Good Lesson (Best is a strong word….)

During my practicum, I was asked to teach Indigenous literature to a class of Grade 8s in a Humanities class. I had read a fair number of contemporary Indigenous writers’ work and was initially excited to choose something that I had read and studied previously for my young students.  I was able to find a short story in the reader called “Context & Comedy” by Lee Maracle. Maracle is a contemporary Indigenous writer whose style and content fit well into my unit about oral texts as history, and I just generally was a fan of her work. Although my students were initially a bit cold about this text, they quickly related to it being a story about childhood embarrassments. The conversations we had around this text as a class were very illuminating, funny, and intimate considering the students’ age. This text became a springboard for students to write their own embarrassing story and to see how humour could be used as a means of “owning” an embarrassing story and removing the shame from the event. I really enjoyed exploring this text and the themes with my students. It was a happy accident that seemed to pay off and celebrate our shared vulnerabilities and insecurities.