Paul Geise › Books › Breaking the Label
Overcoming Learning Disabilities and Achieving Success
by Paul Geise
A true story from the student's side of the IEP meeting. Paul Geise was in an Individualized Education Program from second grade until he graduated high school. This is what that was like, what actually helped, and how he went on to college and a career anyway.
Paul was in an IEP from second grade until the day he graduated high school. Every year he sat in his IEP meeting with his mom and the teacher consultants and heard his scores read out loud. No one hid the label from him.
In high school, his reading was assessed at a fourth-grade level, a result he still doesn't believe was right. In his English class, a teacher consultant read the story aloud to his group and then wrote the essay for them. Paul copied it, turned it in, and got a B. Because he knew the grade wasn't his, it gave him no confidence at all.
Algebra went differently. When he couldn't get the help he needed, he found a student tutor and earned a C on his own. That C felt like a win, because it was his.
In college, fear of writing made him drop his first English class four times. On the fifth try he passed with a B, and his professor told him, “You write well.” He later scored 980 out of 1,000 in Business Communications, earned an associate degree in information technology, and built a career in the field.
That's the heart of the book: in Paul's experience, being passed along was not the same as being taught, and the grades he earned himself were the ones that changed what he believed he could do.
The book walks through the parts of school that shaped him, one chapter at a time:
Yes. It is Paul Geise's own account of being in an IEP program from second grade until he graduated high school, and of what came after, including dropping his first college English class four times before passing it with a B.
Students with an IEP or a learning disability label, their parents, and the teachers who work with them. It's told from the student's side of the IEP meeting, by someone who sat through one every year.
The eBook is 37 pages, so most readers can finish it in one sitting. Its chapters cover reading, English, math, testing, grades, hard work, and health and wellness, and it ends with a list of resources.
The eBook is $4.99 on Google Play Books and is also on Amazon Kindle. A paperback edition is available on Amazon.
