Meet Alex and his friends Max, Lily, Bella and Jack who are all members of the A-Team. “A” stands for both Awesome and Autism. Join Alex as he helps us understand Autism and teaches us about his strengths and challenges in addition to those of the fellow A-Team members. Observe how social situations in school can lead to various conflicts or confusion. Then, participate each week in A-Team meetings, led by their teacher Ms. Corina. Learn how Ms. Corina helps the members of the A-Team address various social skill challenges. Review strategies, steps, and actions to proactively address common social skill challenges, such as: compromising, being too silly, being too bossy, being flexible, dealing with losing and more. See how Ms. Corina uses Top Secret Mission cards to outline key steps and strategies that can increase success with school, work, and friendships. This book is an introduction to “The A-Team Presents…” social skills book series and curriculum. The series helps teachers and parents proactively develop social skills as well as deal with a range of common social challenges. Notably, this is the introduction book in the “The A-Team Presents…” series of social skill books to support social-emotional learning. This Intro book introduces and discusses autism, while the rest of the books in the series don’t mention autism explicitly. After this Introduction book, each story unfolds from the perspective of one of the A-Team members. Every book focuses on a specific social skill, without mentioning autism. In this way, parents, teachers and administrators will find these books to be an invaluable resource for teaching social skills to ALL students, with or without autism. Courtney Butorac has been supporting kids and adults with autism and also their families for 25 years as an elementary school special education teacher, preschool teacher, camp counselor and behavioral therapist. She has pioneered new ways to support social learning within her school district and is an enthusiastic member of a behavior and autism intervention team that engages district-wide to help teachers develop the knowledge and tools to support students with autism in their classrooms. Courtney has designed and facilitated powerful professional learning for educators that focuses on how to teach social skills to students with a broad range of disabilities and how to support behavioral needs in the classroom. Additionally, Courtney has guest lectured multiple times at the University of Washington's early childhood special education program. Years ago, she and a group of her students with autism formed the A-Team friendship group to tackle the common social challenges facing her kids. These students helped inspire the "The A-Team Presents..." characters and book series. Courtney has both a Master's Degree in early childhood special education and her Board Certification in Behavior Analysis (BCBA). Courtney lives in Seattle with her husband, who is a fellow educator, and two young and energetic sons.