be allowed to do so. When I observed, the other students in the class did not seem to be bothered by Eric’s actions—in fact they didn’t even seem to notice. But the teacher was not comfortable with this and asked that the autism outreach teacher come and help Eric do something with the other students. She set up a “peer buddy” on the playground once a week whose responsibility was to play with Eric. The little girls that volunteered to do this were great and seemed to enjoy the challenge of getting Eric to connect.
Our first autism outreach teacher left the school system after Eric’s fourth-grade year. It was hard to see her go. She had been so important to Eric and to me. Fortunately, the person who took her place was also wonderful. He was trained and experienced in the field of autism and worked well with the regular education teachers. He was a resource for Eric throughout the remaining years of public school. Eric no longer needed one-to-one support in the classroom. The new outreach teacher’s primary support for Eric was to consult to and meet with Eric’s teachers on a regular basis. He also attended all the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) meetings.
In addition to helping Eric, the outreach teacher was a support for me personally. Here was someone I didn’t have to educate about my son. He already knew the uniqueness of these students and nothing surprised him. He helped me to see some of Eric’s strengths that I hadn’t been able to see. He also served as a go-between for me with the teachers. If Eric were getting bad grades or if I were seeing problems Eric was having in the classroom, I would call the outreach teacher. He would then contact the teacher to discuss how things were going and offer solutions. The teachers could talk about their frustrations or whatever with the outreach teacher, something they would not feel comfortable doing with a parent. Teachers also seemed to respond better to suggestions from another teacher with experience working with these students than they did to a parent’s suggestions. My relationships with Eric’s teachers over the years were less complicated because of the support of the outreach teacher. At difficult IEP meetings, the outreach teacher was extremely helpful. There were several times over the years that he would help me defend Eric’s need for services when the school would try to remove supports. He helped the other members of the team understand that Eric was doing well because of the supports and that to take them away would be a mistake.
Eric continued with inclusion throughout the remainder of elementary school with very few significant problems. The teachers and the principal were supportive most of the time. School was not easy for Eric and he didn’t enjoy going to school. He had to work hard to hold it together during the day. The numbers of kids in the class and the noise and activity levels were difficult for him to handle sometimes. Luckily, the academics were fairly easy for Eric overall but his writing was very slow and made it hard for him to keep up. Homework was long and tedious and Eric had problems getting himself organized. He required one-toone help at home with most assignments.
As the years went by the people at the elementary school, the teachers and the students learned more about autism and came to understand Eric and accept him for who he was. It helped that the students in his class were told about his autism each year. This is a very personal decision that must be made carefully and with the approval of the person with autism. It may not be the right choice for all students on the autism spectrum. We discussed it with Eric and explained why we thought it would be helpful. He agreed that the other students should be told. We knew Eric’s behaviors would set him apart from the other students and that they would know something was different. When they understood it was the autism that made it difficult for him to communicate or made him act oddly at times, they were much more patient and supportive.
The autism outreach teacher talked to the class about Eric’s autism each year. (Eric was out of the classroom during these discussions.) He did a great job explaining the autism at the level the students could understand. He talked about it in much the same way as I did when explaining the diagnosis to Eric. He talked about how all children have differences and some can do things better than others and that everyone can do something well. He had the students talk about what they did well and what they had trouble doing. He then asked them to share what things they had seen Eric do well. The students had the opportunity to ask questions about autism and about Eric’s behaviors. Eric had very few bullying experiences in elementary school and I think educating the students had a great deal to do with that.
Middle school
I began worrying about middle school when Eric was in the third grade. I had heard and read other parents’ stories about bullying and social problems in middle school. I dreaded leaving the smaller, intimate campus of his elementary school where everyone had known him for years. I knew everything would be harder for Eric and that he would need as much preparation as possible for the transition.
I have a very vivid imagination. The picture in my mind of middle school was of total chaos, constant bullying, flunking classes, and Eric wandering the halls lost in a sea of students. Middle school was not like that. There were only a few bullying episodes. Eric never flunked any classes, and he learned to navigate the large campus fairly easily. This is not to say there weren’t problems, because there were. Middle school brought what were definitely the hardest years of public school for Eric and for me as his mother. But we both survived the three years of middle school relatively unscathed and those years actually turned out to be good learning experiences for both of us.
Preparation for the transition to middle school was important. It began in elementary school, in the fourth grade, well before the actual transition. When we had Eric’s IEP meeting at the end of fourth grade, our focus was on the skills he would need for middle school. We wanted to work on these skills during his last year of elementary school. We included goals in the IEP that targeted independence, social skills, and organizational skills (skills he would also eventually need in college). I knew these were weak areas for Eric and could be problems for him in middle school.
In addition to preparing Eric, I also needed to prepare myself for the transition by learning as much as I could about middle school. I talked to other parents of children on the autism spectrum who had been through middle school to find out what was helpful. I talked to friends with “typical” middle school children about what the student needs to be able to do in middle school. I called the guidance counselor at the middle school and asked her questions about the middle school student’s responsibilities. She explained about the “team” teaching concept used in our middle school and the role the guidance counselor would play when Eric came to her school.
At the end of fifth grade, when the transition to middle school was looming ahead of us, we had a very important IEP meeting. I requested the meeting to take place at the middle school, not at the elementary school where it would normally have occurred. I also invited everyone I could think of who could be helpful to us during this transition. The expected members of the team were there: the autism outreach teacher, the exceptional children’s (EC) representative from the elementary school and the EC representative from the middle school, the principal of the elementary school, the occupational therapist from the school system, and Eric’s current elementary school teacher. We also invited a middle school teacher to attend, someone who knew the sixth-grade curriculum. Eric’s sixth-grade teacher had not been chosen yet, or they would have been included. The guidance counselor from the middle school was also there. It was necessary to get the people who had worked with Eric in elementary school together with the people who were going to support him in middle school. The information that was shared during the meeting was crucial to Eric’s smooth transition to middle school.
Middle school meant there would be many changes, and change was not easy for Eric. At this age he was less rigid about his routines than he had been, but I knew he still needed time to prepare for the newness of everything he would be facing. Over the summer before middle school we talked about his new school quite a bit and drove by the school, pointing it out to him. Visits to the school were also helpful and we went there several times during the summer to familiarize Eric with the campus. I also arranged for Eric to get a copy of his class schedule early. We were able to walk through his schedule at the school ahead
