross.
I have been an educator in this district for the past 9 years, with over 25 years of experience in the field of education. I am a proud graduate of Ephrata High School—home of the Tigers—so my Orange and Black pride runs deep!
Following high school, I earned an Associate of Arts degree from Big Bend Community College and went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree from Washington State University (Go Cougs!). I also hold a Master of Education in Secondary Education and Teaching, as well as a Master of Science in Special Education.
I have been happily married to my husband for 26 years, and we have a 20-year-old son who is now exploring opportunities at a community college. My decision to specialize in Special Education was deeply personal, inspired by my son’s early diagnoses of Autism and ADHD.
Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with our dog, Dakota, and our cat, Gizmo. My hobbies and interests include history, reading, puzzles and board games, video games, movies, baseball, and crime drama television shows.
The focus of our lessons will move towards helping your young adult improve their functional, vocational, social/communication, leisure and independent living skills. This means math will be tied to things like money or cooking, reading will be tied to things like utility bills or recipes, writing will be tied to things like job applications, and so on.
We will be trying to go out into the community to practice shopping etiquette, finding items on a shopping list, making transactions, and more! The reasoning behind these walking trips would be for if we have a cooking lesson, we will shop for supplies. I will let you know ahead of time if we have a trip that will require us to be off campus for these trips as we will be walking to Safeway. During these trips we will be working on learning directionality, signage, and proper use of public places. A portion of our lessons focus on career awareness and job skills. In addition to this, we participate in classroom jobs and on campus jobs to practice hands on skills. We also have access to the vocational lessons where we can practice life & job skills in a structured setting.
Not everyone can but if you are able to support.
We typically ask for a volunteer donation of $10-15.00 each month (or however much you can contribute) for your child’s use. The money will be utilized in our Home Skills and community training activities. No worries if you are unable to contribute, your young adult will still be involved in the lessons and training activities.
Some items for the classroom you can donate that we consistently use include: Kleenex, Glue Sticks (purple colored), Pencils, Loose Leaf Paper, Pencils, or cooking materials like canned vegetables or fruits, oatmeal, pancake/biscuit mix, rice, desert mixes.
