Review: Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth
Review from The Miramichi Reader
August 2, 2024 by Carrie Stanton
- Educate verb. from the Oxford Dictionary
- give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, especially a child), typically at a school or university.
- Educate from Merrian-Webster Dictionary
- implies development of the mind.
- more things than formal schooling serve to educate a person.
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.
About the Reviewer/ContributorRelated Posts
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.