Mentor Text: The Reserve Went Silent by Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe
Techniques:
- Point of View
Background –
As a Canadian teacher, my work in my classroom has been influenced by this country’s history, most specifically our work in the areas of Truth and Reconciliation. On September 30, we have a Day for Reflection on Truth and Reconciliation, so I make an effort to include the work and perspectives of Indigenous writers and artists leading up to that, although those voices have a regular home in the work in my classroom.
I’ve likely mentioned here before that in my Grade 11 courses, we do poetry letters, inspired by Moving Writers alum Karla Hilliard. I write students a letter with three poems attached, and they’re expected to write one in return. We spend time in class discussing the poems, making sure we have some good insights to share.
This month, all the poems attached to my letter to my students came from Indigenous poets. As a survivor of Canada’s residential school system, Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe has explored that system in her work. It was a different perspective on that experience that justified my selection of this poem for the letter, but as we discussed it in class, I realized that it had mentor text potential as well.
How we might use this text:
Point of View – Openly discussing the terrible reality of the residential school system in Canada is a fairly new thing – many folks, including teachers, didn’t really learn about it. In exploring it in classrooms, a lot of the material that we use focuses on the experience of the children who attended the schools. Memoirs and poetry from residential school survivors sharing their experiences. Books at all levels that tell the stories of children forced into that terrible system.
Halfe’s piece does feature children, but that’s not her focus. As we looked at this poem in class, we discussed the way that she focused on how the community suffered from the loss of the children. The imagery of the spaces normally occupied by children now empty of children tells a different side of this terrible story. We see how the community faced a loss.
In the last stanza, when she focuses on her parents’ grief, and the pain families from whom the children were taken felt. “I never saw the searing pain/ on my mother’s face, nor experienced/ my father’s eyes squeezed to dam his flood.” I found my self thinking of Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Danger of a Single Story.’ In terrible situations, there are often those who suffer the most directly, and we often focus on those stories as learners and readers. Maybe we feel they hold the greatest insights and lessons for us.
But there are many sides to stories, and in looking at the pain of those left behind, those who had their children taken from them and placed into institutions where neglect, racism, all manner of abuse and even death were regular occurrences, we may understand why these terrible things had such profound and long lasting impacts on those communities and cultures.
Of course, this is a delicate mentor text. I actually think the way that I introduced it, as a way of deepening our learning about this topic, allows me to use it as a mentor text. All my Grade 11 students have read and discussed the poem already. Throughout the course, each of them will be focusing on a topic that deals with our course theme of Society: Power and Voice. When we’re done researching, and we’ve entered the writing phase of that work, I can pull this poem out as a mentor text. We can look for the “other voices” in the stories around the topics each student has chosen, and use this poem as a way to explore and express a deeper and more insightful consideration of those stories.
I love the start of the year, and being back in the classroom. I love that I’ve got a classroom full of students who can look at big ideas like this, and think deeply and critically, reflecting on their learning. I love that I work within a community like Moving Writers that gives me a place to work out ideas, and a place to share them. I hope that this first post of the school year gives you a bit of that for your classroom.
Do you have pieces that go along with some of your tougher topics that could be potential mentor texts as students explore other tough topics? Do you have mentor texts that you introduce for a different purpose, and return to as mentor texts later?
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