 What appears need to know to be effective supports to their classmates with significant disabilities? Well, it depends. We've noticed that some peers just have a knack for providing this kind of support. They seem to do it instinctively. They feel very comfortable in those roles as a social connector, as a academic support provider. They just seem to get it right from the outset and they're confident and comfortable in their roles. But for most students, they really do benefit from some targeted orientation and initial training. Most students might feel a little hesitant or reluctant at the outset, and they're unsure about what really is my role in providing support to this classmate. And so if you can spend some time with them, usually half-hour, to provide some of that initial orientation, then that ensures that these students feel much more confident in their roles. In our trainings with peers, we typically begin by sharing a brief rationale for why we're wanting to involve them so heavily in providing support to their classmates. We explain that often the goal is to help students with significant disabilities be more part of the class and develop more relationships with others in that class, and it's hard to do when there's always an adult sitting next to you. Peers typically get that, but we want to just emphasize the potential benefits of involving peers rather than so heavily relying on adult supports. The students within and without disabilities, they might not know each other well, and so it might begin by just making introductions and having students share what their likes and dislikes are, what their interests are, what they love to talk about, the ways that they communicate best with one another. We don't share specific confidential information, but we talk about things like one of the goals for SAM is to use its communication device more in this class. So you can look for opportunities to ask in questions or have him share during group discussion. So sharing the broad goals for that particular student is often really helpful for the peers. So they know really what are the most essential supports to provide. So you'll share with the peers some of the specific ways that they can provide help during whole group instruction, during a small group activity, when there's independent seat work or when there's downtime in that classroom. So being very specific with the peers about the kinds of supports that they can provide is really important. Sometimes students with significant disabilities will have communication challenges. They might use an assistive technology device, a communication system, or some sort of switch or other assistive technology. And so you'll want to share with the peers how that technology works, how do you operate the communication system, how do you ask questions in ways that the student can actually respond with their communication device. When it's appropriate and the student with disabilities is okay with it, we'll sometimes show the peers actually how to program that communication device so that during class they can program in a comment or a response that the student with significant disabilities can use. We'll also talk about when the peers should ask for assistance and how to get that assistance. So there's certain roles that peers shouldn't provide. We make sure they know what those are and who they can turn to in that class for help, whether that's the educational assistant, the classroom teacher, or someone else. We also give them some ideas for how they can provide encouragement and support to their classmates. Often the only model for that they've seen is the way a teacher interacts with a student. So we encourage them not to model what teachers do, but really more to provide support in the ways that they would provide to any of their other classmates. So your role is not to be a mini-teacher, but to provide support the way, to provide help the way you would provide to a classmate. So we sometimes have to model what that might look like. And the last thing that we'll emphasize is the importance of confidentiality and a respectful language. And so one of the best ways to ensure that peers are not sharing any confidential information with other classmates is not to share any confidential information with the peers. And so there's this tendency in orientation sessions to say, well, maybe I need to tell the peers about what autism is or what the child's diagnosis is. We've found that's usually not necessary at all. In fact, we never share that information. Peers typically want to know why Sam, who has autism, maybe rocks back and forth or flaps his hands or repeats things that I say. And so we can give information about why that's the case without ever revealing what a diagnosis is. We might say, you know, when Sam comes up to you and he rocks back and forth, that's his way of telling you he's excited to see you. The way you give someone a high five, he communicates that excitement about seeing someone through kind of his body language. But we also want to give the peers some language for how they might tell other classmates about what they're doing. So rather than saying, you know, I'm here to help Sam because he really is struggling in this class and he really, he really needs my help, we might give peers language like, you know, I'm working with Sam because he doesn't know a lot of his classmates and this gives him a chance to meet some of us and for us to have a chance to learn more about Sam.