Film Reviews 71

A DOSE OF REALITY, 16 minutes , color, 16ram film. Made in 1978 by

Suzanne St. Pierre for CBS News . Rental: inquire; Sale: $250 f rom Carouse l

Films, 1501 Broadway, N e w York, NY 10036.

From Harrisburgh General Hospital comes an example of a new role for health work- ers in caring for the terminally ill. Joy Ufema, R.N. cuts the bureaucratic and emotional barriers to help patients prepare for death. In this film from "60 Minutes" she is shown helping a woman with leukemia plan her own funeral, meet with her family and discuss openly how much better it is for everyone "to know."

One of the most compelling sequences deals with her work with children. A termi- nally ill child is helped to feel she can control some aspect of her existence by being given kittens to care for. A young father she worked with at the time of his wife's death reports with gratitude that their five year old son was able to hear the truth and to ask the questions that were on his mind. The legitimacy of each concern of child, relative, and patient is what guides Ms. Ufema in her understanding approach. She provides these persons a dignity and autonomy which is often lost in terminal care. Her "dose of reality" is administered with much warmth and compassion. As the Hospital Medical Director says, not all physicians favor this approach but gradually many are won over when they see the beneficial results on patients and relatives.

Here is a moving documentary which will be valuable in professional training and in seminars on Death & Dying. It should inspire other institutions to move closer instead of becoming more remote when families are facing a death.

Edward A. Mason, M.D. Harvard Medical School

ORAL L A N G U A G E DEVELOPMENT: VIEWS OF FWE TEACHERS, 30 min-

utes, color, 16mm. Made in 1976 by David Espar for California State Depar t - m e n t of Education. Purchase $300, Rental $50 (Videocassette $160). Indiana

Univers i ty , Audio Visual Center , Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

This film, part of a series called 'A Child's Right To Read', presents classroom activities engaged in by five elementary school teachers who aim to stimulate the use and the learning of oral language skills. The classroom activities range from singing songs and acting out the lines to telling the teacher stories to be written down in 'special books' which then serve as topics of class discussions. At the end of each segment devoted to the activities introduced by that teacher, she makes a short statement about why she does what she does, how the activities she uses promote oral language skills, and why oral language skills are so important to later school achievement in reading and writ- ing.

These teacher statements are important adjuncts to the film, but its real value comes from the marvellous presentation of joyful, exciting classrooms. The film presents a whole wealth of notions about how to interact with kids on a verbal level and leaves the viewers with the feeling that teaching, if it were done like that, could really be fun. One did wond6r, however, whether the techniques and activities demonstrated could be applied in any classroom and by any teacher, or whether the teachers in the film were so successful because they benefited from having very well-equipped classrooms, small classes of bright children and very dynamic personalities.

The issues addressed in the film included 1) the importance of stimulating children's

72 Community Mental Health Journal

talking in order to prepare them to read and write, 2) the value of listening to the kids as a way of getting them to talk, 3) the value of well-practiced songs, verses, rituals in stimulating oral development, and 4) the need to value the children's contributions in the classroom above the preprogrammed contributions of teachers or curricular activi- ties. These are probably not highly controversial issues for most teachers. The difficul- ties arise in applying them in practice as well as in theory. The greatest value of this film is that it provides countless ideas for applying these notions in the classroom.

I used the film in a course on Language Development. It could be equally useful in courses on reading, on elementary curriculum, or on social and communicative de- velopment. Any school or school system that wishes to improve the education it is offering to its schoolchildren in the area of communication, self-expression, building self-esteem, writing, or reading could usefully show this film to its elementary teachers. Any elementary teacher who wants to make her classroom a fun place to be as well as a good place to learn could use this film as a source of ideas about what the child's role in the classroom should be and about specific activities to use in the classroom setting.

Catherine Snow, Ph.D. Harvard Graduate School of Education

DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL SERVICES

Community Mental Health Center has immediate opening for M.D. or D.O. with three years APA approved post-doctorate residency in psy- chiatry to coordinate medical services. Position includes appointment to clinical faculty at Wright State University, School of Medicine.

Send Resume to:

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