Jennifer M. Schmidt

Children are often curious about others and ask questions or form assumptions about those they perceive as different in less than ideal ways. By introducing characteristics of autism in a manner that promotes understanding and inclusion, assumptions based on fear or confusion can be avoided, and attitudes of acceptance, kindness, and empathy can be fostered.This book allows the discussion to go one step further by enabling families to share about their child with autism, if they choose, in a personalized, authentic way. The template at the end allows readers to learn specifics about peers with autism and how to be a friend.

Students with autism are often brilliant but struggle to get and keep jobs due to social skill deficits and splinter skills. This book will help students start thinking socially through intentional social skill lessons based on evidence based practice including peer based instruction and intervention. Using peers to teach social skills is an easy way to shift the culture and climate of your entire school building and even district.Readers will take away ready to use lessons, created using evidence based practices, to help students who struggle with social skills become more socially aware and practice strategies to be successful in school while also applying learned social skills in the real world. ""Yes, Please Tell Me!"": Using the PEERSPECTIVE Learning Approach to Help Preteens Navigate the Social World, uses easy to understand terms with specific examples and then walks the reader through how to implement the model. For service providers who are not able to implement the model in its entirety, there are units and lessons available to target specific social skills. This book can be used as an entire curriculum or as stand alone lessons and ideas. It lends itself to use in a variety of settings, age groups, and severity levels.

Let’s create a class instead of the typical social skills programs!"" With this statement began the development of this innovative evidence-based curriculum for secondary students with ASD and their neurotypical (NT) peers. PEERspective is a complete curriculum that teaches high school students self-awareness, self-acceptance, relationship building, conflict resolution, managing stress and wellness, and many other topics that have lifelong impact on students' lives. The curriculum is popular among students with ASD as well as their NT peers, leading to friendships and relationships far beyond the classroom.