Every year we end up in the same spot with back to school looking down upon us. We make sure we get the supplies and we maybe get extra for the classroom. We make sure the backpack from last year is cleaned out and hope there wasn’t a sandwich squished in the bottom. We get new shoes, new haircuts, and start trying to get the kids into bed by an actual reasonable time.
Unfortunately all of that is just logistics. None of that actually makes a school transition go well.
A 2024 randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders studies the impact of coaching on families making the big school transitions. The results are a big deal for every parent of a kiddo with a neurodiversity.
The Building Better Bridges (BBB) was developed by researchers at UCLA. The goal of the program was to provide coaching to caregivers of students with autism who were transitioning from preschool to elementary or elementary to middle school.
They recruited 170 families in communities that had limited resources and were racially and ethnically diverse across 4 ares. 83 families were given coaching and 87 families were given a resource binder.
Families who received coaching were taught
How to communicate effectively with schools
Their child’s educational rights
Self- advocacy skills
Helping prepare your child for a new school
The data they collected was focused on adult perception of the child’s adjustment to the new classroom.
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Data showed the caregivers that were coached felt that their child’s transition was easier than the parents who were just given a binder. The teachers, who did not know which families were coached and which were given a binder, expressed the same sentiments as the parents. The difference was measurable.
Let that sink in. The intervention being studied was about the parent- not the student. And the difference was clear to the teachers.
Luckily, you do not need a personal coach to replicate what those parents did. The core of BBB is four things:
Learn how to create collaboration and a true partnership with the school
Become knowledgeable about you and your child’s rights
Clearly advocate for your child by telling the teacher who your child realy is and what is working and what has proven to not be effective.
Work with your child to be prepared for the new classroom.
Because of this research, I wanted to empower my readers with an easy to implement strategy to start this school year off in a positive and effective way. A very simple strategy you can do is write a letter to your child’s new teacher(s). This isn’t just something that is nice to do. It is an evidence-based strategy to help you, your child, and their teachers to start the school year in a partnership.
Tomorrow’s blog gives you the template.
Wells, K. B., Tang, L., Nava, J., Kasari, C., Arias, M., Fagen, M. C., Lester, P., Meza, D., Norona, A. N., & Jones, F. (2024). Building better bridges: Outcomes of a community-partnered new school transition intervention for students on the autism spectrum. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 55, 3100–3117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-024-06285-7
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