The friends are special needs students at East who join students for seminary, the LDS Church's program that allows teens to use one school period to receive spiritual instruction. The students in two classes at East act as peer tutors for others with a variety of special needs and conditions, including Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and learning disabilities. About half of Stewart's special needs students cannot communicate verbally.

"This is a really neat treat for them to get out, get in a new setting, meet some new students and feel like they're part of East High School," Stewart said. "I think they do get overlooked."

But no student, special needs or otherwise, is overlooked in Stewart's class. Peer tutors greet their partners enthusiastically and encourage them to come to class.

"Hey!" shouts a boy, giving his partner a hug and helping him into his coat. "Let's go to seminary!"

Special needs students also are given class responsibilities like leading the music, leading a devotional or acting as the class greeter. Flor Galvan, 17, who has Down Syndrome, walks around the classroom with her buddies, Caitlin Mecham and Christina Lee, and shakes the hand of every student. She sits down to the sound of applause from the whole class. Mecham, a junior, just started working as a peer tutor.

"We kind of have to learn how to pace and we probably don't get as much out of it as we would in a normal seminary class, but it's just such a different experience being with the special needs kids," she said. "They help you see things in a different way."

Lessons in the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are difficult to convey to classes with special needs students, said Tamara Uzelac, who teaches another mixed seminary class at East High. But, at least in her opinion, peer tutors and their partners are learning more valuable lessons.

"Their hearts are being fed," Uzelac said. "You can't be in this class and not leave a better person. You just can't."

To address the variety of needs in their classes, Stewart and Uzelac have to adjust lessons from the traditional preach and listen model. While mainstream classes memorize a set of scripture verses, called scripture mastery, Stewart's students learn sign language to help them remember the idea of the scripture, if not the exact words. Uzelac's students are able to communicate verbally, but she still simplifies her lesson plans to keep their attention. One good method, she said, is engaging all their senses. In a recent lesson about faith, Uzelac's students read an illustrated story with five chronological pictures. The students then closed their books and, with their partners, put the pictures in order from memory. Anyone would be surprised, Uzelac said, by how well her special needs students grasp the concepts she teaches.

"These kids get it," she said. "They just have certain restrictions, like we all do. Theirs are just more apparent."

Stewart has taught full-time in the church's educational system for three years and is in his second year of teaching a special needs seminary class. He agrees the experience has sharpened his attentiveness to every students' needs. For example, he is more likely to pay more attention to quiet or shy students, instead of overlooking them.

"I am more aware of the social needs of students," he said. "Every mainstream student has special needs, too."

Coming to seminary also helps meet the social needs of the mainstream peers. Sophomore Gail Garfield, who just started her second semester as a peer tutor, said she used to be intimidated by the special needs students at school, but now she considers them friends.

"I've made lots of friends that are special needs kids," Garfield said. "We walk down the hall and talk."

Seminary peer tutors are selected at the beginning of each semester. Mainstream students arrive on the first day of class and are told that their class will be a mixed class. Anyone uncomfortable with being a peer tutor is welcome to join another class, but that rarely happens, said East High School Seminary Principal Mark Christensen. More often, students ask to be peer tutors.

"I have never seen a mainstream student mock or belittle or make fun of a special needs student," Christensen said. "It's just touching to see how they respond to each other."

Garfield said she might have declined the offer to be a peer tutor.

"I was a little nervous," she said. "If I had been asked ahead of time instead of being assigned I might not have done it; but now I'm so glad I was put in here." Though most peer tutors only have the responsibility for one semester, Garfield enjoyed the experience so much she requested to continue into the new term.

Teachers have the same experience with their special needs students. Uzelac, who has been teaching seminary for eight years, said she couldn't imagine doing anything else with her life right now, despite the challenges.

"Some days, absolutely, are frustrating," she said. "But no more frustrating than my next period which is 22 guys, football players, and eight girls. It's like teaching seminary in a locker room."

And progress is being made. Two of Uzelac's students, who wouldn't even speak when they were in her class last year, are now active participants. Many of her special needs students can remember scripture mastery scriptures.

But it is mainstream students who are learning valuable life lessons like patience, compassion, charity.

"It's nice to get my special needs students to learn," Uzelac said, "but I think the reason we do it is for their partners."