6A - Jodie Bock - response to Ralph Rich

When I first reading Ralph Rich’s paper on Bibliotherapy I was intrigued because I had never heard of that therapy before.  Bibliotherapy is a healing method by which readers may identify with a character to use as a coping mechanism for a behavior or a situation.  They can use a book, poem or any other stories.  I wonder if watching a movie instead of reading a book would also fall under this therapy? Bibliotherapy has been around for a long time.  In ancient civilizations, words or phrases were carved above entrances of libraries indicating that it was a library and was “medicine for the soul” This therapy was popular after World War 1 when libraries were being installed in hospitals to help soldiers suffering from trauma.  This therapy falls into tow categories, clinical and developmental which would take place in a classroom or library.

When using Bibliotherapy in the classroom, the teacher should select the story with care. Like any other story read to the class the story should take into account, age, ability, language and sensitivity and understating. When the teacher selects a story pertaining to a specific disability, they should look for a story that has a child with a disability taking on a leadership role.  They should also look for a plot that has a positive uplifting outcome, has a balance between children with and without disabilities and have the child with disabilities being used has a positive role model.  Once the teacher selects the story then they need to introduce the story maybe even posing questions to the class to get them thinking.  The second stage of the therapy is guided reading where the teacher reads the entire story to the class. The final stage is when after the story is done and the teacher has a recap of it, they then can have a class-wide discussion on it.   The teacher may lead it with some questions to help students openly relate their personal feeling with those of the character in the stories.  Ralph also pointed out in his questions that there are other ways to follow up on the reading, one is by having the children in the classroom participate in a role play about the story.

            Ralph also share some stories that used children with autism as the main characters in the stories.  He mentioned the book, My Brother Sammy by Becky Edwards (1999), emphasized ways to assist a friend or relative who has autism. Since I work at the Rich Center for Autism, I feel that this book might be helpful for us to read to our classrooms during our summer sessions when our typical children join us in the peer role modeling program.

Ralph also posed the question “do I believe that this therapy is an effective means of healing on the soul?”  I don’t know if I believe that it will heal one’s soul but I do believe that it would be a useful tool in an integrated classroom for teaching social awareness and acceptance for our children with disabilities.  I think using books to help open up discussions and portraying our children with a disability in a positive manner can be helpful for the child to have a better self-esteem and for typical children to have a better understanding of the disability and hopefully more compassion for them.  For myself personally, I am an avid reader and feel reading a book lets me “escape” my life and relax for a little while.