Last week I also completed reading Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper.  I think this should be required reading for all teachers and students alike.  There are Life Skills classes at my school so our students see all kinds of disabilities.  I have partnered with one of the Life Skills groups in the past and had my third graders be reading buddies with them.  Although the disabled students benefited, my students probably grew a lot more from the experience.  They were actually afraid of the students at first.  As they interacted and discovered that they are just real kids who can't walk, or maybe talk, or function quite the same, they became very comfortable working with them.  After seeing the positive effects of this arrangement, I teamed with that teacher each year after that.  Still, we have incidents every year in which a student teases or in some way hurts the feelings of one of the disabled children.  We try very hard to educate them about what the disabilities mean and to make them understand that they are still people with feelings.

Out of My Mind is told from the perspective of a young girl with cerebral palsy.  She is an extremely smart child, but cannot speak or move her body on her own.  The frustrations she shares are so realistic.  I kept forgetting that the book is fiction.  Knowing that it could very easily be a true story was sobering.  I cried several times during my reading.  I have talked to a couple of our Life Skills teachers about the book.  It turns out their department recently read the book.  We are talking about doing something with it for the entire faculty to help with awareness toward our disabled children. 

If you have not read this book, please do!  It will change you!