darius goes west

I've been hearing a lot about the documentary Darius Goes West lately, a documentary about a young man with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy named Darius Weems. This film has been highly recommended (by Oprah, for instance) for use in middle to high school classrooms - to both raise awareness about the disease (which is the number one genetic killer of youth worldwide) and to "propel the positive & empowering message of Darius Goes West as far and as wide as possible." (from dariusgoeswest.org) To achieve this goal, The Darius Goes West website will ship out a free DVD to educators and has made available a "standards based curriculum" to accompany the film. Arrangements can also be made for Darius Weems to attend a video-conference Q&A in your classroom.

Admittedly, I hadn't given a lot of additional thought to what I'd heard about Darius Goes West - for one thing, if I land in middle school, I'll be teaching middle level science (although an interdisciplinary approach that investigated the cause of Duchenne's, research like gene mapping, treatments, and potential cures could be very interesting). However, while channel surfing the other night, there it was, being shown on the Halogen channel. I decided to watch it, and it was a very touching movie about a 15 year old young man who knew his life would be cut short (his brother died as a result of Duchenne's at 19) and wanted only to go west and get his wheelchair "pimped" on MTV's "Pimp my Ride." It definitely evoked sympathy for Darius (especially since MTV wouldn't touch his wheelchair or invite him on the show) and inspired you to also pay attention to issues of inclusion and difference. Of course, it also encouraged you to support Duchenne's research. Overall, I thought that the documentary was good.

As I watched, though, thoughts expressed in one of the readings from our special needs class kept springing to mind. I can't recall the title of that article, but it contained a section decrying the "poster child" method of raising awareness of (and funds for) diseases and/or disabilities. One danger, we were told, is that the emphasis becomes the generation of revenue, with the poster child simply shilling for disease research. A good treatment of this issue can be found in another article, "From Poster Child to Protestor". Author Laura Hershey's particular beef is with the Jerry Lewis telethon, and she expresses the following complaint about manufacturing poster children:

Now we were taking on one of the biggest barriers of all: the paternalistic attitudes which prevail in our society, and which are reflected so dramatically in the annual telethon.

So, for anyone reading this blog, I toss the ball into your court. What do you think about this? Is finding a charismatic, sympathetic character and casting him or her into the role of "Poster Child" good, mostly good, tending to do more harm than good, or just wrong? Let me know what you think. And do watch Darius Goes West if you get the chance.

the zombie zapped the zebra's head

One of activities we chose for our kindergarten buddy was Silly Sentences, found in chapter four of Fox's Word Identification Strategies. When we administered the emergent literacy profile to our buddy, there was some confusion around the beginning sounds section. When we asked him to identify the beginning sounds of the listed words, he named the beginning letters rather than the sounds. For example, when given the word "more" and asked "What sound does more begin with?," he answered "m". He even offered the letters "c-h" instead of naming the beginning sound for the word children.

Given his responses, we thought that Silly Sentences exercise could help reinforce the concept of beginning sounds. We came up with a half dozen or so silly sentences, crafted with his interests in mind - like many meerkats munch on millipedes - and wrote them on index cards. We had our buddy read each card and identify the common beginning sound. He caught on quickly and enjoyed the exercise, which also included illustrating each silly sentence. After we went through the prepared cards, we encouraged him to craft his own silly sentences on blank cards. This is when he really showed us that he "got it." One of his silly sentences was "The zombie zapped the zebra's head." Wow!

Another strategy identified by Fox that really struck me was that of using rimes to sidestep exceptions. For example, in a short word with one vowel followed by a consonant, the vowel is usually short. We can teach it this way and then start addressing all the exceptions, one of which is the word "find." Fox points out that given the vowel/consonant rule, the i in find should be pronounced like the i in dish, but isn't. It certainly seems like this could be a point of serious confusion for kids, hence Fox's assertion that teaching rimes is preferable. It seems much clearer to teach a child that -ind makes the sound found in find, kind, and rind and that -ish makes the sound found in dish, wish, and fish. I really liked this strategy and the way Fox described it.

I'm a little sad our time with our kindergarten buddy is at an end for now, but I'm excited to meet our second grade buddy next week.

PS Please think twice about using plastic baggies for the "Baggie Book" activity on page 165. There has to be another way to accomplish the desired effect without using a large quantity of environmentally un-friendly ziploc plastic bags. It's just wasteful.