Dylan Kalms-Taylor is just one of the crew at Bendigo Trailers and Hardware.
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The Kalianna School Bendigo student likes it better than school, because he gets to spend more time outdoors.
Dylan, 17, has been working at the business for a few months now, and he likes that he makes good friends.
He's one of many Kalianna students working or doing work experience at Bendigo businesses.
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Kalianna careers co-ordinator Rob Brown said the school wanted to give its students, who have intellectual disabilities, the same opportunities as other teenagers.
His primary role is teaching work-related skills to Kalianna's cohort of Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning students.
Mr Brown said businesses had become increasingly inclusive and more aware of the capabilities of his students.
Success can look very different to lots of students. Whatever it looks like for every individual, you move heaven and earth to give them that opportunity.
- Rob Brown
"All of our students' aspirations are no different to Bendigo Senior or Victory. All we do here is we facilitate it; we have to do it via a different means, it's a lot more hands-on," he said. "The idea of coming to Kalianna is because it is a very adaptive curriculum, but the end goal is to have [each student as] a functional member of society.
"The cornerstone is about giving them the same opportunities as every other year 11 and year 12 student gets."
For students, opening up opportunities means working and work experience, and doing so in more meaningful situations.
At Bendigo Trailers and Hardware, Dylan does the general jobs that need doing in a hardware shop - he sorts stock, puts stock away and sometimes helps customers.
He's worked at the business for a few months now, and has previous experience at Bunnings.
Owner Geoff Heritage said the business had always taken students from Kalianna in his time there.
Often Dylan was assisted, but there had been no special requirements on the business, Mr Heritage said.
He said if businesses weren't including people with disabilities in their workplace, they should be.
He believes the business has received so much back from the Kalianna students it employed.
"Having the guys here too, it sort of makes us think in a different way about the business, which is good. So it can set up some new challenges for us as well," Mr Heritage said.
"We're all here to learn from each other, whether we've got so-called disabilities or not."
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To make the transition from school life to working life more secure, Mr Brown organised a careers expo on Thursday for students.
Students met employment providers from across Bendigo, with whom they will link once they finish school. Bendigo TAFE also had a stall.
The expo gave students a chance to build relationships before the end of the year, Mr Brown said.
"Rather than just throwing them out at the end, it gives them time to build up trust and build up relationships, because that's everything to these guys," he said.
"The benefit of doing it now is for a lot of our students it's about trust and security, instead of at the end of the year going: 'Congratulations for year 12', handball."
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Kalianna year 12 student Sam has just finished 10 weeks of work experience with the City of Greater Bendigo.
She wants to study childcare at TAFE once she finishes school, because she loves children.
Seventeen-year-old Tyson Schreiber did work experience at the Bendigo Bank this year.
While there he did some computer work and worked in the mailroom and the data centre
Tyson said the most interesting of the three was the data centre, which provides IT services across the bank's network.
He enjoyed the chance to meet new people and find out what they did.
Mr Brown said businesses had become more aware of the capabilities of Kalianna students in his three years as careers counsellor.
Students had worked in hospitality, retail, plumbing, and at Bendigo Bank and the City of Greater Bendigo.
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It was slow, but the wheel was turning, Mr Brown said. More and more businesses were opening their doors to students with mild intellectual disabilities and seeing what they were capable of.
Mr Brown put it down to an increased awareness of what Kalianna students could do. He said work experience gave the students more experience of industry, and meant they could discover their passions.
"Every year the good stories of what's happening get out into the public forum and into that business world and they talk about the really positive experiences they've had with our students, then there are more businesses that are willing to look into it," he said. "More and more businesses are opening their doors to our students and they're seeing what they're capable of.
"The more of our students go out on work experience and meaningful work experience, the more work opportunities open up to them."
A lot of Mr Brown's work involves communication and cooperation. The key is that the students are treated like young adults.
Through VCAL Kalianna aims to give students every opportunity to be successful after school, however that might look. "Some of our students have a strong communication barrier, one of the other barriers is the processing of information and the retaining of information," Mr Brown said.
"One of the best attributes of Kalianna is that you might come with those barriers but that barrier's only there if you let it be there.
"It doesn't have to be a barrier if you don't want it to be, you just have to find a way to adapt to the situation that you find yourself in."
Mr Brown said the school prepared students for work for exactly the same reasons mainstream schools did: because it's part of being a functional member of society. "In mainstream society there's an expectation that in order to thrive in life, in order to function in life, you're going to need to work. These guys are absolutely no different, they want to work," he said.
"If you've got a dream, and you've got a passion for what you want to do once you finish school, we can take an opportunity to make that happen. Success can look very different to lots of students. Whatever it looks like for every individual, you move heaven and earth to give them that opportunity."
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