Feb. 27 update

I recently found a very disturbing article that goes along with my issue. It is from 1996. The title of the article is A Model of Factors Affecting the Treatment of Disabled Individuals in Organizations

I have only just begun reading the article, but some of the facts I have found so far are very concerning, especially when I am living this situation. I found it disturbing that only 34.6% of disabled individuals were employed at the time this article was written. Also, those who are disabled are often given low status job offers that offer little chance of advancement. OK, so the person may be disabled, it doesn't mean they can't do something. Also, the income level of the disabled is often up to 35% less than non-disabled people's average income. What about all the medical bills and special equipment people have to buy because people hardly ever seem to make the proper provisions.

This blog isn't intended as a rant, but I could sure go on about this. My issue is beginning to hit me hard personally. So if I'm stuck like this, this is what I have to look forward to? Why are people so afraid, so unwilling to make allowances for this? Is it that big of a deal to put in elevators or ramps, or to teach children not to stare? Is it really that difficult for people to just get along, whether they are in a wheelchair or not? Granted, I might run over your foot with a wheel, but it isn't intentional, so what's the big deal?

Feb. 22

Survey Monkey has allowed a question to be skipped that shouldn't have been, so I am reposting a link just to make sure nothing was wrong with the other.

Click Here to take survey

Feb. 21 Children Story

I located a children's story I wrote awhile ago. I cannot draw for anything, but I may use ideas from it and create a multi-genre writing based off of something similar to this:

One little girl sat separated from all the other kids. She felt sad and alone.


A little boy came over to her. “Hi, I’m Tom! Won’t you come play with me?” The little girl looked up at him shyly. “I’m Sarah. But I can’t play.”


Tom looked at Sarah puzzled. “Why not?”


“I can’t run and play,” responded Sarah. “Why not?” Tom again asked. Sarah looked down at her legs sadly. “I’m cripple,” she answered sadly. “I can’t run and play with you.”


“Oh,” Tom answered. He turned and ran off.


Sarah watched him run off. She felt like she was going to cry. She watched the other children playing. She saw that Tom was with the other children now. She picked up her crutches and began to leave.


“Wait!” someone shouted from behind Sarah. Sarah turned and saw Tom running towards her. Tom came up next to her, gasping to catch his breath.


“Can you color?” Tom asked, pulling out a box of crayons and paper.


Sarah’s face lit up. “Yes!” she cried out excited. “Cool!” Tom giggled. “Let’s go to the table and color together!”


So Tom and Sarah went to the table and sat down. They spent their recess together, coloring and laughing.


As the bell rang, ending their recess, Tom and Sarah looked down at their drawings. Tom’s was of two people standing together and smiling, seemingly good friends. Sarah’s was of a little girl coloring together with another child, the handicap gone and forgotten.



I want to look into how to incorporate something like this into my research paper.

Feb. 20

I have revised my survey slightly. The link is the same but here it is again.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1UZUfN244h3vjvA4uAzDeg_3d_3d

Feb. 18th

I have created my survey and posted a link if anyone wants to review it for mistakes.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1UZUfN244h3vjvA4uAzDeg_3d_3d

I have also sent out an interview request but I am waiting for a response.

Feb. 14 2009

So my big progress for the week was completing my annotated bibliography. Outside of reading and writing for it, I have done nothing else towards my project for the week although I will be working on questions for the interview and survey this weekend.

Crap Questions

Double question: Do you like your classes or today's lunch special?

Wrong choice question: Which genre is your favorite: fiction, non-fiction, or mystery?

'Fuzzy word' questions: Should bad people be let loose?

Cover the world: What do you think about the Catholic priests?

Jargon: Did the IV or DV remain constant?

Kitchen sink: What do you think about STU? Are the professors decent? Is the univerisity too small and limited? How do companies Regard degrees from STU?

Dream questions: What do you want to do with your life?

leading: Why did Bush do such a horrible job?

hearsay: What do you think about your classmates productivity?

fallout: Do you watch TV? Are you overweight? Do you eat snacks while watching TV?

Feb. 8 2009 Update

I have been pulling together sources for my annotated bibliography. I decided to JSTOR and I hit the jackpot for some information pertaining to my topic. Several articles, although slightly outdated, gave some me some interesting ideas.

One spoke of a little "intervention" program that presents elementary aged children with situations involving a peer with a disability. They then give the students a chance to discuss and ask questions about the disability or about anything for that matter. The students were then given a "quiz" to see how they responded compared to a test they did before this program.

It made me wonder if I could somehow work out something similar in a school. Although legally it would probably be impossible to work with elementary aged children, I have been wondering about the used of my high school. My high school has implemented a "house system" with mentor groups. Mentor group takes place each school day and is the same group of kids from freshman year all the way through senior year. I'm debating about approaching the school and trying a small study on an "intervention" program, but due to the ages of these teenagers it may not be as beneficial.

Also, being a writer, I found an article that spoke of children's books that teach children about physical disabilities. I wrote a short one my senior year of high school. It was very short. However, I was wondering about adapting that idea and creating my own. I could then integrate it into my research paper as one of the multi genre sections that could also show an example of the ways an intervention program could be created for children to help them understand. I discovered that past research shows that most children begin discriminating against those who are physically handicap around the ages of 4 and 5. If there weren't so many legal restrictions I would love to work with a group of preschool age children and see if a difference in attitude could be created. But C'est la vive with all the sickos in the world...

Interview Report

On February 5, 2009, I interviewed A3. She spoke of her experiences of growing up in the Bronx.
A3 grew up in the Bronx in a Puerterican neighborhood. A3 said she had the "best of both worlds" living in the Bronx. She also grew up in a bilingual household with her grandmother who only spoke Spanish. She likes to kid around that she created Spanglish.
Growing up, it was her mother, her grandmother, and her older sister. They put a lot of focus on her culture and she enjoyed growing up in that atmosphere. She enjoys a campus such as STU where the population is very diverse. S. Florida is not the same as what she was used to in the Bronx. A3 referred to it as a “culture shock” when she moved to S. Florida.
One dynamic A3 misses is the metropolitan urban atmosphere that existed in the Bronx.
When I asked A3 how she liked living in South Florida now, she admitted that she missed New York. There were many false promises for Florida and the lack of reliable public transportation made her miss the Subway back home. She also wondered about strange questions fellow students would ask her about being a New Yorker.
I asked A3 about the Subway and she just loves it. However, with the debate going on about raising the price for ridership, she decided she might rather walk and be able to get a slice of pizza and a soda.
A3 described the Subway as a wonderful place to go and make observations. She told me how when she was living there full time she loved to just ride on the Subway with a notebook and make observations on what went on around her. She said the strangest experience she had was one night when she was out late, a man dressed as Cher came and sat down next to her. Her upbringing in New York, surrounded by such a diverse population let this event not even phase her.
A3 described times when she just rode the Subway just for the sake of riding on it. She even fell asleep on the train and ended up at the wrong stops on occasion. She also enjoyed the reliability of the Subway rather than the lousy transportation in S. Florida that A3 and a friend waiting for over an hour for a bus to come. She said coming from New York, where trains ran about every 4 minutes or so, she couldn’t understand how this system could be so slow.
As the interview came to an end, she said how she misses New York.

Feb. 3 2009 Update

I have been working on revising my proposal. For the most part it was stupid mistakes. However, I am trying to decide how to spruce up my observation. So far I have come up with "I may observe similar situations, such as comparable locations, to those who have spent a day in a wheelchair but are not physically handicap and compare them to my own. For example, I will take Samantha Jacobsen’s experience in a wheelchair at St. Thomas University and compare it to my own experience. There is bound to be some difference between my experience and Samantha’s. It will aid me in eluding unnecessary biases towards one side or another."

I'm not pleased with my idea or the portrayal of it. Any suggestions?