A quick update.
After quite a struggle, I think we found the root cause of his difficulty. He does not like sharing his opinions or personal information with people outside of the immediate family. He had a bad experience a couple of years ago where he wrote a story that was "published" so that other kids could read it. At the time, he was fine with that, but now he looks back on is writing as immature and not reflecting him as he is today. Thus, the anxiety / self-esteem issues with writing about people.
We were able to find out that his major problem is the permanence of his writing. He does not want his opinions or views about other individuals "out there" for people to discover. He believes that he becomes a new person every year, and his older writings will undermine that notion if they continue to exist. We suggested that he provide an oral report for this assignment, but even that is too much - he does not want people to even remember his representation of other individuals.
The teacher emailed us with some suggestions of applying the descriptive qualities of the assignment to octopi, which may work. Unfortunately, he has been having a rough weekend emotionally, so we may choose not to introduce this idea today.
Thanks everyone for the input. We're at the "tried that, doesn't work" stage with so many strategies at this point, and as I'm sure you all know, kids like this are moving targets. As for tonight I just hope we all can sleep well.
