Paul Menton Centre's Virtual Make the Cut 2020: Video #1 - Welcome and Session Overview - Transcript [MUSIC PLAYS] PADDY STEWART: Good afternoon and welcome to our virtual Paul Menton Centre Make the Cut Fall 2020. I am your host, Paddy Stewart. It's just a treat to be here with you today. It is wonderful that you folks are preparing now, you're thinking ahead about next year and what you're going to do when you graduate. You're preparing and you are thinking about those kinds of things - that is excellent! So, good for you for getting that sort of thing ready and in your mind. The staff here at Paul Menton Centre have a terrific set of information and tips and ideas that's going to make it a lot easier for next year when you head off to post-secondary. So, it is going to be good for you. So, what I say is "good for you" and you're going to be "good to go" when you head off to post-secondary. Alright, moving on now, here to welcome you is the director of the Paul Menton Centre, Larry McCloskey - a very good friend, a remarkable man and the inspirational genius behind Make the CUT. So, Larry, over to you. LARRY MCCLOSKEY: Hi, my name is Larry McCloskey and I am the director of the Paul Menton Centre for students with disabilities. We're about to offer you the 31st rendition of Make the CUT and that is a big number and this has been an exciting and really worthwhile event for 31 times. Now, as you know, this year is a little different. We're doing this as a teleconference. It's a "COVID" event and um so it's been a bit of a challenge, but we're determined to give you the information and also to keep the energy as we always have and Paddy Stewart will help with that, as well as the staff at the Paul Menton Centre. So, really one thing that we want to keep in mind is this event, Make the CUT, is all about giving you the tools that you need in order to be successful. So, it's important for you to know what the supports are at the Paul Menton Centre and throughout the university. It's important for you to know what the expectations are for university study, and it's really important for us to talk about commitment and resiliency and really the number one indicator of success for students with disabilities, for all students, throughout university years is persistence and persistence leads to resiliency and good mental health. So, these things all come together. It starts with information and an important piece for you will be the rapport that you have, the contacts that you have, and using the Paul Menton Centre staff who are really enthusiastic and a lot of help. Our students come back and they tell us year after year that they were ... they often attribute their success to the Paul Menton Centre staff, but in fact, that's not really on us ... it's you who are successful, you who will be successful with help from the Paul Menton Centre staff. So, this is a "well-worth-it" event for you. It's really going to help you to get started to think about what you need to do and most of all to make that contact with the staff to get your education going. Thank you and enjoy the day. AMANDA BLAIS: Hi Paddy, how you? PADDY STEWART: Amanda, lovely to see you! AMANDA: Good! Yes! PADDY: And you are going to be one of the presenters actually that going to give them some specifics about learning strategies, not to give anything away! AMANDA: [laughs] Yes, I hope to provide some information about learning strategies, for sure. I know that we are also going to be talking a little bit about the agenda, right, Paddy? PADDY: Yes, we will. I will be letting them know that we have three presenters during the beginning, yourself as one of them. Then after those three presenters from PMC, we will be having a break, just a short five-minute break and we have a special, powerful guest speaker. Last but not least, we have what we call the "Student Success Panel", which is a fantastic group of four students from here... well, you can tell them about that, Amanda. You know a lot about the Student Success Panel. AMANDA: The Student Success Panel is often the highlight of these events. You have done how many in the past, Paddy? PADDY: 30. This is number 31, Amanda. AMANDA: Wow! That's a lot! That's older than most of the people watching us right now. PADDY: Ha! That's right! I was looking at some of the registrations. Most of the people joining us were born in 2003. AMANDA: And we have how many school boards joining us today? PADDY: Ah, there are ... how many school boards? I'm not sure. We have some 40 high schools that are represented, from way up the line there in Fellows and in Pembroke and as far out east as Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute, way out in the east ... Thousand Islands Secondary School, down to the south, and right here in Ottawa we've got schools like Earl of March, Immaculata, Merrivale, and Glebe ... just a whole mess of them! We also ... as well as about 150 students, we have 70 educators that have joined us today. These are the students' favorite spec ed teachers, their guidance counsellors, personal support workers, inclusion personnel and others. And they are here to find out some information to help pass on the students graduating, grade 12 students. AMANDA: Amazing! PADDY: Yeah! AMANDA: That is so awesome. It's hard to um ... I know you and I were talking about it ... it's hard to ... I appreciate how many people are watching us um on this platform, but I appreciate everyone has been able to join us today. I know that you and Linda have done ... and Jocelyn have done so much work in the background in getting everything going. So, I feel like we might be ready to get rocking and rolling. What do you think, Paddy? PADDY STEWART: What we're going to do now is ... I've outlined briefly what's going to happen for the rest of the afternoon. We are going to move now to Somei Tam, who is a senior disability adviser here at the Paul Menton Centre and she's going to outline what going to happen with the three presenters for the morning. Okay, over to you, Somei. SOMEI TAM: Hi everyone! Thank you for joining us today. My name is Somei Tam. I am a senior disability advisor at the Paul Menton Centre. I am very excited to be part of this first virtual Make the CUT for all students with disabilities who are planning to go to university next year. We have three very exciting and informative presentations prepared for you. Each presentation will be about 20 minutes long. It will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A when you can ask questions to each of the presenters through the live chat function. The first presenter is Amanda Blais who is a disability coordinator and learning strategist. Amanda will be presenting on learning strategies in post-secondary. She will talk about creating structure and accountability as a motivation for completing tasks and staying on task, as well as understanding course expectation in communication, knowing different areas of learning strategy support offered by the Paul Menton Centre, as well as exploring various tools for planning, managing time, and maintaining productivity. The second presenter is Jordyn Tremblay. Her official title is Learning Strategies and Assistive Technology Officer, but we call her our "Tech Guru". She will be giving a live demonstration of different assistive technology that students with disabilities are currently using in university to assist them with their reading, writing, and note-taking. The last presenter will be Sonia Tanguay. Sonia is a senior disability advisor at the Paul Menton Centre. She will be presenting on the topic of planning your transition to university. You will learn about the differences between high school and university when it comes to setting up accommodation in ... at the post-secondary level. She will give you tips on how to make a successful transition to university life and how to prepare before, during, and after your university admission. [MUSIC PLAYS]