Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

Kelley Challen: Transitions for Kids with Learning Differences

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In today’s episode, I sit down with Kelly Challen, a transition specialist at NESCA, and talk about her work helping neurodiverse students navigate the journey from high school to adulthood. Kelly shares insights on the importance of individualized coaching, real-world employment experiences, and critical life skills for fostering independence and success. Tune in!

BIO

Kelley Challen, EdM, CAS, expert transition specialist and national speaker, has been developing and directing programming for teenagers and young adults with an array of developmental and learning abilities since 2004. She has been the Director of Transition Services at NESCA since 2013, providing individualized transition assessment, planning, consultation, coaching, training, and program development services. She is skilled in assessment and consultation determining optimal timing for a student’s transition to college, technical training, adult learning, employment, and identifying and developing programs and services necessary to minimize skill gaps. Ms. Challen is one of the only professionals in New England specializing in assisting families in selecting or developing programming as a steppingstone between special education and college. She has a unique understanding of local postgraduate, pre-college, college support, college transition, postsecondary transition, and 18-22 programs. She earned a BA in Psychology from The College of William and Mary and an MA of Education and Graduate Certificate in Counseling from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is co-author of the chapter, “Technologies to Support Interventions for Social-Emotional Intelligence, Self-Awareness, Personality Style, and Self-Regulation,” for the book Technology Tools for Students with Autism: Innovations that Enhance Independence and Learning. She is also the mother of two children and two puggles who continually help with her inventive and flexible thinking! Follow Kelly on Linkedin.

Learn more about NESCA here:
Website: https://nesca-newton.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nesca-newton/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NESCApc/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nescaneuropsychology

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Kelley Challen:

We think about these students who are planning to transition to college, academics are super important. And, you know, being able to pass certain tests is really important. But it's also like, can you make ramen if you need to? Can you, you know, can you purchase that T shirt that everybody's got to wear on Friday night for whatever activity it is? You know, can you function in a dorm, if you want to be in a sort of a more traditional college environment.

Sheila Akbar:

Hi everybody, and welcome back to the podcast.

Kelley Challen:

Yeah, so I wish I had like, the 10 second Wow. It's almost September. I promise I will stop starting my version of how I came to do what I do. But, you know, I'm a podcast chatter with what date it is. But honestly, I sit down transition specialist, and when I was a child, that was not a and I go to record this, and I look up at the date and I'm like, what? How? I'm sure you can all relate. Well, we're sort thing. So and I laugh, because one of the things that I do now of on a theme right now in the sort of back to school season of as an adult is career counseling with students, right? Career getting students the support they need, right, we just did counseling, planning for college. But if I had counseled Jay's episode on skills to sail through high school. I've got another one coming up on how executive function skills may be myself, I think I would have been pretty horrified. You know, hindering or helping your student in their academic and it's like, I love singing in high school, so I thought I was personal work. In today's episode, I've invited my friend going to major in opera, that I applied to college as a computer Kelly Chalon to join me, and Kelly is a transition specialist science major, and ultimately, just, yeah, ultimately, just sat at a mental health practice called NESCA, and we've worked with NESCA for many, many years. We're good friends with its founder, Ann Helmus, and with Kelly and the rest of the team, in on a really awesome psychology class my freshman and they do such amazing work, doing neuropsych evaluations, year of college and got fascinated by psychology, and actually providing occupational therapy, executive function sort of went down that road of majoring in psychology, knowing coaching, all kinds of mental health services, transition assessments and supports, career counseling and a whole bunch of I wasn't going to be able to just get a job in psychology other stuff. So I'm excited for you to hear from her today about without some sort of graduate education. So then I looked for those services and how they can really help students. Kelly has been working in the area of programming for teenagers and summer employment opportunities that would help make me more young adults with an array of developmental and learning abilities for two decades now, and has been with NESCA for attractive to graduate schools, right? So what I got interested about 11 years, so she definitely knows what she's talking about, and she fills such an important gap for in was working with students with autism spectrum disorders. families who have differently abled children and are At the time, it was students with what we would have called struggling with the idea of transitioning to independent life, and these concerns absolutely exist, even if The an Asperger's Syndrome profile, and I went for that as a summer student just has minimal challenges in their executive functions or in their ability to focus. I think any parent can employment experience, as opposed to working with students attest to the fact that there are times when when you think, with mental health issues, because I thought Emotionally, how is this kid gonna survive on their own if they can't do, you know, XYZ that I as a parent currently do for them right now? it would be a little bit easier for me. Ironically, now I work So obviously, it's a journey, and we need all the support we can get. And Kelly and the team at NESCA is a great part of our with all students, and especially post pandemic, lots support network here at Signet, so I'm excited for you to hear from her. So take a listen. I'll see you on the other side. of students with really chronic, severe mental health issues, but Kelly, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. Sheila, this at that time, that was like a really easy clinical start for is pretty exciting.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. I'm really excited for people to hear about the kind of work that you do. But before we get into all of me. And I love, I love the kids on the spectrum, like it's just that, let's talk about what you do and how you came to do it. that is a passion for me. So I did that. And then I went to grad school thinking I was going to be a guidance counselor, That's great. I love that story, because I think thinking I'd be a middle school guidance counselor. Could not get hired by my own middle school or high school that I went to and got kind of stuck looking for full time employment experience, and the summer camp programs that I had been working at in college were looking for somebody to develop and expand programming for teenagers and young adults and really develop some year round programming. And so I was just in the right place at the right time, with just enough of the right experience, got hired full time. The program's called MGH Aspire. It's a Mass General Hospital program. And I was able to develop some of their teen programs and the outline for it happens to so many of us that when you say you just wandered some of their young adult programs. And I went on to do more full time work program design and development for these sort of transition age students, right? Teenagers, young adults, middle school students. And NESCA found me when they were looking for somebody to specialize in this area as well. So I came into NESCA with the graduate experience in counseling, with a lot of the lived experience working with students with variety of disabilities, and was able to kind of merge those together. And so I do this transition planning work now, where I work with students often who've been on IEPs, helping them figure out life after high school. But again, I say it's like I'm trying to help students figure out linear paths for themselves, and we know that life is not linear. And my life in particular was a lot of like, okay, I'm gonna try this now. And I'm lucky to have been somebody who's good at networking and got into the right places at the right times by virtue of just having met a lot of really cool people along the way. into a psych class and it it just held your attention, and it changed your entire trajectory from, well, I guess opera to computer science to to psychology. And I think, you know, certainly I look back at at, you know, me in that transition age, and what I thought I was going to do is definitely not what I ended up doing, but it is, I think part of the process of growing up is to make plans and then learn how to adapt when your plans inevitably need to change, right? So it's great you've got that experience yourself that you can really relate to the students that you're working with, or the young people that you're working with to help them know, yeah, we can talk about this for hours, but at the end of the day, you need to build some skills so that you know what to do when your ideas change.

Kelley Challen:

I think it's the skill building, and I think it's also just not underestimating how much actual employment experiences impact your employment trajectory, right? You can do all the learning in the world, but until you get out and try certain jobs, you may not know exactly where you're headed. So I'm so grateful that I had parents that pushed me to work when I was school aged, and then that I spent time working in college, you know, partly for money, but partly also to bolster graduate applications. And it's all those different work experiences that really link together to sort of propel more of that forward motion to where I am right now. And I just, I think that's so critical for young people, is to really have have work experiences, not just learning experiences, and that those are an important way that we build the skills. Well, let's back up just a minute, and you mentioned NESCA. So tell us what NESCA is, and what you know. I know NESCA offers a lot of things, if you can encapsulate what is NESCA's mission and what kind of services they offer. Yeah. So NESCA is, at its core, a Neuropsychology practice, and it was founded in Newton, Massachusetts, back in 2007 by Doctor Ann Halmus. She had previously had a private practice and worked at Children's Hospital before that. And so NESCA was founded with 11 neuropsychologists at the time. I think there was some reading that that was the perfect size for a small business. So that's literally where we started. And then when I joined in 2013, I was the only non neuropsychologist at this practice. So NESCA's mission, you know, has always been to work with children, you know, who have disabilities, you know, who have learning challenges, whether mild or complex, right? I think we do very well working with the students who don't fit inside a box, although I am not meeting students these days who fit inside boxes at all. But that's always kind of been a passion for us. And so I think something else that we really focus on and as a practice is not just who's a student now and what do they need to learn now, but really, how do we look at this student in a strength based way, and capitalize on those strengths to sort of promote more of a lifelong quality of life, you know, positive experience for that individual, and not just getting stuck in the what's going wrong now and what's needed now. But really, how do we think about more of a lifelong tragedy for each client that we're working with and each family that we're working with as a transition specialist, I do a lot of different things. I do some sort of extensive evaluation that's a little different than neuropsychological evaluation, where I'm not looking at diagnosing a student or what's going on with learning and memory and attention right now, I'm looking at what are students career interests? What are students career aptitudes? If a student thinks they want to be on a college trajectory, what are the skills that they have for college planning and college readiness and college knowledge? And I also look pretty in depth at students life skills, so the kinds of skills that they have for taking care of themselves, taking care of things around the house, getting out in the community, and really kind of being in the world. If we think about these students who are planning to transition to college, academics are super important, and being able to pass certain tests is really important. But it's also like, can you make ramen if you need to? Can you, you know, can you purchase that T shirt that everybody's got to wear on Friday night for whatever activity it is? You know, can you function in a dorm if you want to be in a sort of a more traditional college environment? So I'm looking at a lot of those soft skills, really, for being able to make a transition to whatever those post secondary activities are. And so I actually evaluate that for kids, and I come up with recommendations in terms of being able to supplement what's going on, especially if students are on IEPs. I'm thinking about, how do we make that more robust to really prepare that kid for post secondary adult life, if a student's not on an IEP, or even sometimes if they are but we want to look at other resources that a family could tap into in their community. Then we're just thinking about, you know, other ways that students can build skills or have experiences that are going to support them for post secondary adult life. And then, you know, we work with families privately. We work with school districts when they are looking for support in this area, we do a lot of consultation, a lot of training. I mean, it's a very it's a very niche kind of a thing. You know at heart, I was trained as a guidance counselor, which is this, like transition from school to post school, but then it's sort of like a guidance counselor on steroids, for lack of a better term, because it's really looking at like every aspect of the student, of the student's life, and how we're planning, not just for, you know, college or career, but college and career and being able to live through all of that and being able to engage with peers.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, and it's so needed. I mean, I know NESCA has a focus on, you know, neurodiverse children and young adults. But I think even the most neurotypical students need a lot of that, you know, skill building around, you know, living independently and taking care of themselves, managing their time and their schedules. And most colleges actually, they're, you know, they define success by looking at the GPA at the end of the first year of college. And what they're doing in the college application is trying to, you know, find information that will suggest a student will be successful by that definition in their university. And that's, you know, one of the ways that they select their students. And if you think about that first year of college, like, yeah, there is maybe a heightened rigor to a course load, but probably the biggest changes are all of these things that you're talking about in terms of being able to live on your own, being able to feed yourself, and, you know, keep things organized and kind of communicate and engage with this new community that you've just been dropped into. So I think that's really, really pretty amazing. Tell me more about how you're actually able to build these skills with students. I know you do a lot of one on one work, and I know that there are also kind of summer workshop kind of programs. So tell us about that.

Kelley Challen:

Yeah. So we have a pretty robust coaching program at NESCA, actually, when the very first time I had lunch with Ann Helmus, and she asked me what I thought was missing from transition planning and services, especially in Boston area, because that's where I'm based, although now we're working all over the country and internationally, one of the things I felt like was really missing for students was one On one skill building instruction. It was really important to me that we started up an individualized coaching program at NESCA, and that we had the opportunity to work with students one on one, so that they weren't just copying what they were seeing other students. Do you know, especially bright students, they may be able to look around and follow somebody else across the street or kind of just mimic what someone just did to make a purchase, but they may not be building those skills when they're in group environments. So it was so important to me to do one on one coaching, but we do a really wide range of coaching at NESCA, so some of the work that I personally do with students individually is what I call, sort of like transition planning or transition coaching, which is more working with students, to learn about themselves, to set goals for themselves, to think about, if this is my long term goal, what's something I could do this week that might help propel me toward that goal? To think about if they are a student who's in special education, you know, like, what needs to what do they want on their IEP, right? So some of what I'm doing in terms of coaching students is just helping them to reflect on their own strengths and challenges of what they want to work on and how they might want to build those skills. We also have what we call real life skills coaching, where occupational therapists will actually and Transition Specialists will meet students in their homes or in their communities or at their job site, and really work functionally on coaching certain skill sets that might be needed. It's very much individualized to the young person. And then we do tend to do some other kinds of coaching, this sort of like in between the EF and the real life skills coaching, where we might be just working with students to build motivation to be doing different tasks in life. And we're seeing a lot of students right now who may be struggling with chronic mental health issues, may have been home, you know, either tried college and it didn't work, and then they've just been kind of home doing nothing, or had a period of time that they were out of high school. And we're really kind of working with those students are just build up, like healthy lifestyle routines and get some motivation to, I don't know, just build some joyful activities back into their week before we try to sort of springboard off of that to other things. And then we have vocational counselors who do some of the career coaching work, helping people find their first job. We get a lot of students who have tried college, are taking time off from that for one reason or another, and they want to figure out, like, should, what do I actually want to do, and should I be going back to college, or is what I want to do, not something that college is necessary for right now. And we certainly like we certainly refer to a lot of partners in the community, right? We're not trying to do things that other people do well, like, if there's somebody who's doing it well in the greater Boston area, I'm going to send my student there. You know, we have sort of a finite supply of team members at NESCA, and we all want to be helping as many people as we can with our time.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. Well, that was really great to hear just the really broad spectrum of both services you offer, but also the kinds of students you help. And I want to come back to the thing that you said sort of earlier in that answer, which is a lot of the times it sounds like you're just helping young people get clear on what actually matters to them and then put a plan in place. And I think that that is just so essential to any of this work, because if they're not bought in, if they don't believe working on this skill is important, or doing these steps is going to get them to some goal that's actually meaningful to them. So talk us a little bit more about how you help students kind of get that clarity.

Kelley Challen:

You're absolutely right. I mean, I think it's the foundation of everything we do in our transition services team is really, it's very student centered, or young adult centered, you know? It's very like vision driven. And so we, we do spend quite a bit of time, number one, establishing a relationship with a young person, right? Like you're not going to tell me what's important to you, if, if I'm not, important to you, right? So part of what we do is just spending enough time to have a student get comfortable with us, to make sure that they know that we like care about them and are invested in them, and are interested in hearing what they have to say. I think you know, it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that oftentimes students who make their way to NESCA, you know, to very specialized help, are students who have pretty motivated parents or pretty motivated family members in their lives, and so they are used to being pushed a lot and used to hearing about other people's expectations for them. And so I think first and foremost, we slow things down and let students or young people know that, like we're here for them, you know, we're not going to push them to work on anything that they don't want to work on, don't think they need to work on.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, yeah. We found that so true in our practice as well. I think it's so empowering for a kid to be taken seriously by an adult. That's just part of the magic of it, right? Well, we're coming up on time here, but I have two more questions for you, one of which is, if a parent whether the kid is on an IEP or not, if a parent suspects they may need this kind of help, where do you suggest they get started?

Kelley Challen:

Well, so if somebody's thinking they might need help, specifically from from NESCA, like we have one very standard process, you know, it's like, you go to the NESCA website, you click on the intake form, and you fill that out. And the great thing is, if you just suspect, you and need the help. You're not really sure if you need it, or which service you need, or, you know, you're just like, Oh, I heard of NESCA. Somebody said it might help my kid. So I'm on the website, like, that's an okay way to fill out an intake form. And our intake coordinators are so good, they'll call and talk with the family and get to understand what's going on that the family felt like they might need some support in some way, and at least get them set up with an initial call or a consultation with the person who's going to be the right person to kind of get them started in the process. And we have little different intake processes for the different services we have. But the great thing is, everything starts with that form and really getting people connected with someone who can help them figure out, you know, how they can best be supported. And if we're not the right fit, I'm certainly not interested in trying to sell somebody something they don't need, right? I'm a parent myself, and it's like you need a lot of different kinds of help. And we, we again, we're all about maximizing our time to help as many people as possible. So if we're not the right fit, you know, we again, you and I are connected because we've met through the work that we do, right? You know, it's like you meet different people through the work that you do. And we're all about helping families to get to the supports that they need. And I think the beauty of the internet these days, I mean, you can love or hate Facebook, but like as a parent, I think there are some really wonderful groups that you can be part of in social media communities to get more information. There are wonderful things like your podcast and blogs and, you know, webinars, where you could sort of go like, check people out before you commit to working with certain people. And I do love that about living in this technology age.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. Well, this is a great segue into my second question, which is, as a parent yourself, you know what is? What is something you wish you knew or something that you want parents to know about? You know, no matter what age, how far away from college, their kids may be, what? What's one piece of advice you want to leave them with?

Kelley Challen:

Yeah. So the piece of advice that I cannot emphasize enough, and it's hard to get to parents at the right point in time for this, but the best thing I ever did for my own child was to get a thorough neurodevelopmental evaluation when he was 20 months old. And so I don't know who's going to be listening to this podcast that this will resonate with but the reality is, like, if you ever are curious, like, Are things going well? Are they not going well? Is there something that's needed? Is what you know it's like, the best time to do it is as early as possible, because the earlier you have information, the more services you can put into place, the more negotiation power you have with your school district if you end up needing to do that. So I guess it's more that like as a parent, if you have a gut feeling like and you can, you can afford to get some support and use your insurance to get support at those ages. Like, it is always better to try to get help early. And I think that that sticks, you know, into middle school, into high school, into college, into adult age, the earlier you reach out for help, the more effective the help will be, and honestly, the less expensive the help will be.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah.

Kelley Challen:

So I think that's, that's just what I want to emphasize. It's like, earlier is always better, and, no, it's never too late, right? Like, so whatever point in time you were at that you feel like you need support, that's the time to go get it. You know, when you wait things inevitably are just a little bit harder. So that's my advice.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you. Kelly, well, if people want to learn more about you and Nesco, where, where can they go?

Kelley Challen:

So we have a website. It's just www dot NESCA, which is N, E, S, C, A, hyphen, Newton, n, e, w, t, o, n dot com. That was our sort of original location was in Newton, although NESCA now has offices in Newton and Plainville, Massachusetts and Londonderry, New Hampshire, and we have staff at satellite offices in Brooklyn, New York and up in Burlington, Vermont. So we're slowly, you know, expanding throughout the Northeast, which is really cool, but that nesca hyphen newton.com website gets you there. You can get to our LinkedIn, you can get to our Facebook, you can get to our Instagram, you can get to our blog. Our blog is awesome. I will say, like, no matter what kind of human you are, every single one of our clinical staff members contributes to that blog. And so blogs come out that just have anything to do with children, adolescents, adults, humans at different ages and different kinds of things that they might be dealing with. And I like I learned so much reading that blog and reading different things my colleagues have written. So I strongly recommend it.

Sheila Akbar:

Fantastic. Yeah, I'll make sure all of that is linked in the show notes. And I was telling you this before we hit record, but I've been following your LinkedIn, and I love everything you post, so you should definitely also follow Kelly on LinkedIn, and I'll link your profile. But Kelly, thank you so much for your time. This is a really great conversation.

Kelley Challen:

Thanks so much, Sheila. This is a lot of fun. I'm really glad you invited me.

Sheila Akbar:

I had so many thoughts bubbling up when I was listening to Kelly talk about the work that she does and the support that she is able to arrange for students, and how it all starts with the student identifying those needs themselves. That's something we get really excited about here at Signet, and I hope that families can take that lesson into your own parenting, because if the kid's not motivated around something, it's not going to change. And sometimes you do have to let them face the consequences of their action, and then they all of a sudden find motivation to change it, or they just get to a point where they don't want to be struggling anymore and they're ready to ask for some help. Maybe it's not from you, maybe it's from somebody else, but you know, you kind of have to give them the space to come to that place on their own, because that's when the interventions really do have the most impact. So I hope that's helpful to think about. I know it feels like there's a lot at stake if we let our kids make mistakes. But there are very few trajectory changing mistakes that a young person can really make at this stage, even though I know in our Gen X generation, we've always been told, if you don't do this one thing right, all of the dominoes will fall and you can't get back on track. That's just not true. That's something that our parents told us to scare us into, you know, behaving, doing the things that they wanted. You know, the world is a very flexible place. People are very flexible. And we're coming into, we're coming into an age where the workplace is changing, education is changing, possibilities are really changing. So I'm not saying go out and let your kids make all the mistakes. Of course, you still need to parent them and guide them and protect them, but I think it's wise to think about what mistakes you're going to get really, really upset about, and what mistakes you're just going to be like, Okay, let's see what happens. You made that decision. Let's see what happens. And you're going to have to deal with the consequences. And you know, I'm here to help you deal with those consequences, but you've got to face them. All right, that's all I got to say about that. I hope you all have a great week, and I hope to see you next time. And we're really getting back into the swing of things. My son started school today. Very exciting, and I know it's all happening for all of you parents out there, and you know, counselors and teachers, whoever you are listening, it's all starting up again. So I wish you all the best of luck. We'll see you next time.