Unit+Rationale+-+Marcelo+in+the+Real+World

=Unit Rationale - Marcelo in the Real World= We lead polarized lives. Throughout them, we encounter individuals and clusters of people to whom we are drawn, as though by a magnetic pull, and from whom we rebound. For many students, they are drawn toward the familiar, toward particular people—peers, colleagues, mentors—while they feel pushed back from uncertainty, situations unfamiliar and maybe even terrifying—transferring schools, acclimating themselves to new work environments, meeting the expectations of family members, to list a few. As such, we, all of us, recognize our moments of separation, of solitude, while perceiving our integration within society. The distinction between the feeling of aloneness and of community can, at times, be wrought with anxiety—concern for //why// we feel out of place, //how// we can mold ourselves to fit in, or, maybe, //when// it is appropriate to escape. Getting to know who we are, discovering the traits which make us truly individual and how people perceive and assess those traits, is paramount to answering those questions, with which we all—but students, especially—grapple. This unit seeks to accomplish just that.

 In our four-week long exploration of the theme “solitude and society,” we will be reading //Marcelo in the Real World// as our core text. The novel recounts the experiences of Marcelo, a seventeen year-old boy challenged with __Asperger's__ Syndrome—a type of Autism characterized by an ineptitude in understanding social and emotional cues—while he works in the mail room of his father’s law firm for one summer. There, he must navigate the social waters made treacherous and, often, outright dangerous, by his disability, experiencing the pace and pressure of what his father calls the “real world.” At the end of the summer, and dependent upon his performance in the mail room, his father will either allow him to finish his senior year at Paterson, the rural school for students with disabilities to which he has gone all his life, or enroll in the public high school. Predominately, we will investigate how Marcelo’s disability at first separates him from everyone except his family, doctors, and fellow students at Paterson, as well as the challenges he must overcome to become a part of society—even if it’s only a small part, tucked inside a bustling law firm.

== Before you analyze him as a "disability," consider him as a teenager: conflicts with father and office employees; desire for companionship conflicting with his self-protection; how his behavior reinforces his solitude. How does the "society" of the law office both help and hinder him? How does his conscious isolation help and hinder him? Character issues lead to thematic issues. ==

While our focus will rest especially on Marcelo and the nature of his disability, we will be drawing connections between his experiences and our own; we will write about and discuss why and when we separate ourselves from people, what it means to be normal, how we define abstractions like “truth” and “beauty,” and what preconceived notions we have about people with a wide array of disabilities. In our culminating assessment, each student will select one of those disabilities and research its characteristics, the types of people it affects, the challenges it poses for those diagnosed, and the unique perspectives on our world it inspires. Indeed, we attend classes, work, and live with individuals with disabilities—we, especially those of us who are fairly uninformed, would do well to acknowledge their identities beyond a diagnosable characteristic. Marcelo’s story inspires us to initiate that conversation and begin understanding the ways we can, in fact, overcome our differences, our fears and anxieties—because sometimes, they really are not that different, from person to person.

 By the end of this unit, students will, ideally, have a better idea of how they can close the gap between solitude and society or, at least, become more comfortable residing at times within that separation. They will also have gained new or refined insight into the lives of people with disabilities and explored the challenges they face and the likenesses we all share. === Researching disabilities can be helpful, but tie the research to the novel in some way. How are disabilities and abilities related in the novel? How are disabled people expected to treat their disabilities (in the novel and life)? By ignoring them, explaining them to others, apologizing for them, defending them? How does teenage society relate to the disabled? ===