Price: $34.95
Page Count: 188
Publication Date: October 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77258-506-3
Lucy Black is a skilled educator, administrator, writer and advocate who expertly and with compassion shines a light on the dark side of school. By giving voice to some of our most vulnerable students and emphasizing the truth and importance of the proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, Black shows just how much care, connection and support is needed in our education system—and how far we have to go.
— Janet Vendrig, retired Public Health Nurse
The stories in Class Lessons go beyond the Hollywood tropes of high school experience and reveal heart wrenching snapshots of young people trying to survive impossible and often horrifying situations, and the dogged frustration and hope of a career educator trying her best to make a difference. An indelible collection that sheds light on the limitations of modern-day schooling, and the lives of vulnerable students who are lost within it.
— Hollay Ghadery, author of FUSE, Rebellion Box, Widow Fantasies
These reflections shared by Lucy Black serve to disclose the limitations of the public education system as teachers and school administrators strive to serve every student. We are reminded that our secondary schools are a cross-section of the community. Therein, are thousands of dedicated educators like Lucy Black, who take on all comers with the singular purpose of mentoring the development of each teenager into a productive and resourceful citizen. In this effort, given system limitations, failures will result. As Black’s reflections reveal, such failures may haunt educators long after retirement instilling them to ponder how better outcomes could have been achieved. While these stories of failure are tragic, each reflects a sterling level of devotion and resourcefulness. Make no mistake, this is the same commitment that is made to every student, most of whom thrive and grow.
Certainly, Lucy Black’s accounts should cause those in positions of influence to ponder the costs, both human and financial, of maintaining for a lifetime those who fall through the cracks in our school system.
— Joe Allin, former Assistant Director – York Region District School Board, and former Chair – Durham District School Board
These are the kinds of stories that keep educators up at night. Most parents have no idea what really goes on behind the closed doors of schools. Lucy Black takes us down the locker lined halls and into the chaotic lives of the most vulnerable students. With great compassion, she shows how an educator can provide buoys of hope amidst turbulence and despair. Without quailing or judgement Black demonstrates the most elusive quality of our best teachers -- a spirit of generous pedagogy.
—Anna-Liza Kozma, Journalist and Senior Producer, CBC Radio.
I read, I wept, I turned the page and wondered where Gemma and Katie and their peers were now. “Watching the thrust and parry of students” as Black does so well is not the same as persuasively recreating that thrust and parry, but it is the necessary first step, the moment of recognition that only a wise teacher foresees. Lucy E. M. Black is not only a brilliant writer, but she also knows the ropes of the school system from the inside—like history and geography blending into a new genre. Her eye goes immediately to students who lean out, who cross over, who cannot let go of sorrow or escape its wily traps. Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth is a visionary collection of stories. The “vulnerable” heroes are more attractive because they are young folks in our midst facing a complicated and striated world—by most accounts, the world we have both knowingly and unknowingly made for them.
— Marlene Kadar, Senior Scholar and Professor Emerita, Department of Humanities, and
School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, York University, Toronto
Within Lucy E. M. Black’s fiction, the reader quickly becomes invested in her characters. Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth, a collection of fictionalized accounts based on Ms. Black’s career as an administrator in the public education system takes on a poignant urgency that leaves the reader in horrified disbelief, angry, and sickened by the life stories of students, and particularly young women. As she acknowledges, the support systems she worked with were many, including education, health professionals, and social agencies. Still, for some students, trying to cope with school and life, no manner of resources or care could protect them or direct them onto a trajectory to a happy ending. This haunting work is a witness and testimony to the author’s love for the vulnerable students who came under her care.
— Gail Kirkpatrick, author Sleepers and Ties
Class Lessons is an unusual collection of stories inspired by Lucy Black’s 29 years as an educator. After working in corporate training, she decided to reset her career and become a classroom teacher in high schools, eventually stepping into a vice principal’s shoes. Empathetic and reflective, Black writes: “Unfortunately, school success is not experienced by all students, especially those for whom the struggles of daily existence overwhelm every other aspect of life. In my experience, female students are frequently among the most vulnerable and yet the most resilient of such constituents.“
After an initial set of true-life tales that give the backstory to Black’s career change, her names-changed-to-protect-the-innocent stories make it clear just how huge those struggles of existence can be. The characters include young women living in squats, battling poverty, judgmental, even alcoholic or abusive parents, incest, rape, fetal alcohol syndrome, and learning difficulties. Some in their early teens are already pregnant, or sex workers or table dancers. Another, from an immigrant Muslim family, is stalked and assaulted by her brother when he feels her behaviour besmirches the family’s honour. One of her characters is bullied for becoming gender fluid, and another as the only Black student in an often racist student population.
Commenting on this, Black notes that the other students “were not discernably monstrous. They were simply teenagers seemingly untouched by the territoriality that had destroyed an innocent girl.” While trying to help these victims, the narrator becomes inextricably involved with others in the community, both helping (foster parents, social workers, police) and troubling – the local biker gang, pimps, or parents who blame teachers for their child’s behavioural problems when a toxic family environment is the true cause. The title, Class Lessons, has a useful double meaning, as Black, from a more privileged background is not used to talking with bikers, or sex workers, or being threatened by a controlling parent. The stories transmit what Black learned from the students who confided in her and (mostly) trusted her, many set in a small, working-class town.
Among the qualities of Black’s writing that keep these stories real are her honesty and humility. She writes of her own fear in certain situations. Of a character named Jade, Black admits: “She lived in a world that I could only glimpse.” Regarding her encounters with another troubled girl, Black reflects: “I had left the corporate world hoping to be helpful and now I saw how limited my own skill set was, along with my privilege and lack of contextual experience.“
“Black’s narratives are often sobering accounts of how, even in a relatively prosperous, liberal and peaceful country like Canada, young people may face enormous challenges in order to assert their own identities and contribute to society.”
The narrator doesn’t give up on her students, no matter how difficult or challenging they are. She knows that students who are racist or homophobic learn these attitudes outside the school: “I came to understand that the biases and values reinforced in some homes were poisoning our efforts within the school.” Later, on the same theme, she adds that the saying “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is often used “when discussing such situations. But I believed it was possible to collect those apples and toss them just a little further out. I had to believe that because I saw it as part of my job. To expose young people to a broader way of thinking – to help them become responsible social citizens.”
These stories are well worth reading. They will give parents more insight into what their children (especially daughters) may face or hear about during their teens. Anyone, like me, who has worked in education will be reminded how educators’ efforts to help their students are often thwarted by systems and forces beyond their control. Black’s narratives are frequently sobering accounts of how, even in a relatively prosperous, liberal and peaceful country like Canada, young people may face enormous challenges in order to assert their own identities and contribute to society.
Another possible use of the book is as a source of case studies for not only teachers and school administrators, but those being trained in professions such as counselling, social work, child and family services, and police work. While there is not always a solution to the problems Black dramatizes, it at least helps to discuss what can and should be done for needy teens, who are traumatized by their world, often by their peers and families, but still trying to survive, and ultimately thrive.
- A Fiction Review by John Oughton
Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth by Lucy E.M. Black is a stunning collection. Fictionalized to protect the identities of its characters, this is a gritty account of vulnerable youth in high school by a real-life career educator and author, Lucy Black. Black has brought her career’s worth of experience into Class Lessons. We meet an unnamed narrator and school principal, linking these stories and providing the reader with first-hand knowledge and information. Each story looks at a difficult situation involving a vulnerable youth, in the teenage years, in a high school setting. The short stories are arranged to showcase each individual by name, their issue, and the connection between the educator and the student.
An engaging narrative of what happens with educators and vulnerable youth in high schools everywhere.
This could very easily have been an impossible task if left to the devices of another. Lucy E.M. Black is a brilliant storyteller who captures the students’ essence in the short chapters, all inside of about 200 pages. Black combined the necessary information and knowledge, spun it with compassion, emotion, clarity, and craftsmanship, and produced this incredible work, Class Lessons. This is not a dry piece soaked in factual statistics, but an engaging narrative of what happens with educators and vulnerable youth in high schools everywhere. Who are their friends, how important is that friend group, what role do the parents play, what effect does poverty have as a factor, and how many others (i.e. support staff) are necessary to be called into action to help? Importantly, Black skillfully and impressively combines all the factors necessary to be considered a “vulnerable youth” into an explosive, heart-pounding reading event.
This is a case of literature directly and purposefully opening the mind of the reader. I wanted to rise to action, do more investigating, and find out more about educators, schools, and vulnerable youth. According to Research in Focus’s J. Douglas Willms,1 “28.6 % of Canadian children are vulnerable … Many Canadian children must cope with unduly negative life experiences, such as racial and ethnic prejudice, severe learning and behavior problems, inadequate parenting, family violence, and poverty.” This is staggering! Thoughts of literacy, economics, and policy leaped into my mind. What are the long-term effects of having youth reach adulthood with little education, support, or security? Simply put, how will they get jobs and raise families without perpetuating this same cycle, so that it becomes intergenerational?
Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth by Lucy E.M. Black is an essential work, a necessary work, a book to be shared now and often. Readers can open the pages and meet Addison on page 36, Starr on page 43, Deanna on page 57, Gemma on page 68, Reza on page 72, and others, all with unique stories and circumstances. Black provides an in-depth study, in the shape of riveting short fiction, allowing the reader, the educator, and the youth to collide on the pages.
Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth by Lucy E.M. Black is an essential work, a necessary work, a book to be shared now and often … An astounding, eye-opening read!
Class Lessons spotlights the importance and challenges of educators, their satellite helpers, and their jobs while connecting with the youth dependent upon them, for their knowledge, skills, insight, intuition, compassion, intervention, and kindness. Often, the ones they are trying to help don’t even know how much this lantern of guidance will change their dark lives and, in turn, change the trajectory of our country. This book is for educators, parents, policy makers, the students themselves, and anyone interested in helping create a more successful community. Those youth who do fall through the cracks surface later, and affect everything in our society. This is an astounding, eye-opening read! Pick up a copy of Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth by Lucy E.M. Black and meet those who are destined to fall through the cracks, but for educators like Lucy Black, who are committed to catching them early before they become demanding ghosts among us, humans needing much to be able to even exist on the perimeter of society. Black’s stories need to be told. Don’t look away.
Lucy E.M. Black was a corporate trainer before becoming a career educator. She is the author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet, and The Brickworks. Her short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada in literary journals and magazines. She lives with her partner in Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.
- Carrie Stanton
Managing Editor
TMR’s Managing Editor Carrie Stanton has a BA in Political Science from the University of Calgary. She is the author of The Jewel and Beast Bot, and picture books, Emmie and the Fierce Dragon and The Gardener. Carrie loves to write stories that grow wings and transport readers everywhere. She reads and enjoys stories from every genre.
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………Page 6
Origin Stories
The Parking Garage……………………………………………………………………………………………. Page 7
The Wrapper………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 12
Lena……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 21
Career Change…………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 31
Class Lessons
Addison………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 36
Starr……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 43
South End……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 50
Deanna……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 57
Gemma……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 68
Reza…………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………….Page 72
Katie……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 80
Sidney…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Page 88
Carton of Cigarettes…………………………………………………………………………..……………….Page 101
Myah………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………Page 107
Alyssa………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 112
Brooke and Lewis………….…………………………………………………………………………………….Page 125
Chanelle………………………..........................................................................................Page 134
Chloe…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Page 141
Destiny………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Page 153
Jasmine……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 164
Rachel………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Page 168
Alex……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Page 175
Tia………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Page 182
Victoria………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Page 186
Lucy E.M. Black was a corporate trainer before becoming a career educator. She is the author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet, and The Brickworks. Her short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada in literary journals and magazines. She lives with her partner in Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.
