School days in the FOCUS classrooms welcome a positive environment for special education students to work with other Southwest students, known as peer tutors. The peer tutors, who enrolled in the class taught by Brooke Claypool and Marilyn Foerster, focus on teaching special education students academic skills, as well as life skills that can be used outside of the classroom.

“For whatever the [special education] students are doing [in school], the peer tutors are working alongside them and are keeping them moving through the assignments,” Claypool said.

The FOCUS program, according to Blue Valley, serves “students with moderate to severe cognitive challenges.” These challenges include “language delays, attention issues, [needing] assistance in daily living and [having] behavioral challenges.”

Foerster, who has worked with special education students for the past 23 years, works specifically with the peer tutors in the SMD room, which is for special education students with severe multiple disabilities.

“It’s a little bit different [in the SMD room] because students are lower functioning,” Foerster said. “[The peer tutors] might be helping them with actually transitioning into other rooms in the building.”

In Claypool’s classroom, peer tutors assist higher functioning special education students in subjects such as social studies, math, english and science.

“[I like] talking with [the special education students] and becoming really good friends with them,” said junior peer tutor Andrew Person, a student of Claypool’s class. “We usually have a lot of fun in that class.”

As peer tutors work with special education students over the months, relationships and bonds begin to build.

“The best part is just seeing the relationships because the peer tutors are the future employers of the students that we have and are the people that will advocate for them in the long term,” Claypool said.