ABSTRACT
Lee Heff ernan was teaching third grade across the hall from a special education classroom some years ago. Th ere was a boy, Evan, who was autistic and regularly ran into her room and played with the computers until his teacher retrieved him. His teacher asked if Evan could visit Lee’s room for a short period each day. Lee agreed, but was worried about how much of a distraction Evan would be. Over time, Evan started to fi t in more and stayed longer. Lee decided to read aloud Ian’s Walk (Lears, 1998), a book about a boy with autism and his sister Julie. Th e kids made connections with Evan and many of them related to Ian, the character with autism, rather than the sister Julie as Lee had expected. Instead of focusing on Julie’s irritation with her brother being so diff erent, the students focused on Ian’s feelings of frustration at not being allowed to do things his way. One girl made the connection, “Evan loves to smell the chalkboard just like Ian liked to smell the bricks.” A series of conversations and literacy events about disabilities followed and the students decided that almost everyone had something that was diff erent about them (Heff ernan & Lewison, 2000).
