Blog #5 - Critical Encounters Ch. 6

Chapter 6 in Critical Encounters this week instantly had me thinking about an ELA 20 class I attended this week at Nutana. Chapter 6 has to do with choosing literature that accommodates to the diversity of students within classrooms. The ELA 20 class had just completed reading Keeper'n Me, a novel written by an Aborignal author about the many challenges during the life of an Aboriginal boy. I haven't read the book myself, but from the class dicussion and from the information on the back of the novel I gathered that the plot begins with the main character at a young age after he is sent to a residential school. The boy was then sent to live with a White foster family, and as he got older he began to lead a dangerous lifestyle and eventually landed himself in jail. While in jail, his original Aboriginal family contacted him and the rest of the novel has to do with the main character's struggle to find his identity after everything he had been through.
The classroom I sat in on had eleven students, seven of whom were Aboriginal and four of whom were White. They had just completed the novel and were going over questions with a substitute teacher when I found out that their reaction to the novel was mostly negative. When asked if the book impacted them, many replied with "No." When the teacher tried to squeeze an answer out of them, they hardly gave in, and at least four of them replied with "It was so boring," "It put me to sleep," or "It was a waste of time." Two Aborignal girls, however, said they enjoyed the novel and felt a connection with it because they were Aboriginal themselves and could relate to what the author went through. When the teaher asked the White students if they thought they would feel differently about the novel if they were Aboriginal, two of them replied with "No. It would still be boring."
As I was sitting there, I was wondering why on earth they had no reaction to the novel, because it was clear they had read it. Another one of the Aboriginal students said he enjoyed the novel because he could really relate to certain parts of it. In general, I would say the White students had a more negative reaction to the book.
As I was sitting there taking all of this in, I was trying to think of reasons some of the students may not have liked the book. Was it because they had no background information or framing beforehand? Or was it because they truly couldn't relate to it? A person is allowed to dislike a book, but I feel as though a lot of the students didn't even try to identify with it. It was evident that the theme of "identity" was strong throughout the book, and I thought perhaps if more work had been done around the theme, students would have been able to relate to the novel more effectively.
Another example of when I realized the importance of framing, not only for text but for any activity, was when a treaty educator spoke to the Grade 9 class at Nutana about the history of treaties. I spoke with the speaker after the presentation, and he told me about an experience with one of his previous groups at another high school that week. He said he spent the hour talking about treaties, and at the end of the hour, a Black African student put up his hand and said, "Who is an Aboriginal person?" The treaty educator said he was embarrassed that he had taken for granted that everyone had previous knowledge of the subject.
What, then, can we do to make every student feel comfortable in a classroom? I feel as though the proper amount of framing combined with a variety post-colonial texts that supplement each other are extremely important to include when teaching an English class. Once students are given more than one perspective they seem to start to understand concepts more effectively.