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Give students time to read and

set up your classrooms to

enable them to make good

choices.

In graduate school, I learned about

Nancie Atwell's ideas for teaching

reading. Whether you are reading her

book In the Middle or The Reading

Zone, Atwell's ideas are pretty simplis-

tic--- JUST READ! Try not to worry so

much about having your students pre-

dict, connect, visualize, question, sum-

marize, or re-tell during their reading

time. Just simply give them time to

read, the tools to select the best books

for themselves, and the right to make

choices.

That being said, as educators, we al-

ways think we know what is best for

our students. Believe me, I am guilty of

this too. After all, I read books for

entertainment, for knowledge, and

basically I read books for a living.

That's right; I actually consider reading

to be part of my job description. How

am I supposed to convince young peo-

ple to read the best new books if I am

not reading the best new books?

Yet, no matter how many great books I

have read, my students always prefer

to select their own books for inde-

pendent reading. They like recom-

mendations but ultimately the choice is

theirs. I am usually asked to "sell" two

or three books at a time. After they

have listened to each book description

and my excitement about each book,

they then weigh their options. Does the

book have enough action? Will it be

“easy” to read? How many pages does it

have? Will I relate to the characters?

While it is probably not shocking to

anyone, each semester I require my

students to read at least one book with

a Deaf Character. Similarly, the stu-

dents are given three or four book

presentations during the sixteen-week

semester. They select their own books

based on various requirements. This

semester, one of their independent

reading book presentations included a

Deaf Character novel. The criteria was

simple– select a fictional novel with at

least one deaf character. For part of

their presentations, the students had to

(Continued on page 6)

The Right to Have and Make ‘Choices’

Volume 1, Issue 4

Spring 2008

Letter from Sharon 2

New in the bookstore

for 2008

2

What’s on my bookshelf 3

On TV & the Web 4

On the Internet 4

On Cable 5

On the Internet 5

Why I join organizations 8

Inside this issue:

"Young Girl Reading,

1908" by Mary Cassatt

Dear Readers,

The winter is always difficult for me. I loathe the cold and the lack of sun. Even with the approaching Spring, the month of

April was extremely difficult both personally and professionally. I was overwhelmed and even worse, I felt like I did not have

any choices. Just the idea of choice leads to a sense of freedom. Yet, our students do not always have such luxury. They are

told what classes to take, when to do homework, when to eat, etc. The least we can do as educators is enable them to have

choice when reading. Nancie Atwell would argue that this „choice‟ makes our students stronger readers and more motivated

to read. I happen to agree with her.

Since we‟re talking about choices (read my featured article on The Right to Have and Make Choices), I think we should also

have the right to change our minds every now and then. Although I have received numerous requests in the past to broaden

my blog to children‟s literature, I have been insistent (and perhaps a little stubborn) that my blog is a place for adolescent

literature. At the International Reading Association convention, I met Myron Uhlberg who discussed his picture books, and

stories about his parents which have absolutely stolen my heart. He argues that picture books are not only for children but

for adults as well. Professional Organizations, like the IRA, are places where educators should go to renew their teaching

souls and to learn. (Read page 8 to find out my reasons for attending and why I believe you should too.) Point taken...this

summer I will be expanding my blog to include both picture books and children‟s literature.

At the time of this letter, I have 181 contemporary books listed including some upcoming publications on the "100+ Books

and Counting" list on my Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature Blog (http://pajka.blogspot.com/). As always, I love hear-

ing from you about the books you are reading! Feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Happy Reading,

Sharon Pajka-West, Ph.D.

Letter from Sharon

New in the bookstore for 2008

T4 by

Ann Clare LeZotte

(September 2008)

My Most Excellent

Year

by Steve Kluger

(March 2008)

Silent Magic

by Simon Carmel

(2008)

The Golly-Whopper

Games

by Jody Feldman

(March 2008)

The Sign for Drowning:

A Novel

by Rachel Stolzman

(June 2008)

mailto:[email protected]

Mask of the Jackal by Christine Harris

(2008)

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Hardcover: 198 pages

Vendor: Christine Harris/ Launch Press

ISBN: 978-0-646-48531-7

Morgan Steele is fascinated by Ancient

Egypt and mummies...until he is alone in a museum base-

ment and strange things begin to happen. What starts as a

school assignment ends with Morgan and his best friend

Jordy, a Deaf Character who uses sign language to commu-

nicate, involved in the disappearance of a mummy, kid-

napping, madness, a terrifying attempt to escape danger

and a search for immortality.

New Avengers #39 (March 26, 2008)

Reading level: Ages 13– Adult

Comic Book Publisher: Marvel

The Secret Invasion is here! Award-winning

artist David Mack brings his amazing talent

to NEW AVENGERS to illustrate a major story

in the life of Deaf Character Maya Lopez (aka Echo!) In Mar-

vel's preview, they ask: Have the Skrulls (Skrulls are a race

of shape-shifters and warriors in the Marvel Universe) infil-

trated the Avengers?; Is Maya Lopez the only one with

proof?; Will she live to tell the tale?; All this and a major

Avengers hook up!

Echo debuted in Daredevil (v2) #9(1999) as a love interest

for Matt Murdock. She now appears in the arc of the most

recent issues of The New Avengers. As a teaser, Marvel Uni-

verse includes a picture of Daredevil in the issue… WAIT, is

Daredevil in the issue? You‟ll have to read it yourself to find

out.

Ellie's Ears by Elizabeth Boschini & Rachel

Chaikof (illustrator) (May 2008)

Reading level: picture book

Ellie‟s Ears is a story of a deaf girl who uses a

cochlear implant.

Okay, I don‟t have this one on my bookshelf just

yet but it is on its way.

The Sign for Drowning: A Novel by

Rachel Stolzman

Reading Level: Ages 15– Adult

Hardcover: 192 pages

Publisher: Trumpeter (June 10, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1590305876

The story is of Anna who witnesses the death of her sister by

drowning and later develops the belief that she can communi-

cate with her through sign language. As an adult, Anna

adopts a deaf foster child named Adrea. The story includes

the struggles of parenting, adoption, and how best to educate

a deaf child. Anna, Adrea and numerous other characters in

the book use American Sign Language to communicate.

Stolzman debut novel is about healing and growing. I loved

this book! This is the perfect read for teachers of the Deaf,

especially for hearing teachers who often question whether or

not they belong in the field.

Dad, Jackie, and Me; The Printer; and,

Flying Over Brooklyn by Myron Uhlberg

Reading Ages: Children– Adult

Picture Books Publisher: Peachtree

In Dad, Jackie, and Me, Myron explains

that he began to understand the connec-

tion between Jackie Robinson who endured numerous racial

taunts and his own Deaf father who experi-

enced a similar type of prejudice through-

out his life. Inspired by his father being a

hero, the author shares the story of a deaf

printer who saves his co-workers with the

help of sign language during an emergency

at the newspaper plant in The Printer.

The author‟s mother appears in Flying over Brooklyn, about

the snow fall in 1947. The snow is a meta-

phor for silence. “All sound was muf-

fled.” The main character who flies over

Brooklyn can not hear a thing and must

rely on his other senses.

What’s on my bookshelf

Sweet Nothing In My Ear , a play by Playwright

Stephen Sachs which was adapted for a Hallmark Hall

of Fame television movie, aired in April on CBS . Now

it is available for purchase at local Hallmark stores

and on-line at www.hallmark.com.

Sweet Nothing in My Ear (the play) premiered in 1997

at The Fountain Theatre, where Sachs was the co-

artistic director. The television version was directed

by Emmy Award-winning Joseph Sargent and stars

Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin and Golden

Globe winner Jeff Daniels.

In the play, Laura (Matlin), who is deaf, and Dan

(Daniels), who is hearing, are a young couple who

have been happily married for nine years. Their son

Adam was born hearing, but by age six he has lost

his hearing. When Dan

decides to pursue the

possibility of a cochlear

implant for his son, a

divisive wedge is driven

between husband and

wife that threatens to

shatter their marriage.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame website now features

behind the scenes footage and four interviews with

Jeff Daniels, Marlee Matlin, Joseph Sargent, and

Stephen Sachs. All interviews are captioned.

On Te levis ion and On the Web

Matt Hamill (aka The Hammer) is the subject of an upcoming

movie entitled "Hamill" about the early life and wrestling career

of the Ultimate Fighter. He was a three-time NCAA Division III Na-

tional Champion in wrestling while attending the Rochester Insti-

tute of Technology (RIT) in New York. Matt has a silver medal in

Greco-Roman wrestling and a gold medal in freestyle wrestling from the 2001 Sum-

mer Deaflympics.

The movie, which stars Eben Kostbar, has been criticized by some members of the

Deaf Community because it features a hearing actor. However, Hamill supported the

casting of Eben due to his wrestling experience and the fact that Eben is fluent in

American Sign Language. "Hamill" is set for a 2009 release and is being filmed this

fall in Los Angeles and Rochester, N.Y. The movie is produced by K'Dee Miller and

will be directed by Joseph McKelheer.

In Product ion

A memoir by Emmy winner Irene Taylor

Brodsky, HEAR AND NOW, winner of an Audi-

ence Award at last year's Sundance Film Festi-

val, chronicles her deaf parents' decision to un-

dergo cochlear implant surgery and follows

their journey from a comfortable marriage of

silence into a new, complex and challenging

world of sound.

Paul and Sally Taylor, both age 65 and deaf

since birth, led rich lives filled with jobs, hob-

bies, passions and the support of a devoted fam-

ily. Considered pioneers in the Deaf Commu-

nity, Sally worked as a teacher, a college secre-

tary and even lent her “expert” lip-reading skills to law enforcement investigations. Similarly, Paul, an engineer

and retired professor, helped develop the TTY. Just before retirement , the Taylors announced that they planned

to get cochlear implants. Their decision was met with mixed feelings by their hearing daughter. "After this sur-

gery, who will they be?" she asks. "Will they still be deaf people, or hearing people, or will they be something

in between? What if the implant doesn't work? What if one of them can hear and the other one can't?"

HEAR AND NOW is a love story about two people who find each another and grow together strengthened by the

challenges they face as Deaf individuals. They cannot possibly foresee the impact the surgery will have on their

relationship, or the emotional and neurological challenges of adapting to a world of sound. Will they be able to

overcome these challenges when one of them appears to have more success with the operation than the other?

For show schedules, visit http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hearandnow/

On Cable

On the Internet

Bug, of the blog site Fookem and Bug:‘Hear all, See all, Know all, and Share all’,

wrote an article about the “Little Rascals” character Darla who was played by

child actress Mollie Mae Gottschalck Barron for a short time before becom-

ing ill with the chicken pox and losing her hearing. After that, her acting ca-

reer ended . On April 2, 2008, the actress died at the age of 87.

To read the story, visit: http://fookembug.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/former

-little-rascals-star-was-deaf/

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hearandnow/

includes books that are hot off the presses with some

copies of books that are not yet published. Neverthe-

less, we made our way to the university library and

once there my students selected numerous books at a

time and quizzed me, “have you read this one… and

this one?”. If I answered “Yes” that I had indeed read

the book, I noticed that those books either made their

way back to the shelves or were placed in a „reject‟

pile. What was going on here? When one of my stu-

dents was clearly frustrated and complained that I must

have read nearly all the books in the library (or at least

all of the Deaf Character books in the section where we

were standing), I then explained (what I assumed that

they already knew) that I had read most of the books in

the section because that was my research interest.

What the student explained surprised me. He and his

peers wanted to discover a book that I had not read.

Not only did my students want some autonomy to make

their own choices, they wanted book anonymity too.

Just because I have read the same novels that my stu-

dents planned to read certainly does not mean that I

have had the same experiences that they will have. The

reader and the text are not isolated from one another.

The „transactional theory of reading‟ establishes the

reciprocal nature of the reader. Rosenblatt (1978)

introduced the term transaction to describe the lived-

through experience of reading a text. The terminology

replaces interaction which implies that the reader and

the text are separate from one another. Transactional

theory asserts that readers approach a text with their

own history of personal, cultural and linguistic experi-

ences. Once the reader and text transact, the reader

constructs meaning from the text. Prior to that, the text

is considered nothing but a series of symbols

(Rosenblatt, 1982). Because of this, my students could

(Continued on page 7)

explain the Deaf Character‟s communication methods,

any stereotypes or misconceptions about deafness that

were included by the author, whether the plot focused

on the “issue” of deafness or whether the character(s)

just happened to be deaf, if (or how) the Deaf Charac-

ter reflected diversity, and if the author appeared to

describe a “realistic” deaf person. Much of the work

was based upon their own definitions of diversity, what

a realistic deaf person was, etc. As long as they could

defend their analysis, it was acceptable.

To begin the search for Deaf Characters in literature, I

gave them several websites and lists with book titles,

and places where they could find such books. I tried

not to notice how quickly and easily my Blog (http://

pajka.blogspot.com/) was discounted and how unwill-

ing my students appeared in borrowing any of my Deaf

Character books from my office. After all, my office

(Continued from page 1)

(cont.)

The reader and the text are not isolated from

one another… Transactional theory asserts

that readers approach a text with their own

history of personal, cultural and linguistic

experiences. Once the reader and text

transact, the reader constructs meaning

from the text. Prior to that, the text is

considered nothing but

a series of symbols.

when reading Paul Fleischman‟s "The Binnacle Boy" in

Graven Images. Sarah, the sister of main deaf character,

Tekoa, falls from a cliff. As a class, my students argued

whether or not Sarah decided to fall to her death in an

act of suicide or whether while she was being chased

she had not paid attention and accidently fell. My stu-

dents pulled quotes from the text and cited numerous

reasons to defend their interpretations. In the end,

their academic arguments grew so heated that they

had to agree to disagree although for the remainder of

the semester I watched as they muttered with smiles,

“she fell” and “she jumped” to their peers. Regardless

of the character falling accidentally or by choice, my

students realized that they had choices. Their close

reading of the text and their transactions with the text

assisted them in understanding the story better than if I

had told them all the answers (which I don‟t have). They

quickly discovered that their teacher does not know

everything… and that is „okay‟.

Atwell, N. (1998). In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing,

Reading and Learning, 2nd Edition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transac-

tional theory of the literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois

University Press.

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1982). The Literary Transaction: Evocation and

Response. Theory Into Practice, 21, 268-77.

read the exact same novels that I have read and come

away with vastly different experiences than I had... and

in most cases, that is exactly what happened.

My students had been concerned because they thought

that if I had read the books that they wanted to read, I

would know all the answers. Perhaps they interpreted

the book differently from the way I interpreted it. My

interpretation had to be the correct one, right? Wrong!

Like my students, when I was in high school I believed

that my teachers knew everything there was to know

about literature and English. On my very first day of

teaching, I had an epiphany. I needed a teacher and

realized that I was the teacher. Suddenly there was this

feeling of not knowing all the answers and realizing that

neither had my high school teachers.

Shared Inquiry, a method of learning in which partici-

pants search for answers to fundamental questions

raised by a text, enables students to read in a way that

has them take what the author has given and try to

grasp its full meaning, to interpret and to reach an un-

derstanding of the text in light of their own experi-

ences and reasoning. The teacher‟s role is not to im-

part information or give her opinion, but to guide stu-

dents in reaching their own interpretations of a text.

During the Spring 2007 semester, students in another

one of my courses used a shared inquiry approach

(Continued from page 6)

(cont.)

"...to see the reading act as an event involving

a particular individual and a particular text,

happening at a particular time, under

particular circumstances, in a particular social

and cultural setting, and as part of the ongoing

life of the individual and the

group" (Rosenblatt, 1985).

Once the reader and text transact, the reader

constructs meaning from the text. Prior to

that, the text is considered nothing but a

series of symbols

Read the YADC blog!

http://pajka.blogspot.com/

E-mail us!

[email protected]

I am a huge advocate for professional organizations. Professional organizations speak for educators

and our students at the federal, state and local levels. It allows us to meet and learn from professionals.

Whether it be through journals, newsletters, listservs, conferences, continuing education courses, the

opportunity and need to share and learn with others is so important for our own education. Aside from

that, being able to associate with individuals who do what we do, understand our joys and frustrations,

and who have weathered similar storms is an important part of renewing and refreshing ourselves and

our careers. There are some disheartening statistics about teacher burn out. I have been asked nu-

merous times by peers if I am worried about burning out. I like to think that professional organizations

give me the opportunity to be a Phoenix- the legendary bird rising from the midst of flames and ashes

fully reborn. April was an extremely hard month for me both professionally and personally but during

that first week in May when I attended just one day of the International Reading Association conven-

tion, even before meeting Myron Uhlberg, I felt free. I brushed April's ash off my wings and started to

soar.

Here are a few of the professional organizations that I support….

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) As the Washington, D.C. Representatives for the As-

sembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN), my job is to spread the word about the organization and to recruit new members.

Membership dues are $20.00 per year and it includes the journal, The ALAN Review. Their website includes tons of book recom-

mendations and a book club! Check out the website http://www.alan-ya.org/ and consider joining. I love ALAN because they

focus on adolescent literature, a part of literature that is often neglected.

The International Reading Association (IRA) The IRA is supportive of including Deaf issues through the Spe-

cial Interest Group. The regular individual membership is only $36.00 per year which includes the bimonthly newspaper Read-

ing Today. You can now join the SIG without any annual dues! IRA provides Sign Language Interpreters for all of the hundreds of

sessions at the convention. Check out the website http://www.reading.org/ and consider joining. The IRA had one of the best

conventions that I have attended.

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Membership dues are $40 per year which welcomes you in

an organization devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education since

1911. This organization provides a forum for the profession, along with an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their

professional growth. Check out the website http://www.ncte.org/ and consider joining.

Why I Join Professional Organizations… and why I think you should too.

Favorite Spring Moment:

Meeting Myron Uhlberg

http://www.alan-ya.org/

http://www.reading.org/

http://www.ncte.org/

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Education

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