An important part of running an autism classroom is teaming.  No one usually informs you while you are training for your career, that you may walk into a classroom and have two, three or four other adults there working with you on a daily basis.  If you are the classroom teacher, they will be expecting you to be the instructional leader in the classroom.  What a great deal of pressure that is in your first autism classroom.  If you are a para-professional, the teacher will be expecting you to support the teaching endeavors.  With this many people working in the class, everyone will need to build their collaboration and communication skills quick, fast and in a hurry!  The most important things to remember, however, are to respect others, empower others, motivate others, write down expectations, verbally discuss the written expectations and give each person in the room a copy of the written expectations.  A written plan for classroom roles and responsibilities will be helpful in creating an organized and effective classroom staff team.  Having everyone on the “same page” and aware of their individual responsibilities helps each person function efficiently as part of that team.  As a team, have each person establish their morning break (if applicable) and their lunch break time.  (Try your best to schedule activities which can be handled by a smaller amount of staff members during all the lunch break times.  For example, recess, sensory time, structured play may be activities the students enjoy and stay focused on and can be handled by a smaller number of staff members.)  Once all staff members, including you, have established lunch break times, it will be easier to finish the roles and responsibilities chart.  There will be some items where there is no doubt that the classroom teacher will need to take the lead for that role or responsibility.  However, there will be several activities and tasks that can be shared or can be completed by any person on the team.  Start with the items the classroom teacher definitely has to conduct or address.  After those are listed, then talk with the team about activities they have a skill at doing or an interest in doing.  For example, if you have a person who is very skilled at art, they could possibly be in charge of creating ideas and scenery for the bulletin boards or running the art lesson for the classroom.  Another example could be if you have a person who loves to sing, they could possibly run the opening morning circle part of the day, while including lots of music.