Laughing at My Nightmare (II) by Shane Burcaw
Authors: Kamylle Paddio, Justine Porciuncula, Hannah Ritchie, Andrew Ruvalcaba, Rachel Sanchez
Review
Laughing at My Nightmare is a 2014 young adult autobiography by Shane Burcaw. The book is a collection of chronological stories from his life growing up and includes both new content and original content from his blog. Burcaw initially created his Tumblr blog to share funny stories about his life, which is affected by a genetic disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). These moments make up important parts of his childhood, focusing on his family, relationships, and the path that eventually led him to the creation of his nonprofit organization, Laughing at My Nightmare, Inc. The purpose of the book is to show that although he has a terminal illness which causes him to rely on a wheelchair, he is no different from anyone else and lives a life not unlike other teens. Being in a wheelchair, or having any disability for that matter, does not automatically make a person inept, which is how they are often initially viewed. Burcaw has been able to live a full, exciting life which includes many accomplishments.
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Image Source: laughingatmynightmare.co
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Through the book's humor, educators can focus on the use and purpose of style, tone, and perspective, while also studying a viewpoint that is often left out of the curriculum. This is because of both the style and tone change with the chapter topics, some of which are more serious than others. The writing style is easy to read, even when the topics go from light and humorous to factual and dire. The parts where Burcaw pokes fun at his own misfortunes shows how he lives like any other teen his age, making dumb decisions and dealing with the consequences. His humorous tone works especially well when some of the chapters take a more serious turn. Like when he can’t lift his head after it has fallen back because his neck muscles are too weak. Instead of treating this as a sad moment, he makes light of it by joking about how he was too embarrassed to ask for help and just played the whole thing off. At other moments he abandons his humorous tone altogether so he can talk about serious medical issues. These chapters are written with a more informational tone and include detailed descriptions and medical terminology. It is during these moments where Burcaw’s language becomes more matter of fact. Students can use the different chapters to compare style and tone.
Although this book has many benefits, it is not without its flaws. The humor can be childish at times (keep in mind that many of the stories were written in his late teenage years). The major issue with this book is that to show how he is no different from other kids, he often differentiates himself from other wheelchaired individuals. It seems as if Burcaw tries to elevate himself over others with different illnesses and handicaps. It is because of the way he tries to label himself as “normal” that he ends up showing how incapable other handicapped individuals are. Nevertheless, these drawbacks still have their beneficial place in a classroom discussion, which makes for depth in students analyses. All things considered, this book is a great nonfiction resource for educators to use to discuss terminal illnesses and handicaps, but also to dissect the authors use of language, tone, and style through fun, engaging stories.
Biography
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| Image source: Macmillan Publishers/ Firerock Productions |
Shane Burcaw is a 25-year-old blogger, author, and inspirational speaker from Pennsylvania who lives with a disease known as Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). Because his disease affects the proper formation of muscles in the body, he has used a wheelchair for mobility since the age of two. He started writing a blog called "Laughing at my Nightmare" to share his personal experiences and interesting stories about his condition through humor, ultimately attracting many readers through his positive outlook on moments that are usually considered a struggle. Little did he know, his blog would eventually gain hundreds of thousands of followers from all over. What started as a small, personal blog turned into a memoir and a nonprofit foundation, also called Laughing at My Nightmare, which raises money to support research for muscular dystrophy, shares a positive message to others dealing with the disease, and provides the proper equipment for those in need of them.
| Image Source: leighvalleylive |
Burcaw’s achievements also include graduating from Moravian College with an English degree, being awarded a Mid-Atlantic Emmy, and winning a YALSA award for his first memoir. He enjoys traveling and speaking in front of crowds in businesses and schools across the country. He currently has a girlfriend who he recently just moved in with. In 2017, his second book, Not So Different, was published. Also discussing his life with muscular atrophy, the picture book targets younger readers, and it has already been selected for a Robert F. Sibert Honor, an ALA award. His third book, Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse, is expected to be published in 2019 and will be a collection of essays about how people treat him and the assumptions others make about him due to his disability. Despite his disease, Burcaw does his best to make the most of his life, he tries to live as normal as possible and does not let his disease hold him back from making a life-changing impact in his life and the lives of others.
Sources:
Burcaw, Shane. "About Me." LAUGHING AT MY NIGHTMARE, Tumblr, www.laughingatmynightmare.tumblr.com/about.
Laughing At My Nightmare, Laughing At My Nightmare, Inc., https://www.laughingatmynightmare.com/.
Ruiz, Rebecca. "'This Is My Life': Blogger, 21, Laughs despite Fatal Disease." TODAY, NBC TODAY, 14 Oct. 2016, https://www.today.com/news/my-life-blogger-21-laughs-despite-fatal-disease-6C10194114.
Resources
- http://www.curesma.org/sma/about-sma/ Shane’s Disease (Official Website)
This is a useful website for both teachers and students to learn more about Shane's disease. Through this website, the teacher can be well prepared on the subject of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and use this to help the class further understand the context through which these stories occur.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4619513/ (“Understanding the experiences and needs of individuals with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and their parents: a qualitative study”)
This website is a qualitative study of people with SMA and also the people who are involved in their care. This is an excellent resource that can be used to encourage students to consider the idea and use of perspective within nonfiction writing.
This is Shane’s official website for his first book. This can be used for discussion of his non-profit organization, how he uses his disease to help others, as well as providing context and expanding on his personality traits for the assignment.
This resource is Shane's original blog that he discusses throughout the novel. As much of his writing addresses the process of writing itself, this can be implemented in order to help students further visualize how Shane’s novel and organization came to be.
This is one of the materials that can help students organize their thoughts for their project during the class activity. This website can be used for the students to map Shane’s personality and/or writing style, as demonstrated below.
This is website is an easy-to-use resource for the students to share their final "tweets" with their classmates. It is an online sticky note board that can be used to track participation as well as provide a safe space for students to share their work without relying on public social media sites like Twitter to do so.
This link to Shane’s episode on the Youtube channel, Soulpancake’s show “My Last Days,” might be useful for visual learners. This can help to provide more depth to Shane as a person, not just a writer. It might be shown to the class simply to let them hear Shane’s voice and see some of the video content that he discusses within the novel.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762283/ (Laughter prescription)
This is an article that discusses experiments and research about the relationship between humor and health. The instructor could use this article to prepare to discuss the subject with the class while also focusing directly on writing and style.
Instructional Activity
Preview:
Throughout the novel, Shane Burcaw often discusses the process of writing his blog and memoir, and each vignette is written with his own unique, humorous style. This four-day class activity helps students develop their understanding of style, tone, and writing for their audience. Through this activity, students can make connections between language and tone in order to mimic Shane by writing their own "tweet" from his perspective, focusing on concise details (280 characters including spaces and punctuation) rather than content to convey his style. In addition to practicing concise writing, the technological component also ties in concepts of publishing on the internet, again tying it back to how Laughing at My Nightmare started.
California Common Core Standards:
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.2.B
Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience's knowledge of the topic.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.2.D
Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the complexity of the topic and convey a style appropriate to the discipline and context as well as to the expertise of likely readers.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.5
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology's capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.
Resources and Preparation:
Day 1:
- A PowerPoint/handout discussing tone, style, voice, etc.
- A directions sheet with a grading rubric
Days 2-4:
- Sample assignments are provided below
- Popplet.com
- Padlet.com
Instructional Plan:
- Day 1: Mapping Shane's Personality
After reading the novel, the activity begins with a discussion of how to describe Shane and his personality. Using a website such as Popplet, students can work as individuals or in groups to narrow a list of traits down to 4-6 points, as depicted below. These traits should be justifiable through specific stories or recurring themes throughout the novel.
- Day 2: Mapping Shane's Writing Style
By referring to their personality map from the previous day, students should now focus on how we, the audience, can conclude that these are his personality traits. They should focus on questions such as:
- How does his writing show his character?
- How does he convey humor in his stories?
- What kind of tone does he write in with certain situations?
- What language does he use?
- What type of audience is he writing for?
These should be narrowed down to no more than eight main traits. An example can be seen below. They can also choose to add one or two photos that show personality, as he regularly includes photos throughout his novel. However, they should also keep in mind that this will lower the number of characters that they have to work with down to 140 if they choose to include one in their final tweet.
- Day 3: First Draft of Tweet
Using their mind-maps from the past two days, students will begin to draft their "tweets," keeping length in mind. They can either reference a certain chapter/story within the book and narrow it down into one tweet, or, for those who want to be creative, they can come up with a situation in which Shane might find himself. However, the most important part of the tweet is not the story itself. Their effort should be reflected in how well they mimic Shane's voice and style of writing through things like humor, sarcasm, concrete details, and comments that show honest, self-reflection. As mentioned previously, the students can also search either of his blogs for images to use, but this will lower their tweet character limit to 140, just like on Twitter!
- Day 4: Final Draft and Publishing to Padlet
On the last day, students will do a quick partner review of each other's tweets. At this time, they can make any necessary revisions and finalize their work. After everyone has completed their work, each student will publish their tweets to "Twitter." In this example below, we used Padlet so that the students do not have to create twitter accounts or worry about posting publicly. This also allows the class to see more at a time when displaying their final work without the need to scroll. There should be time at the end of class for students to read and review the class' version of Shane's twitter, followed by a discussion of the importance of the skills and standards that they worked on throughout this project.
