(bright music) - An effective strategy for promoting and supporting the development of social relationships and social networks for students with complex access needs, is utilizing what's called a bridge builder. Now, a bridge builder is simply another person who already is a part of a social network who kind of walks alongside the student with complex access needs, introduces that student to the group and maybe provides some support for the initial days of the student's participation in that social group. Probably all of us have utilized bridge builders in different aspects of our lives.
Certainly, if you take a new job and you're assigned a mentor, that person is a bridge builder. You move into a new neighborhood and you happen to know one person in the neighborhood but not everybody, that person can serve as your bridge builder by inviting you to the barbecue or you know, to the bridge games. Much the same is for a bridge builder for a student with complex access needs. I think there are some steps that make sense to take to prepare a student for that bridge builder role.
Number one, I would think about approaching a student who already has a solid footing within a social group. So I wouldn't wanna pick the shyest student, you know, in the key club or in the running club. I would necessarily say you have to approach the most popular or outgoing student, but maybe a student who you know has some good peer relationship skills, some good communication skills. I would interrogate that student who expresses interest and find out why the student wants to do it.
If you get a sense that that student is a little more on the side of the, oh, I feel so sorry for Johnny and, you know, he always sits alone during recess and it makes me so sad. Maybe that's not the best motivation for a bridge builder. If you could find a student who in kid language, in teenager language, expresses the idea of fairness, you know, it just doesn't seem fair that the kids in that class can't, you know, can't come to our basketball games. Or it doesn't seem fair that that student can't be part of our drama club, then I think that's a student who maybe has the right initial motivation for doing this.
Certainly a training that you would want to have happen for that student is to first, do some activities that build an initial relationship between the student with complex support needs and the student who's interested in being a bridge builder, if that relationship doesn't already exist. So, those two kids need to spend some time together. And I think that, you know, needs to be social time. So, can they eat lunch together?
Can they, you know, join one another for a conversation at recess? Can there be almost an exploratory period? And let me just pick drama club as an example. So, you know, you as an inclusion facilitator, as a special ed teacher, as a guidance counselor, might approach the drama club students and say, there's a student in our school, you may know him, his name's Danny.
He uses a wheelchair. You may have seen him, you know, going up and down the hall, he's really interested in joining the drama club. He's gonna actually come to play practice next week. And we're kind of interested to find out if any of you guys might be interested in sort of teaching him the ropes.
You know, like there's certain things you do in drama club rehearsals and there's certain things you don't. If there's anybody who maybe wants to get to know Danny a little bit more outside of drama club. Any of you guys might be interested in that? So I think those sort of initial introductions just kind of supporting the student maybe first with adult support in the extracurricular or social activity, and then issuing the invitation to the student and then continuing to build opportunities for student with complex support needs and the student who's kind of emerged as an interested bridge builder, building opportunities for them to spend more and more time together.
If the student with complex support needs uses augmentative communication, then I think it's really important to teach the bridge builder how that student communicates, how to be an effective communication partner to the student. I think it would be great to ask the bridge builder, like, do they have any questions about the student, about the student's use of a wheelchair, about how the student communicates, if the student has special healthcare needs. So openness to like there's no, there's no question that's out of bounds, I think would be a good approach to the potential bridge builder and to be really honest, you know, with that student.
Of course you wanna build the ability of the student with complex support needs to answer some of those own questions. And I think as that bridge builder relationship starts to become a bit more mature, I definitely think there's still a role for an adult to periodically do some kind of check-ins with the pair of students. Hey guys, why don't you come have lunch with me in the guidance office on Thursday. I'm interested to see how drama club is going.
And then to sit down and say, how's drama club going? Are there any problems that you guys have run into? Do you need me to run interference for you or are you guys all set? And perhaps even to have a private conversation with each member of the pair because they might not want to say in front of their friend, you know, it's really not working out.
So, those are some of the initial kind of preparatory activities and ways to monitor that pair of students as they develop their relationship.
