Helping Students Build Confidence, Explore Career Possibilities and Expand Their Horizons of Opportunities – Get to Know Deanna Langton, Sam Bannerman, and Kate Larson – 3 New Pre-Employment Transition Services Counselors at SSB

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The Pre Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS) Team helps students between the ages of 14 and 21 build confidence, explore career possibilities, and expand horizons of opportunities. You will get to know 3 new Pre-ETS counselors, Deanna , Sam and Kate. You will get a sense of how excited they are about your future and offering resources to help you achieve your dreams.

If you have questions or would like to learn more, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or call 651-358-5205.

Check out SSB on the web at: https://mn.gov/deed/ssb/

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If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Pre-ETS Program and Transition Services Coordinator Shane DeSantis by email or 651-358-5205.

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Helping Students Build Confidence, Explore Career Possibilities and Expand Their Horizons of Opportunities – Get to Know Deanna Langton, Sam Bannerman, and Kate Larson – 3 New Pre-Employment Transition Services Counselors at SSB

Jeff:

Pre-Employment Transition Services, also known as Pre-ETS, is a service that helps students ages 14 to 21 build confidence, explore career possibilities, and expand horizons of opportunities. And in this episode, you’ll get to know Deanna, Sam, and Kate, three new Pre-ETS counselors at SSB, and you’ll get a good sense of how excited they are about your future and offering resources to help you achieve your goals. If you have questions or would like to learn more about Pre-Employment Transition services, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us or call 651-358-5205 and now from the Pre-ETS team at SSB, please welcome Deanna Langton, Sam Bannerman and Kate Larson. We hope you enjoy.

Sam:

I am looking forward to helping someone every day figure out what the next step is for them or what the next steps are gonna be for their life.

Deanna:

I actually worked with an SSB counselor myself from childhood on through my transition years, and now I’m full circle as an SSB counselor, so that’s pretty cool to me.

Kate:

Especially as a young person, when you really want to have a sense of agency and confidence in your life and ability to say, I’m not sure but we’re gonna figure it out.

Jeff:

Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio we have Sam Bannerman, Kate Larson, and Deanna Langton. They are three Pre-Employment Transition Services counselors at State Services for the Blind. And it’s great to have them here because these are the people that go out and make that personal contact with the students, their families, and even possibly their TVIs along the way, and bring them into SSB and all it has to offer. So, Deanna, let’s start out with you and why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

Deanna:

Absolutely. Hi, I’m Deanna Langton. I am, as Jeff said, one of the new Pre-Employment Transition counselors here at SSB. I started in September of 2022, and I started here after 14 years working in the general vocational rehab services agency with people with all different types of disabilities, except those who have a primary disability of vision loss or are deaf or hard of hearing. I have a lot of experience working, especially with individuals who have mental health conditions and various other types of disabilities. And how I came to the field is I actually worked with an SSB counselor myself from childhood on through my transition years, and they helped me with technology, with training. I graduated from University of St. Thomas with a master’s in counseling psychology. And during my time in school, I realized that I liked to apply the principles of counseling to the world of work, and my SSB counselor suggested that I look at vocational rehabilitation services as an area that I might be interested in. So that brought me here, and now I’m full circle as an SSB counselor, so that’s pretty cool to me.

Jeff:

It is pretty cool to go full circle with that, to receiving them and now assisting and providing the services. That’s awesome. Kate, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

Kate:

Sure. Thanks and thanks for having us. It’s cool to learn about Deanna and Sam about you too as well in this context. So I’m Kate, I use she and her pronouns, and I started here at SSB as a counselor in the Pre-ETS group in late October, which feels like both a long time ago and a very short time ago at the same time. So I’m excited to hang with all of you and get to know all of you in the coming months and years as people go into high school and college. So my background, I have been in career counseling in higher education for many years and have worked in the college career counseling space and love focusing on how people can find ways towards meaningful work. My background in academics is in mental health counseling, and I feel like if you can help people feel good about work and how they can find meaningful and fulfilling work, that can make a lot of our lives better, in many respects, and it feels really solutions-focused and oriented towards people’s skills and their areas of interest, so that’s where my jam has been in my own work. I love working with young people because that’s just a really special time I think in people’s lives that, you know, you’re open uniquely to new ideas and new things, and so I’ve gravitated towards being in career counseling with young people. I could go on and on, but that’s probably a good start.

Jeff:

Well, especially with the Pre-ETS, because that’s 14 to 21. I like that. Meaningful employment. I like that. So Sam, why don’t you fill us in a little bit about yourself.

Sam:

Yeah, so I think I’ll start from how my journey started. My name is Samuel Bannerman. I go by Sam. My journey started back in 2017 at St. Cloud State University. I wanted to be a counselor, but I didn’t know specifically what kind of counseling I wanted to do. And so my professor at the time told me about the rehab and addiction counseling program. She told me to go ahead and apply to the program, and I did exactly that. And during my interview to get accepted to the program, they asked me why I want to become a counselor, and I remember saying that I just love working with the youth population, whatever that looks like, I’m open to any ideas. And that’s when I found out about vocational rehab and that’s what my master’s degree ended up being in. And so during my postgrad, I needed an internship and I ended up interning with VRS in Minneapolis. At the time, Pre-ETS was a new idea and they were still trying to get it incorporated into VRS. And so I got to really learn about it and understand what Pre-ETS really meant. I fell in love with the whole idea. Upon graduating, I landed at Jewish Family and Children’s Services out in Golden Valley and they brought me on their VR team. And my role there was to work with Pre-ETS clients. And part of what we did, I was helping out with resume writing, job exploration, and job placement, and I did that for the past three years, and I recently just left, JFCS for short, I recently left there in October of 2022. A position opened up at SSB and I applied for it, got on an interview, got the job, and was really excited. And knowing that Pre-ETS is the primary role that I’m doing with SSB with a specific population really gets me excited, and I look forward to being on this team and seeing where the role leads.

Jeff:

Well, that’s great. I like those requirements that you had that brought you in here. Well, when you signed up here for SSB, there was a requirement that we have here in Minnesota and it is doing Adjustment To Blindness training under the shades for six weeks before you start in on your job. And I don’t know if you had to do it, Deanna, did you?

Deanna:

I did. I did four weeks.

Jeff:

Four weeks?

Deanna:

Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah. So, it had to be quite an experience. Deanna, why don’t you tell us, how did that impact you and how the adjustment to blindness training centers impact a student?

Deanna:

Sure. As a blind person since birth, when I told people that I was going to adjustment to blindness training, they kind of thought that was interesting, but I really saw the value in it. Learning how the various training centers, the three that we have in Minnesota operate and there are different approaches to things and what may be a good fit for different people. And also I just thought, even though I’ve obviously been blind my whole life, it does not mean that I know everything and I’m going to go into this with an open mind. And I did, and I learned some things myself. You know, just different ways of doing things. I went into it as a student would who’s going through the process, and it was really encouraging for me to be there and witness the students who were there at the same time as me, to see them learning new things and gaining confidence. Also just to see what the process is like for students and to see them go through the hard days and also the successes. So I think it just builds a sense of understanding of when I refer students or when I tell them about adjustment to blindness training, what that process is like to help guide them through that.

Jeff:

And what value would you put on adjustment to blindness training centers from this focal point that you just experienced?

Deanna:

Oh, I, it’s hard to put that into words. It’s such an important piece for many people to have that experience, and it’s the key there, confidence and competence. Yeah. And that’s the building blocks for so many other things.

Jeff:
Great. Kate, how about yourself? What was your experience like and what value did you see that the adjustment to blindness training center has for students?

Kate:

So I just finished my adjustment to blindness training in December. I was able to finish right during a pretty epic snowstorm in Duluth at the Lighthouse in Duluth, which is an incredible space. And then, Vision Loss Resources, and Sam and I got to be at VLR for a little bit together, which was rad too. I think to back up, what I really appreciated, even in the interview process for this position at SSB, they were really clear, initial throughout the whole Process of accepting this position, like, hey, the job begins with six weeks of training and this is the modality and this is what it’s gonna look like. We’re on the same page with this, right? And what that, as someone interviewing for a job, you’re also getting a sense, you’re getting so much data about what an organization values and what they prioritize. And for me as a person wanting to work in an organization I really believe in, and one that I feel aligns with my values, an organization that was saying, we want you to be learning. We want you to grow, we expect you and are holding you to dive in and really be invited into this community of low vision people and blind individuals and those that work in that space. So to be invited into that and then to have that expectation of six weeks of doing that, that just shows me as a candidate, this is an environment of growth and learning and of enormous respect for the community that SSB is trying to serve. And so that’s just unusual in the work of counseling and the work that I’ve experienced to be expected to have six weeks of full-time training is really cool. That was kind of the mindset I went into it with. I think the big things for me that I encountered were just like the enormous generosity of the teachers and educators at the centers that I was in and the students and other service providers in that space. The students being willing to share the space with me and share their experiences and share a little bit about themselves as well as the teachers, and so I’m really grateful for that time, and I think it’s kind of the start for me, not only obviously the training is a start of my work at SSB, but I think I left the training feeling like, oh, this is just like the tip of the iceberg of all the cool stuff there is to learn. I left feeling energized, and really excited about all that there is to learn moving forward.

Jeff:

Yeah. Can you just imagine what that’s like for someone that received six to nine months of training like that? The impact that it can have on them too.

Kate:

Right, totally!

Jeff:

Yeah. How about yourself, Sam?

Sam:

For me, I think it was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to do so far. Walking into it, I kind of had this idea that, you know, six weeks, this is just something that I have to do as an onboarding process. I think at first I didn’t really like understand how challenging it was going to be, and so when I was at vision loss, some of the classes like keyboarding and technology, those are things that I’m pretty familiar with. They seem pretty easy. And then I got into braille and cooking blindfolded, and I remember just feeling super anxious and nervous about, well, for cooking class, being able to use a stove under a blindfold. Is it safe? Am I gonna, you know, hurt myself? And I think that initial thought process is what a lot of students that we’re gonna be working with go through, especially when you’re making that adjustment. And so to really like, feel, and go through that experience, I thought was really cool. And then seeing myself actually get better at using the stove and better at learning braille. It was a really cool feeling comparing where I started, how much better I was getting at picking up those skills. For me overall, walking away from ATB was a really humbling experience. I took a lot of those skills to my personal life and I remember making some modifications to, you know, things around my home, just making sure that I’m cautious about how I use the microwave and how I use the knife, and how I- and where I put things just in case I might need to access them, you know, quicker or have to find them in a dark. It really brought on this awareness that I didn’t have prior to, and I think too that as a counselor I can take that experience and really talk about it with some of the students that I’ll be working with to let ’em know that the better I explain what that process will look like, and I know I only went through six weeks, but, and you just mentioned Jeff, that some people might have to go six months or nine months to really make that adjustment. And I think my six weeks have really helped me be a good support system to someone who might really need it, especially dealing with vision loss. I may or may never know what that will look like or feel like, but I’m really grateful that the ATB experience gave me an idea of what others might be going through.

Jeff:

That’s great. I really like all your three different perspectives. You came from it from different angles, and I’m sure this is really gonna help because all the students and consumers that you’re gonna be working with are coming from different angles themselves. So meeting those students at that training center, the training centers, really gives you a perspective that not each student is exactly, it’s not a cookie cutter , it’s just kind of, it’s just an experience. It’s like immersion, total immersion that you get to go in there and come out of it and learn from. I’m really glad you all enjoyed that and learned from that. Working with young adults, teens, what do you like most about working with them and what are you mostly looking forward?

Kate:

I feel like our imagination and our creativity and just our willingness to kind of design and be creative with how we envision ourselves and those around us in our life is just like really malleable at that time. And it’s a time of so much change and so much growth and enormous stress for so many people in many different directions. Certainly in my background working in higher education and both here at the University of Minnesota and then at Macalester College. College, we’re told so often it’s like the best years of your life, it’s so amazing. First of all, that’s not how life is, at all. In my lived experience, it can be enormous stress and it can be full of tons of fits and starts, and I feel like to walk alongside people during that time in their life is just a real privilege. That sounds kind of cheesy, but I really mean it. I think to be able to be of help to people during that time is just a real cool time, and I love that as a- now I’m like way out of that era of my own life. But I love that I think it invites me as a human to be just as open over and over again. I’m constantly like getting schooled on new TikTok trends, and the lingo that I use that’s totally out of date, and I think it requires, kind of like Sam was saying, like a humility of just like continually being schooled by the cool new generations that are coming through.

Jeff:

Oh, wow. That’s great. How about you, Deanna?

Deanna:

Yeah. I guess to add to or echo what a little bit of what Kate mentioned, just the openness to new experiences, the openness to possibilities that people express during that time and being willing to try different things out and find out where you fit. It’s just a really exciting phase of life. Yeah. Also, not without stress. I remember being in that phase of my life. I remember telling my parents, I just wanna be like 40 and have it all figured out. I just wanna like skip through this and just, you know, know what I wanna do, and they’re like, no. I remember my dad saying, getting there is half the fun. Or, you know, that’s the fun part, and you’re not gonna probably have it all figured it out even when you are 40 and yeah, and he was right. So, yeah, just a positive energy overall that young people bring, an exuberance. It’s great to be around every day.

Jeff:

That’s great. I’m sure you’ll get those chances. Sam, you mentioned that you like working with the youth. What are you looking forward to?

Sam:

Oh, you changed the question on me. I’m looking forward to helping someone every day figure out what the next step is for them, or what the next steps are gonna be for their life. I am looking forward to understanding things about myself as a counselor that I might find challenging, and I am also looking forward to working with students who can help me learn and be a better service worker. I am, most importantly though, looking forward to the fun that’s to be had with the entire process. So far, every day is not the same, and that kind of gives you something to look forward to every day. And so I’m really looking forward to kind of taking that same excitement and presenting it to someone else and coming up with fun ideas and fun new ways to problem-solve.

Jeff:

Great. As a new Pre-ETS counselor at SSB, what is one or two qualities that you bring to the team?

Deanna:

Even though SSB is a different population that I’m working with now, you know, SSB and VRS are different agencies, connected, but have slightly different policies and things like that, and ways of doing things. Having years of experience at VRS and the general agency is helpful. I know a little bit about how the process of planning, employment planning goes within the state system and also just the counseling relationship and working through goal setting and the phases of employment planning with people. Definitely makes me feel a little bit more comfortable coming into this, although I have learned plenty over the last few months since I’ve been here and just the genuine love of helping people discover their interests, what they’re good at, and learning where in the world of work they can use those skills and talents to find work that is fulfilling to them. We spend way too much of our lives at work, not to be happy where we are.

Jeff:

How about you, Kate?

Kate:

Same question? Two qualities?

Jeff:

Yeah. Two qualities that you bring to the Pre-ETS team, or two strengths that you bring to them.

Kate:

Two strengths. I would say curiosity. Curiosity in working employment counseling is like a superpower. I think that, however, I don’t know, that’s like maybe a self-aggrandizing thing to say, but I mean it in that having curiosity about the enormous world of work, which is so vast and so ever expanding, I have to just know that I’m continually going to be learning alongside my clients, and that has to be something I’m excited and embracing, whether it’s working with students who have really diverse career interests and we’re learning like what does it even look like to apply to be a food stylist, or to be a dental hygienist or a midwife or the, just the enormous diversity of things that, you know, those are all actual examples. I think just a curiosity and willingness to continually learn, and then I think a willingness, with that, to ask questions and to sit with and listen and be a student myself. I think being able to continually say, I’m not really sure and learn along the way is an asset that helps people to see, especially as a young person, when you really want to have a sense of agency and confidence in your life, and ability to say, I’m not sure, but we’re gonna figure it out and we’re gonna figure out who might know and where to find this answer or the possibility of answers. And I’m gonna walk with you along the way there. I think that tenacity is something I hope to bring as well.

Jeff:

I like tenacity. I like that. Sam, yourself, what are two strengths or qualities that you bring to the Pre-ETS team?

Sam:
You know, just a moment ago I was thinking about the question. I was like, ha, I don’t think I have an answer for this one. But Kate, your response was so like profound. It kind of gave me my answer and I think I’m gonna steal the word confidence and then I’m thinking hope as well. Confidence, just knowing that the students I’ll be working with, just kind of reminding them that they’ve come a long way so far and they’re a blank slate and they can do whatever they want and we can, you know, figure it out as we go. Just kind of giving them their reassurance that they need to build that confidence. I think it kind of ties in with hope too, like staying hopeful that a solution is possible. And if we don’t reach that solution or that resolution in a traditional way, we can then get creative and still find that solution that fits their needs.

Jeff:

Awesome. So Sam, I’m gonna stick with you here. What advice would you have for a student as they’re looking forward to their employment, their education and career goals?

Sam:

Take it one day at a time. We don’t have to figure it out right now.

Jeff:

Deanna?

Deanna:

Believe in yourself. High expectations for yourself.

Jeff:

There you go. And Kate?

Kate:

There are so many paths and there are so many options and there’s so much out there that can be really exhausting and paralyzing and overwhelming. So often, especially young people feel the pressure of the question of like, what are you gonna do with your life? And that’s really not the question. It’s like, what are you most excited to explore? And that can be in this next year. It doesn’t need to be this employment goal for 30 years. That’s not how the world of work looks for many young people in this era. And so how do they make that question more manageable and more scalable? What are the things you like most doing? What are the things you’re most excited about and how do we explore those first, and how do we prioritize the things you’re most excited about and make that question manageable versus this big employment question.

Jeff:

I like that. There’s no rush. There’s no rush. Just no panic.

Kate:

Right. It’s a process.

Jeff:

Yeah. I think this is great that all three of you are bringing such a neat new perspective to the Pre-ETS team and the students that you’re gonna be working with, like I said, when we open this up, you have that personal contact with them. You bring ’em in. You can have all the programs and all that, but without you, you’re the ones that are gonna give them the confidence to have them take a look at their future and help guide them along the way so they can decide what they want to do, so they can go out and get that job, and I think we got a great team here at SSB, so thank you all for coming on here and have a great day.

Kate:

Thank you.

Deanna:

Thanks for having us.

Sam:
Thanks Jeff.

Jeff:

If you have questions or would like to learn more about Pre-Employment Transition Services, contact Shane DeSantis at shane.desantis@state.mn.us, and that’s s-h-a-n-e dot d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s@state.mn.us, or call 651-358-5205. Once again, that’s 651-358-5205. They’d love to hear from you. And be sure to check out the show notes, you’ll find links to the Spectacle, a newsletter for families, teachers and students, and links to the most recent podcast and of course, the link to State Services for the Blind of Minnesota. Be sure to contact your state services for the blind, your Voc-rehab, and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and Google Play Store. That’s two words, blind abilities. And if you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions, give us a call at 612-367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. A big shout out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You follow Chee Chau on Twitter @lcheechau. I want to thank you for listening and until next time, bye-bye.

[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share

-What we see

-Through each other’s eyes…

[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]

…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.