Study Guide for Help for Billy

This chapter by chapter study guide follows the ground-breaking book, "Help for Billy: A Beyond Consequences Approach to Working with Challenging Children in the Classroom. It is created for teachers to help in creating trauma-sensitive classrooms. This study guide is a must for any teacher, school, or school district needing to answer the question, "What does this really look like to have a trauma-sensitive focus?" It is ideal to use for a book study group of educators to generate discussions, explore new approaches, and implement effective strategies for students who exhibit challenging behaviors.

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW, is the co-founder and owner of the Beyond Consequences Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Forbes has worked in the field of trauma and healing since 1999. She is an internationally published author on the topics of raising children with difficult and severe behaviors, the impact of trauma on the developing child, adoptive motherhood, and self-development. Coming from a family of educators, Forbes has a heart for children in the classroom and for finding ways to teach the child who seems unteachable. Her signature style is to bridge the gap between scientific research and real-life application to equip parents, educators, and therapists with practical and effective tools. Much of her experience and insight on understanding trauma, disruptive behaviors, and adoption-related issues comes from her direct mothering experience of her two adopted children and through her close mentorship of a young adult who suffered fourteen years of severe early childhood trauma.

Jim Sporleder
Jim Sporleder retired in 2014 as Principal of Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA. Under Jim s leadership, Lincoln High School became a Trauma Informed school, gaining national attention due to a dramatic drop in out-of-school suspensions, increased graduation rates and the number of students going on to post-secondary education. These dramatic changes at Lincoln caught the attention of Jamie Redford, who spent a year filming the documentary, Paper Tigers, which tells the Lincoln story. The documentary was released at the May 2015 Seattle International Film Festival. Ever since this premiere showing, it has received rave reviews and is being shown to overflow audiences around the country. Jim is currently working as a traumainformed coach/consultant as well as a trainer with the Children s Resilience Initiative based in Walla Walla, Washington. His travels as a consultant, keynote speaker, presenter and trainer have taken him all over the United States. Jim is married, has three daughters and five granddaughters. In his spare time, Jim enjoys fishing, hunting, but most of all, spending time with family.