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One essential way to support students with autism is to "show up" for them. Showing up means connecting and building relationships with learners and trusting students to show us what they most need to boost their learning and social growth. Snow shares scenarios from her years as a special educator that showcase ways educators can interact and set up conditions to strengthen academic and social skills for students--especially autistic students and those with similar challenges. Strategies she describes that create productive matches between student and environment or between student and teacher are: offering freedom of movement and arrangements that address sensory needs, allowing "soapbox" moments for autistic learners to talk about strong interests, and giving emotionally stressed students "space" but following up.

In this essay, I reflect on over 15 years of experience in the field of special education to explore diverse ways of engaging students in opinion and argument writing. I outline, according to the Common Core standards, the progression of writing in the early years with an emphasis on opinion writing through the later elementary, middle, and high school years, when the focus shifts to argument writing. I suggest that bias is a central feature to both opinion and argument writing that can uphold students' ability to sustain interest in their writing as well as contribute to writing that is dynamic and rich. The essay highlights how three particular teaching stances -- action-oriented, Socratic Seminar, and visual -- can offer meaningful learning experiences for students who learn in unconventional ways, such as those with Learning Disabilities (LD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]