DEDY


 * Members: Damaris, Eunji, Dawny, Yakira**
 * Unit: HIV/AIDS in Brooklyn**
 * Grade: 5th grade.**


 * Book: "Quicksand: HIV/AIDS in Our Lives" by Anonymous. **
 * Genre: Nonfiction **




 * DISCUSSION**

--Eunji This nonfiction/autobiographical book was originally geared towards 7th graders, but the language and concepts were simple and explicit. There were personal autobiographical stories inter-weaved with informational sections, with very simple language, so I think most of the book can be used by 5th grade students. Of course, the teacher needs to use her judgment to sensor some information out, such as sex or the death of the "main character" of this book. This book goes by chapters, so using only the relevant chapters for information and narratives seems very convenient for classroom use.

There were two chapters in this book that seemed especially relevant to our unit! One of them was "Lifelines: Still be a Friend." The chapter talked about how Jay felt he needed a friend who cared and listened, followed by an informational section about "How can you be a good friend to someone with HIV/AIDS?" I think a chapter like this is perfect for a discussion of how to be friends, and that it's okay and safe to be friends with someone who has HIV. Another chapter I liked was the one called "False Fears: Ways the Virus is Not Spread." It talks very specifically about how sneezing, bugs, saliva, tears won't spread the disease. I personally like the explicitness of the book, while it was still appropriate for children (most of it). It's very simple to understand.

--Dawny Being that children are curious by nature, and have many working questions about such a subject matter as HIV and AIDS, a very natural course for lesson planning is definitely providing them with facts about the danger of spreading. I found this chapter very knowledgeable and straight forward about how they are **//not//** spread--in essence, dispelling a lot of the myths we have come to believe about this disease. This is an excellent starter to our unit's subsequent lessons to our students about how to be good friends to children with HIV or AIDS, in a section called "Can I be friends with someone who has AIDS?" This is then a great foundation for the activation of **schema** for our children in later lessons.
 * Chapter: "False Fears: Ways the Virus is Not Spread"**

In particular, I enjoyed the section which addresses "//Is it safe to sit next to someone with HIV at school...?//" as well as "//Is it safe to play sports with someone who is HIV-positive?//" Both address very real-life questions, concerns and subjects of curiosity in which fifth graders face and live with in an everyday setting at school. Both answer these questions with the fact that, YES, it is safe to sit next to another child with HIV or AIDS, and that they do not spread through bodily contact. Discussions may be initiated in which students may confer on how also then hugging, holding hands and playing with another child with AIDS is safe.

--Damaris When you read the first chapter of the book, the author gives great comfort to the audience because he/she encourages people to not keep the issue of HIV/AIDS a secret. If you, or a loved one, is affected with the disease(s) then you should speak the truth. The chapter fits well with the curriculum on the notion of how do families cope with family members having HIV/AIDS. How can I teach my children about the illness and help them not feel guilty, ashamed, or scared about the information they are given. As well, the chapter opens up about the originality of AIDS/HIV. //Quicksand// engages the viewer to ponder more about where did the illness come from? I had no idea that there is great research on the studies of chimpanzees and how there was a transmission between ape and human. The first person affected with HIV/AIDS was located in Congo, Africa in 1959. The book will have the students motivated to read more about the facts hidden within the pages and would want them to explore the bigger picture of the disease.
 * Chapter One: Why I wrote the book?**

As well, I felt relieved to read the language of the book that was "kid friendly" because I know when I was in middle school I turned away from books that had difficulty vocabulary. I agree with Eunji that the text can allow students to easily explore the context of the matter and have the opportunity to reflect upon the issue at hand.

--Dawny To respond to Damaris and chapter one, I found it quite sad that the author made the painful decision to write his/her book anonymously: "//The reason I can't put my name on this book is the reason I knew why I had to write it.//" The author speaks about the fact that now with new medical breakthroughs and more open discussion about these diseases, it is in fact //"...not a big deal in America anymore//."

But however, it is still a stigma that is judged and makes people fearful and uncomfortable as the author points out. I appreciate how the book chooses not to beat around the bush and lays out these circumstances out in the open from the start to its readers--as well as including a story about real life "Jake" and the facts concerning, again, how HIV and AIDS are not spread through everyday touch in its later chapters. It is a book people whether with or without much knowledge about AIDS (I fall into the latter) can appreciate, absorb, and emulate within their own experiences of being stigmatized.

In this way I felt the book is extremely user-friendly, while also adding higher-level thinking/critical thinking discussion platforms with the story about "Jake." Students often connect to a a topic which is introduced to them through the eyes of a real person. Student-led //**accountable talks**// are endless!

--Yakira I agree with all three of you. I really like the fact that this book is actually very straightforward. The author doesn't beat around the bush and I don't find it confusing at all. I think this is a great book to use with fifth graders because I'm pretty sure it will answer most of their questions if not all.

The book has certain places where it explains more in detail the scientific facts and information about HIV; this might be helpful for whoever is going to create our science portion of our unit. I agree that some of the ways HIV can get transmitted will of course have to be omitted like the sex part and the exchanging of needles for the appropriateness of age level.

I think that our students will find this book informative and I hope that when we teach our lesson on how we can still be friends with people who have HIV, they will have a better understanding as to how HIV can be transmitted and that it's not a virus that is transmittable by air; they will realize that you can talk to, be friends with, play, hug someone and use the same restroom facilities with someone who has HIV.

--Damaris Chapter on "False Fears" I agree with the notion that everything is straightforward. The author emphasized the concept that HIV/AIDS cannot be transmitted by air or sharing someone's cup. From a child's perspective, they think that if the infected person coughs, they would hold their breath. This chapter can help the class understand that we should treat people with HIV/AIDS with empathy and understanding of the disease. We should not be afraid of them because they are human like us. I liked how the author's family perspective was also changed by Jay's diagnosis and he explained the process where they used paper plates for him or paper towels in the bathrooms. How can we help children and families understand that HIV/AIDS is not just a common cold that you can catch. This can be further explored throughout the curriculum unit.


 * Book: "Positively" by Courtney Sheinmel. **
 * Genre: Fiction **




 * DISCUSSION**

-Dawny I was absolutely touched with how easily this author relates to her readers--our young students--and thus works to activate schema and connecting to the constructivist method of learning in which students build on experience easily expressed in this story by Sheinmel. Based on their younger age some students may not be able to, life-experience-wise, connect to loss in family but may easily build on this for discussion with the class based on loss of a pet instead and even deeper through this protagonist's vivid story of her ill mom--and eventually HERSELF. It contains extremely kid-friendly and relatable vocabulary and writing, "//The doctors at the hospital said the reason Mom had pneumonia was because she also had a disease called AIDS. They said Dad and I also had ot be tested to see of we're infected with it too. Dad wasn't, but I was//..." After losing my father to cancer when I was also 7 years old I felt as a kid I would have benefited from reading this book because it put the disease and effect on the family in a very genuine and relatable light. I really liked this book.

The storyline envelops much of our unit's work on dispelling myths about the contraction of HIV and AIDS for our 5th graders. It includes how she as a child was not sick, but could one day become sick. It included how she contracted only HIV from the umbilical chord, but explicitly explains how having HIV did not make her a "sick" kid. This was an easy way I felt I could I could teach my kids about the fundamental differences between HIV and AIDS. I really wanted to use this story-line in addition and complimentary alliance to the Arts lesson plan #8, "The Global Faces of AIDS: Photographs of Women in the World" in which students engage in student-led discussion about "loss" through disease, the emotions and feelings in the aftermath, and the production of art pieces by the students which personalized the photographer's mission through the medium of art!

-Eunji

I definitely felt the same about the impressive kid-friendly word choices. "I was HIV-Positive, which means the virus that causes AIDS is in my blood." The illness was described in a very kid-friendly language, making it easy to understand and relate to.

I was most impressed about how the book deals with such serious topics such as death of a family member, divorce, and AIDS all in one book. The book had enough description to encourage empathy in the children, but not too much description so children would not be overwhelmed. I always wondered how elementary teachers should deal with loss. I loved the way the author chose to talk about it:"A car drove by, like it was any other day. Why was everything still moving? I felt like everything should have stopped...Mommy, mommy, mommy. I said it over and over again in my head...Mommy. It was a weird word. It was like two words put together, like a compound word: "Mom" and "me.""

I love this book. It talks about very serious topics, but it is not a hopeless book. Emmy meets other children who have HIV and she no longer feels alone. I think this is great to use in classrooms, although I'm not sure if I'd read the whole book with a fifth grade class. It depends on the students of the class, especially because this is a very long book for fifth grade, with heavy concepts.

Damaris Sanchez

"I love you to the sky," said Emmy, a child infected with HIV and witnessed her mother die from AIDS. The story is such a compelling find where we enter through a child's perspective on her mother dying slowly and her long journey through surviving the disease. I love how narrative and deeply thoughtful the story details on a child's perspective of the disease. This will be a valuable tool for a whole classroom setting because for a fifth grade class, students can either relate to her anxieties, fears, concerns, and so much more. Also, Emmy touches a little on being a child from divorced parents and how she is coping with the idea of her father having another family, and overall the death of her mother. The class will witness the amount of bravery and motivation this little girl has to believing in positivity and not giving up on hope.

Emmy's story reminded me of my mother and how as a child I always feared of losing her because of her health and age. It is that constant fear of losing someone special from your heart brought the true essence of the story and how Emmy tried to cope with not only losing her mother but mentally dealing with the situation as a whole. This book can be implemented as a writing subject where students can free-write how they felt about each chapter or it can also be an art integration where the class can illustrate what they saw from each scene.