tion and choosing. Research shows that high-needs students benefit significantly from cross-age and peer tutoring in areas including self-esteem, locus of control and social skills. If Lucys attitude toward school is positive, she is also more likely to graduate. Some or all of these benefits could have played some role in the collaborative effort to enhance Lucys education by cross-age tutoring.Lucys teachers collaborate to try to provide the education she needs without the stigma of being different. A resource room is always a stigma of sorts. While in the classroom, Lucy provides a cyclical relationship between herself and the younger students. In the cross-age tutoring model, Lucy can further benefit from the repetition needed to tutor her first grade tutees. Repetition is important for MR students and those learning a new skill. A repetitious schedule, reading materials, classroom activities, etc. promotes memory retention for MR students. Lucy learns to stay on task as she monitors the younger students being on task. Cross-age tutoring works because tutors and tutees speak a more similar language than do teachers and students. Unlike adult-child instruction, in cross age tutoring the expert party is usually not very far removed from the novice party in authority or knowledge; nor has the expert party any special claims to instructional competence. Such differences affect the nature of discourse between tutor and tutee, because they place the tutee in a less passive role than does the adult/child instructional relation. The students without high-needs accept Lucy because she is on their level of cognition; thereby, improving social relations between students with and without disabilities. Being closer in knowledge and status, the tutee in a peer relation feels freer to express opinions, ask questions, and risk untested solutions. This is why conversations between peer tutors and their tutees are beneficial even though the relat...
