Gary David Sills

Being and Teaching Special Needs Gary David Sills

This book is autobiographical in nature, considerably more informal than a thesis or a research paper. My emotional handicaps struck the week before my senior year of high school. This was at a time when "Special Education" was not established. Mental illness was not a comfortable topic, especially in a Christian home.
In this book, my method is to take the reader with me into my struggles, disappointments, and failures in higher education and how I overcame them. As I built skills with troubled teens, I added education from a Christian university that gave me more than adequate tools to teach some of the most difficult to manage students. Limitations in this kind of writing are describing how I dealt with challenges in my classroom without noting research-based methods or other sources.
My memoirs here as a handicapped student improperly diagnosed for many years will be of value to parents wrestling with similar problems. Included in the memoir are many scenarios from my classroom in which I modeled successful responses to situations and explained why; I also offered usable innovations that your teacher will find helpful.