Al Capone Does My Shirts

I really enjoyed reading Al Caponse Does My Shirts and discussing the issues surrounding people with dissabilities. As someone studying Deaf Education, I have a real passion for learning as much as I can about people with disabilities through reading scholarly articles, literature and discussion. Not only did I enjoy this past week's novel, but I also found the Linton article to be especially pertinent and important to discuss. Linton's focus on language and public percpetion of people with disabilities was really interesting. As future educators, I think it is especially important that we engage in discussion about dissability to better understand our future students. With the popularity of mainstreaming, it is inevitable that everyone will be responsible to educate special needs students.
I really enjoyed the historical fiction element of Al Capone Does My Shirts. I think engaging in a discussion about the differences in attitudes and language of the 1930s and today is a productive way to learn more about the topics and issues at hand. My Questioning the Text Paper revolved around looking at the historical attitude towards dissability, particularly autism, and how it has or has not changed over the years. I think positive changes had developed, but I also think there are things that are very much the same. For example, the Flannagan family was always searching for a cure for Natalie. At first it may seem like this attitude has changed in the last 75 years, but I'm not so sure it has. I think the same "something needs to be fixed" attitude is still prevelant especially with the medical advances of today. If this weren't true, cochlear implant technology for the deaf would not be nearly as prevelant as it is.
This past week's class has really inspired me for my final project. I chose the topic of dissabilities to focus on for my text set. I look forward to researching more about the literature available and analyzing the attitudes this literature portrays. As I mentioned in class the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is an fascinating book written from the voice of an austistic teenaged boy. I've already begun rereading it, inspired by the video we watched in class. I hope to develop a well rounded personal library that definetly includes an extensive collection of literature that focuses on people with dissabilities.