Hey, all.
So here's my situation: I'm a volunteer coach for a robotics team at an elementary school. One of the kids on the team has Asperger's syndrome. While he's sharp as a tack when it comes to the technical side of things, he seems to be struggling with teamwork and collaboration, which are both huge parts of the activities that the club does.
To complicate matters, he's become alienated from the rest of the team. At our tournament recently, he decided that he had figured out a better to do one of the tasks, so acting on his own and without anyone else noticing until it was too late, he erased half the program to re-write it (in the process, overwriting the version of the program that the kids had written together). When the other kids came back to their pit area and saw what he had done, they were livid that he had "sabotaged" them this way. Some of the other team members still aren't speaking to him.
I'm an engineer, not a teacher, and I've never had any training on how to deal with kids with special needs. There are teachers involved in the team, but they rotate from week to week, so I'm the main adult leader for the group.
I see real potential in this kid, and I think that the environment of the club could be a good one to help build his social skills, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how make that happen, especially now that a fair chunk of the club don't want to have anything to do with him.
I know that we've got a number of members here who either have experience working with kids with Asperger's or have Asperger's themselves. Do any of you have any advice for my approach to him or the other kids, or how I can help this kid or patch things up in the group? Obviously, because of privacy reasons if nothing else, I can't go to the kids and say "psst... ____ has Asperger's, so keep these things in mind when you're interacting with him..."
So here's my situation: I'm a volunteer coach for a robotics team at an elementary school. One of the kids on the team has Asperger's syndrome. While he's sharp as a tack when it comes to the technical side of things, he seems to be struggling with teamwork and collaboration, which are both huge parts of the activities that the club does.
To complicate matters, he's become alienated from the rest of the team. At our tournament recently, he decided that he had figured out a better to do one of the tasks, so acting on his own and without anyone else noticing until it was too late, he erased half the program to re-write it (in the process, overwriting the version of the program that the kids had written together). When the other kids came back to their pit area and saw what he had done, they were livid that he had "sabotaged" them this way. Some of the other team members still aren't speaking to him.
I'm an engineer, not a teacher, and I've never had any training on how to deal with kids with special needs. There are teachers involved in the team, but they rotate from week to week, so I'm the main adult leader for the group.
I see real potential in this kid, and I think that the environment of the club could be a good one to help build his social skills, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how make that happen, especially now that a fair chunk of the club don't want to have anything to do with him.
I know that we've got a number of members here who either have experience working with kids with Asperger's or have Asperger's themselves. Do any of you have any advice for my approach to him or the other kids, or how I can help this kid or patch things up in the group? Obviously, because of privacy reasons if nothing else, I can't go to the kids and say "psst... ____ has Asperger's, so keep these things in mind when you're interacting with him..."
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