by Melanie Catania
An innovative program for special education students started 10 years
ago by the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and Nashville Metro Public Schools
has now gone nationwide through the publication of a new book, “Success
for All Students: Promoting Inclusion in Secondary Schools through Peer
Buddy Programs.”
Carolyn Hughes, Kennedy Center investigator and professor of special
education and human and organizational development, and her former
graduate student, Erik Carter, developed the Peer Buddy program with
their colleagues from Vanderbilt and Metro Schools and authored the
book. Hughes and Carter were spurred to write the book by the hundreds
of e-mails they received asking for more information about the program.
“We were getting requests all the time from across the nation for
more information, and we realized, ‘it has to be a book,’” Hughes said.
In the Peer Buddy program, general education high school students
support, mentor and befriend special education students. These
students, particularly those with more severe disabilities, are often
isolated in separate classrooms and are not integrated in the social,
academic or athletic life of the school. Their general education peer
buddies provide that often missing link with the rest of the school.
The Peer Buddy program started in one Metro high school and eventually
spread to all comprehensive high schools in the district. More than
1,000 special education students have participated in the program, with
some years seeing every special education student in the district
having access to a buddy.
To help the general education students find time to participate in the
program, Hughes, Carter and colleagues worked to have a Peer Buddy
elective class established.
“We worked with the school board, the principals and the administration
to establish Peer Buddies as a for-credit class,” Hughes said. “That
way, the students could devote at least one class period per day to
interacting with the students from the special education classes.”
In addition to spending time in their buddies’ classes, the pairs also
eat together in the lunchroom and participate in activities outside of
school together – in short, they become friends.
“The students with severe disabilities often have limited social skills
and in some cases, it’s just because they haven’t had the practice. So
this is an opportunity to come out and be with people who do have
social skills,” Hughes said.
Hughes said general education students believe they benefit from the program just as much as the special education students.
“It really touches your heart because of the things the general
education students say. They realize the special education students are
really no different from them,” she said. “They say, ‘we are really the
same, we have the same fears, the same dreams.’”
Hughes expanded the program this year to include Vanderbilt
undergraduates, who are serving as mentors to general education high
school students in high poverty schools as part of a service learning
class.
The new book contains detailed instructions, checklists and worksheets
that individual teachers and schools can use to kick off the Peer
Buddies program at their school.
For more information on Peer Buddies, contact Carolyn Hughes at carolyn.hughes@vanderbilt.edu.
Posted 5/10/05