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Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key is a book about a 4th grader in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, who because of his ADHD, finds it impossible to control his body, his thoughts and his mind.  When he tries to read, the words slide off the page; he cannot sit still and control his hands, and cannot read or listen for extended periods of time.  He takes medication (most likely Ritalin), and the meds work best in morning but then wear off and his behavior degrades, and he does things like swallow keys.

The novel tells the story of Joey in a sympathetic fashion, that he is simply a normal kid, with no special powers or secret tricks, whose family life is no more or less challenging than anyone else’s.  He has an absentee, alcoholic, ADHD-beset dad; a mom who returns to raise him and is trying to control her alcoholism; and he was raised in the interim by a psychologically abusive grandmother who also has ADHD.

There is much to be desired in Joey Pigza from a current-day special education perspective, but the reader needs to remember that the book was written in 1998, and while Joey should have had an IEP and would most likely have had a diagnosis of OHI, ADHD, and was most likely on Ritalin, that information is not entirely relevant to the narrative of the book.  While details around the special education process are thin in the book, the arc of the story is more around Joey and the kind of person he is than with the specific therapy he receives as a special education student.  I feel the portrait of Special Ed as representative of what students might get as a treatment partner is a sympathetic one, and he does great good for Joey when he is with him.

There are three quotes from the book that really stuck with me:

99. ‘In fact nothing was scarier than me knowing something was wrong inside me, something I couldn’t see silently eating away at me like termites, and it was going to ruin me even when I was being good.  I was scary to myself.’

117.  ‘”My feeling is that you will be okay.  You do have a medical problem.  You also have some behavior problems.  I think both of these can be managed.  I think your brain is fine.  You have slugged it out for a long while and now you have hit the wall.  You couldn’t have done that if something was seriously wrong.  We’re doing the test just to be on the safe side.”’ Doctor talking about giving Joey the brain test in Pittsburgh.

153.  Then she said the nicest thing a non-family person has ever said to me.  She said, “You know, Joey, the medication has helped settle you down, but you have been a good kid all along.  You are naturally good.  I hope you know that about yourself.  You have a good heart.”’ Harold’s mom speaking to Joey after he returns to the special ed room in his school, reflecting on his blowing out Harold’s birthday candle.

These quotes tell Joey’s story at three different parts of the book: toward the end of the first part where Joey summarizes his thoughts about his life and “sickness”; when Joey is meeting with a doctor about getting additional treatment; and then in the last few pages of the book, where Joey’s true nature is revealed – that is he is, at heart, a good kid.  Although the book presents a simplistic, pat ending, at its heart the book looks to tell the story of a young man whose humanity is keenly felt and strong, if somewhat awkwardly displayed.  As a reader, I was satisfied with the story it told, even if it doesn’t hold up to a more modern, special education-focused analysis.  The lesson of looking for the good in all children is one that all special educators can glean from this book.

Bibliography

Gantos, J., Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key.  Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. C 1998.

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If You Could Be Mine

SPED 771 Prof Perez

November 1, 2017

If You Could Be Mine, as seen through the lens of Criteria for the selection of young adult queer literature

In this marking period’s ELA for 9th graders, they will be asked to read If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan and determine whether/how the novel succeeds against the nine criteria for relevance as a book of YA Queer Literature.  Once students have completed a short essay in their notebooks, the class will review the nine criteria in individual (pair/share groups), in pods and as a whole class, to compare the analysis of the book.

The two most important criteria in the framework are curricular relevancy and literary merit.  On its surface the novel certainly meets the relevancy criteria: it is about a female couple in love in modern-day Teheran, where lesbian affairs are illegal and harshly dealt with.   While the strength of the narrative is debatable, especially around the paper-thin development of the Nasrin character, the novel appropriately falls within the LGBTQ literature area.   The book does have literary merit for a YAL reader, although it must be said that there isn’t a tremendous level of complexity to the text and the story is told in a straightforward linear chronology.   That said, for a 13-15 year old reader, the ideas around being gay, a transsexual, undergoing a life-changing operation, or living in a (modern-day) society that would punish or harm a person for merely seeking out a natural love…those are ideas that will be a challenge for some readers.    The efficacy of windows and mirrors depends upon the location of the reader.  For a North American reader, there will certainly be a lot more windowing than mirroring; for a reader from a Muslim theocracy or a steeply influenced Muslim culture, I think the reverse would be true, and that readers with awareness of cultural norms within Muslim-majority countries will have a different approach to the novel.  That said, there will be opportunities for empathy across a broad readership, as the novel deals with universal and human emotion and the suppression or hiding of ones feelings.   If You Could Be Mine does successfully challenge stereotypes of a broad range of people, including homosexuals and transsexuals (Sahar, Ali, Parveen) who are presented, for the most part, as real people with real needs and problems as they struggle to lead fulfilling (and safe!) lives.  This verisimilitude should resonate with students and lead them to reexamine their point of view on “other” people.  Social Justice and equity are a casualty in the book – Sahar and Nasrin (and Parveen, etc) live in a society that doesn’t allow the free and open expression of a woman’s love for another woman, although it does recognize and fund gender reassignment surgery, which Sahar considers as a means of continuing her relationship with Nasrin, albeit in a non-conforming and not entirely fulfilling manner.  Pride, resiliency and self-actualization also take a hit in the novel.  The power of the state to control the free expression of one’s sexuality is shown through the lengths that Sahar will go to remain with Nasrin, and ultimately, neither character realizes their dream and makes significant concessions.  If You Could Be Mine has at its core an examination of sexuality and what is appropriate or not in a modern (theocratic) society.  Offsetting Heterosexism and Homophobia/

Challenging Heteronormativity is in fact core to the book and at the essence of its disappointment – Sahar and Nasrin cannot figure out a way to continue their relationship in the face of a religiously repressive state and the weight of Nasrin’s parent’s goal of an arranged marriage for their daughter.

Bibliography

Farizan, S., If You Could Be Mine, Workman Publishing, New York, New York c 2013.

Logan, S.R., Lasswell, T.A., Hood, Y., Watson, D.C. Criteria for the selection of young adult queer literature, English Journal.  May 2014.

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Two helpful strategies I have employed in my self-contained math class are Think Pair Share and See Think Wonder.

Think Pair Share is an effective teaching method because it allows the students to work independently on specific problems, and encounter productive struggle, while they seek to arrive at correct answers.  Once a period of independent activity ends, students can then share out with one another their answers to questions, and that is a worthwhile endeavor indeed, as they are required to articulate why they did what they did and explain it so that their peers understand their thinking, or not, ion which case sometimes lively and zesty discussion can follow.

A related strategy is See Think Wonder, wherein students observe each other’s work, and verbally or in writing describe what they see, explain their thinking around what they see and then talk about what they wonder about the result of the work, its importance or significance.  This can sometimes be a more challenging VTR routine than Think Pair Share because it requires them to use more higher order thinking in the Wonder phase of the exercise.

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How Does Your Positionality Bias Your Epistemology?

The biggest takeaway from the article on Positionality for me is that to forge connections, we must teach and model how to listen.  There is a lot in that statement, and it applies to both teacher and student, as each shares a role and a responsibility in that action.  So what does it mean to me?  It means that it is critically important to listen to the students when I am teaching.  It may seem obvious that one should do that, but it is worth stating that I have a lesson I am trying to impart, and that action has three parts to it: my delivery, the students reception of my delivery and my understanding of their reception.  There are an unknown number of variables involved, from the clarity of the lesson to the number of students attending that day and their comprehension of the material, and finally my understanding of their understanding.  And all this can change on the fly based on student(s) not/understanding the material.  Sheesh – this can get complicated!  When I am at my teaching peak, I am listening to the students correctly and understanding the full range of cues verbal and non-verbal that they are understanding the material as I am presenting it.  When I am met with misunderstanding, it is my job to alter my approach and then confirm their understanding.  The responsibility of the student is to be engaged in the lesson, open to its contents, to participate and contribute.

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Book Review of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

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Book Review of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

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While reading Running with Scissors an old maxim ran through my mind:  “Truth is stranger than fiction.”  I mean, it could not be possible to live with and among a family that put 19th century circuses to shame with their brand of oddball eccentricity: giving away and taking in adolescent children almost willy-nilly, Bible “dipping” seeking answers to major life questions, looking for prophecy in poop, advocating not attending school as an adolescent and hatching and executing a fake suicide attempt to gain the necessary cover.

On a conventional narrative level, the book recounts the early adolescence of Augusten in 1970s/1980s Massachusetts, a child of a loveless marriage who is disowned by his then-alcoholic professor father and abandoned by his loony mother who dreams of being an accomplished poet…into the arms of an arguably crazier group of loons… presided over by an unconventional psychiatrist…who is treating the memoirists’ mentally ill mother.  Even Hollywood couldn’t come up with a pitch like that.  (Although apparently they did, and made a movie of the book, which sank like a stone, but that is for another review).

While there is power and authenticity in the form the book takes as a memoir, this reader at least wonders if the author strains credulity in parts - that couldn’t REALLY happen, could it?  A memoir by its nature is focused on the self by way of a recounting of episodes and incidents in ones’ life.  Perhaps there are some fabulations in the book?  I made it a bit of a parlor game to try and discern where the author was using (a little or a lot of) exaggeration or artistic license.

It is interesting to look at the book through a feminist lens.  The women characters in the book run the gamut from “completely liberated, ” which is to say free from the restrictions of conventional society (Deirdre, Vickie), conventional (Hope, who lives at home, doesn’t have a partner and works as a receptionist for her father), to batshit crazy (Agnes, a toothless materfamilias who eats dog food, darns socks and chronically sweeps the house) to those in personal conflict (Fern, caught between the respectable life of a minister’s wife and the desired love of Deirdre).

There are three significant male characters in the book: an irresponsible doctor and two gay males  - an unstable pederast and the author. The paterfamilias is a quack doctor and a sham father who adopts children willy-nilly, and hands out powerful prescription drugs to minors.  The author does his best to flourish in this chaotic environment as an adolescent, free from the structure and discipline of school, which perhaps he avoided because of a learning disability, since he repeated 3rd grade twice?  Or perhaps wanting to keep his sexuality under wraps for fear of bullying or recriminations?

Patriarchal bias would look at this family of circus performers and say that the women had been under the thumb of the fallen doctor and Hope alone really offered any…hope…for a strong character living the examined, rational life.  While working for her father she provides friendship, stability and support to those in need, and doesn’t need to follow a traditional path of procreation and marriage to live a full life.  Burroughs memorably refers to Hope as being “…like a paramedic for the psychologically collapsed,” (234).