July 24, 2019

Post date: August 4, 2019

We had a "great" (one of the best according to Mike!) meeting last night at Dysart's. Six were in attendance: Mike and Jane, Erin, Lauren, Natalie, and myself.  During our round-robin catch up, it seemed we all had some significant event to share, and as Mike said, "We were all engaged"!  And it was the best place to share it and let it all go.  And it was also good to welcome back Erin and to see pictures of baby Alex!  But the highlight was Erin's presentation of a project she completed for a course this summer.  As she is getting her Master's in Teaching, and this course was on children's literature.  The specific project was to research how a disability is portrayed in children's literature.  And Erin chose to research how stuttering is portrayed.  She shared with us her review of a research study which looked at 29 juvenile fiction books in which there is a character who stutters.  There will be a link to her report on the E. Maine NSA website soon, along with the list of books.  Her major summary however was that "the books reviewed offered reasonably accurate and detailed depictions of the many facets of stuttering.  And that while inaccuracies did exist in some of the books, they gave a good sense of what the "stuttering experience" was like.