Court Appointed Special Advocate or CASA fund-raiser as Chris Nelson, right, looks on. Vicki Mueller admits that her lesson plan doesn't exactly go with the book. But you try to figure out how to take a book about fascism and make something positive out of it. Calif. The book dramatizes a classroom lesson on group dynamics to illustrate how easy it is for ordinary people to get caught up in something extraordinarily evil like Nazism. Not exactly inspirational reading, Mueller said, but it is possible to read it as more than just a cautionary tale.
People have power to make a difference for good or for bad.
And after reading a recent Globe-News feature story about the Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, program, Mueller's class knew exactly what they'd do. CASA trains volunteers to serve as allies for abused and neglected children who have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care, said Barbara Tuthill, CASA's executive director. And the eighth-graders who heard her presentation immediately sympathized, Tuthill said. What got their attention is the effect that abuse has on children and the way it makes them act,'' Tuthill said. But what really got the kids was finding out that kids in some foster care situations might not be able to celebrate their birthdays because of financial constraints on the foster family, she said.