Aspergers Syndrome an inside look

In my CEP 452 class we got to skype with a man who has Aspergers Syndrome. I found this very interesting and very educational seeing as I am going into Special Education and I will most likely have students with Aspergers. We talked about how there is a wide spectrum for the severity of this syndrome. The man we talked to was named Paul and he has written short stories about what it was like growing up for him (click here to read one). While I read this it seemed somewhat bizare and sad. One tip he told us was to make sure that the information you are teaching the student is interesting and be able to show them how it connects to their life and other things. He explained to us that he was not interested in learning because his teachers could not tell him why he needed to know was 7x7 was. He also went into detail about how some things need to be structured for him to do while other things cannot have any structure for him to achieve. He also said that it was very hard for him to communicate (face to face) with people. Then he was talking about how he is working on getting a job, and he got upset at this because it is so hard for him to achieve this, it made me really sad at this point while he was talking. I cannot imagine the struggles he goes through on a daily basis. I know talking to our entire class must have been very hard for him (it would have been hard for me even to do) but he helped us all more than he could imagine.