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For ten years I was an 11th- and 12th-grade English teacher at a K-1 2, fully inclusive, public school. Our mission was to respect the individuality of every student, to promote each child as capable and unique, and to hold all students accountable for their personal best. Classrooms were integrated with mixed-abilities from several cultural backgrounds because we felt a diverse learning environment was the best learning environment. Teachers and students were expected to be flexible, creative, self-disciplined and hard working. Maybe this is why I feel silly. It only occurred to me recently to teach students the importance of questioning how adolescent literature portrays what it means to be "able" and "normal" in any given society. Although my students represented a wide spectrum of abilities, talents, limitations and struggles, I failed to coach them to probe books for how they construct what it means to be normal. My epiphany to this perspective arrived after reading Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
Almost all literature occupies some sort of binary between able and disabled bodies, yet I didn't facilitate my students to think about exploring books in this way. Reading Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, however, made me wonder how teachers might encourage adolescent readers to challenge and/or applaud the status quo of normal schooling. Yes, Alexie's text is controversial for several reasons, but it fosters a great deal of progressive thinking, too.
Arnold Spirif s Story
Alexie's style, voice and originality are always entertaining, and I agree with Bruce Barcott (2007) that if it appears that an Alexie line "has an unexpected poetry to it, that's because it was written by a poet." Each chapter in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is written lyrically. In addition, illustrations crafted by Ellen Forney make the reading experience unique. Her artwork, used as a part of Arnold Spirit's on-going diary, delivers amusing layers to Alexie's story and promotes an alternative way of communicating the narration. Forney's drawings can be used to initiate further interpretations and conversations about how students perceive others who are not like them, especially individuals with disabilities.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the 2007 National Book Award for excellence....