News and Knowledge

Julie LaBerge is the mother of 14-year-old identical twins sons with autism and a typically developing 9-year-old daughter and is happily married to her husband, David. She is employed as the director of special education & pupil services as well as a school psychologist in the Bonduel School District in Bonduel, Wisconsin. She also serves as a consultant and resource for parents, educators, community agencies, and support groups and has been a guest speaker numerous times on several disability topics, with a focus on autism spectrum disorders. She has taught graduate courses related to autism for Viterbo University for the past 10 years.

The Bonduel School District, a rural public school with just under 900 students in Northeast Wisconsin, was chosen to serve as a model rural school site for the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders project during the 2008-09 (middle school) and 2009-10 (high school and elementary) school years.

As participants in this national project, several staff members, including general and special education teachers, speech and language therapists, and an occupational therapist, along with a parent representative, committed to learning more about evidence-based practices that could be used with students with autism spectrum disorders in our school district.

With guidance from experts from the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, staff at the Bonduel Middle School determined that there was a need to increase social opportunities for students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) during the 2008-09 school year. When considering the options of evidence-based practices available at that time, it was determined that peer-mediated instruction and intervention (PMII) would be the most appropriate intervention to consider implementing.

At the middle school in the first year, four students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 18 typically developing peers participated. In 2009-10, the district added one group at the middle school, two at the elementary school, and one at the high school. A total of seven students with ASD and one student with another disability who has social needs participated and 46 typically developing peers. This year, there are a total of eight students with ASD and 40 typically developing peers trained as peer supports.

As we implemented a peer support program, we discovered some practical steps that helped us as we developed the program:

1. Identify staff members who have a passion and desire to assist students with autism spectrum disorders or students with other disabilities who experience social challenges. This is a critical step to success related to the implementation of a successful peer support program. A great amount of time, dedication, and commitment is required.

2. Identify a student (or students) with social needs and discuss the possibility of participation in a peer support program with each student’s parents. Contact parents to discuss the purpose of creating a peer support network to assist their children with developing social skills and establishing and maintaining relationships with non-disabled peers in a safe environment. Obtain written parental consent.

3. Ask general education teachers to identify five to eight non-disabled students at the same grade level who could serve as peer supports to the students with social needs. Requirements to be considered as a peer support = kind, caring, and compassionate! That’s it…peer supports need to possess these positive character traits. Once a student in need of social supports is identified, we ask regular education teachers to nominate socially typically developing students who may serve as strong social supports (i.e. criteria: kind, caring and compassionate). We prefer to have between five and 10 typically developing peers per student with social needs to allow for manageable group meetings as well as to ensure that social supports are scattered in a variety of classes/settings throughout the day.

4. Invite non-disabled peers to participate in the peer support group. Give each non-disabled peer who has been nominated an invitation and parental consent form and discuss the purpose of the group. We called our groups “Power PALS” (Peers Assisting Leading and Supporting) at the middle school during the first year and “P.O.P.S” (Power of Peer Supports) at the high school during the second year of the project. Be sure to include information about training on the invitation (i.e. date, time, location of training). Food (e.g. pizza and soda) has been a great motivator for initial training.

5. Train non-disabled peers. Staff in our district used the Sixth Sense Curriculum by Carol Gray. This curriculum focuses on reviewing the five senses (hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell) and teaching students about the sixth sense, or the social sense. Staff modified the Sixth Sense Curriculum and developed a PowerPoint presentation to assist with visuals during instruction.

The training was provided during a lunch period. An adult instructor (teacher, therapist, psychologist etc.) provided the training, which takes approximately 30 minutes. Proper education and training is critical to the success of the program.

Once students begin in the program, they typically choose to continue with the exception of one or two here and there. We have had a few students move out and we have recruited new students to fill in. There have also been students who have requested to join a group. This has been allowed in a few cases as the students requesting to participate also could benefit from the interaction. We will continue to recruit students each year.

6. Coach non-disabled peers. After the non-disabled peers are trained, adult facilitators meet weekly with the students to discuss ways that they can help students with social needs throughout the school day. Coaching is necessary as guidance is needed to help the non-disabled students better understand their roles.

The hope; however, is that the groups will become independent of needing adult facilitation as the students become older. Our goal is that the high school groups will run mostly independently and receive guidance from facilitators related to planning activities or answering questions as needed. We currently have a group at the high school operating in this manner, which is incredible!

7. Continue to assist non-disabled peers pertaining to ways they can extend interactions with students with social needs in the classrooms, hallways, during lunch, and during extracurricular activities. Provide the non-disabled students with scripts, open-ended conversation starters and other activities to create opportunities to interact with students with social needs.

8. Invite students with social needs to join the group. After several weeks of coaching non-disabled peers, adult facilitators in our district decided to invite the learners with social needs (all have ASDs) to participate in the weekly peer support groups.

We believe that this step was critical to enhancing the relationships among all of the students and would allow each student with ASD to participate in a safe group setting surrounded by non-disabled peers who understand his/her needs. This was a great success!

Students with social needs are not included in the initial training with the typically developing peers because the staff leaders use that training to discuss the social needs of the students and identify ways to help.

Annually, we have provided ‘refresher’ training about the purpose of the program and have included students with social needs in these trainings (as they were more global in nature). We discuss how our goal is to help and support one another and make our school a safe and healthy place. The response from the students on the spectrum has been interesting during and after these trainings. They naturally have wanted to help and have been excited to be involved in a leadership program aimed at improving the school climate.

9. Plan activities that are fun and motivating and assist with the development of social understanding. Adult facilitators have continued with weekly meetings with each group over the past two and a half years at the middle school and over a year at the elementary and high school levels. This has allowed for strong relationships to be developed within each group.

Additionally, non-disabled peers have learned numerous ways to support students with social needs throughout the school setting. Large group activities with all peer support groups have taken place including attendance at a minor league baseball game, movie night, youth service learning projects, and a lock-in. These activities have brought many students together for a common cause, which has been to support, encourage, and develop positive relationships with one another.

10. Make the time! Implementation of any program or project takes a great amount of time, dedication, and commitment. Through participation in the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders, our staff was provided with the knowledge and opportunity to better assess the needs of students with ASDs and ultimately develop a program that has now become a district-wide effort to improve socialization opportunities for many students with autism and other social challenges.

New students have been identified as needing supports since our first year. Since we have expanded the program district-wide we have needed to recruit at the elementary and high school levels. The middle school groups have remained pretty constant.

Adolescence is an especially challenging time in life, and this program appears to have provided much-needed social support for several students over the past couple of years. Over 50 students have participated in peer support groups throughout the district. One high school group operates independently of adult facilitators. Several non-disabled students get together weekly to support a student with autism and have developed relationships that are likely to continue beyond high school.

This program has been the most rewarding experience that I have been involved with thus far in my career. Students with autism who once struggled to connect with non-disabled peers now express that they have friends and enjoy coming school. Their social skills are improving which will benefit them throughout life. It doesn’t get much better than that!