Text Set Reflection

At first I struggled to decide on a topic of focus for this assignment because I feel as if I could benefit from research into each of the categories of under represented literature. My decision to focus on persons with disabilities was influenced by my volunteer experience at the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities. In my volunteer work I transcribed books into electronic versions for visually impaired students and I also read and scribed exams for those that needed assistance. As I began to think about the topic of persons with disabilities in literature, I thought back to the students I had worked with and wondered if they ever had literature in their classrooms growing up that they could see themselves in.

At first I thought it was going to be extremely difficult to even find literature depicting characters with disabilities. However, I was surprised to find that there were numerous books that I could choose from. The difficult part was finding books about persons with disabilities written by insider authors. There are very few persons with disabilities that actually write books for and about persons with disabilities. In order to find insider authors I had to do a lot of research to determine in what ways the authors were tied to the disabilities they were writing about. This is what took the most amount of time and what was the most frustrating about the project. Although I had several books to choose from, I was limited in my choices because of the amount of information I was able to find about the authors. Not all of the authors of the books I chose were relatives of persons with disabilities but all of the authors had dedicated their time as teachers and/or researchers and were motivated to understand the many aspects of the disabilities they were writing about.

As I began my critical reviews on each of the books I was struggling to determine what aspects I should focus on that would best inform me on the accuracy and authenticity of the book. I began searching the internet and found a great website that provided me with the information I was looking for. The website is called the Easter Seals Disability Services and the link to the information I used to assess the books for my text set is http://wi.easterseals.com/site/PageServer?pagename=WIMA_Avenues_ReadingOther Books.
Below are the criteria that the website provided:

Books should…
Promote respect and empathy for individuals with disabilities.
Use person first language.
Promote understanding and acceptance.
Depict individuals with disabilities as complete human beings with the same types of strengths and weaknesses as their peers.
Provide accurate information about disabilities.
Focus on similarities between people with disabilities and people without disabilities.
Show people with disabilities taking on diverse and active roles within the community.
Depict integrated schools, work places and communities.
Depict people with disabilities from different ethnic and racial backgrounds and from a variety of age groups.

Avoid books that…
Dwell on what people with disabilities can’t do, rather than on what they can.
Depict people with disabilities as victims or only as objects of curiosity or seek to evoke pity.
Depict ordinary actions and achievements as heroic when performed by a person with a disability.
Depict people with disabilities as helpless or always dependent on others to function in the world.
Use unacceptable disability related language.
Depict people with disabilities as passive observers who take no active role in schools or in their communities.
Fail to show people with disabilities participating in activities accurate for their age group

Following these criteria was a list of many books that depicted characters with disabilities. Along with the information about what to look for in books the site also provided links to teaching about disabilities as well as links about talking to parents of students with and without disabilities about persons with disabilities. This website provided me with background about persons with disabilities that went beyond the texts that I was reading and helped me to better evaluate the literature I had chosen.

I feel that the text set I have created is diverse within its own topic which was one of the goals I was hoping to reach. Each book portrays a person with a different disability which shows that even within a cultural group there are differences that need to be recognized. Not every person that has a disability has the same disability. By choosing a variety of books I feel my text set attempts to reflect more people within this cultural group. However, no matter what, the representation within the text set will be rather limited because there is no way 5 books could represent every individual within a cultural group but I feel my attempts to broaden my understanding of the differences within the culture is a step in the right direction. One thing that I learned from this assignment was that there are many different disabilities and degrees of disabilities within the world and I must come to the realization that even if I continue to build my collection I may not be able to cover every inch of the far reaching topic of persons with disabilities. What I liked about my final book selections was that each book steered away from generalizations by speaking about one specific person with a disability rather than persons with disabilities as a whole. This project was a great learning experience and a great tool that I can build on throughout my career as an educator. The experience I have gained has increased my confidence in my abilities to determine what is considered good diverse literature. Although I in know way consider myself an expert, I feel my motivation and commitment to understanding the process of selecting literature has made me better able to determine what an accurate and positive representation looks and sounds like.