Talking texts with teachers #7

An interview with my sister Tyshana McEwen, a teacher from Carine SHS, where it's clear that a love of getting contemporary Australian fiction into classrooms is something that runs in the family.

Tyshana McEwen is an English teacher at Carine Senior High School, a large independent public co-ed school in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. She’s also the little sister of Karys, who writes this newsletter.

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What is the best text you've ever taught, and why?

One of the best texts I’ve ever taught is Lenny’s Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee. I used this in an Year 8 Extension English class. I worked really hard to engage my students with the novel in the pre-reading stage which I think paid off. Having met the author a few years prior at the Perth Writers Week, I drew from this experience as well as exploring the relevance of each theme to hook the students before reading the first few chapters aloud to them. I remember a really powerful activity where we discussed why, as teens, it might be important to read about disability and physical difference, as well as grief and death, and ultimately coming to the conclusion that books are a safe space to explore these things.

The best part was shortly after reading the novel we emailed a set of questions to the author and within days had a response with some really insightful answers. This was very cool and one of the benefits of teaching an Australian novel. My students thought I was totally embarrassing and doubted that the author would ever respond to me, so it gave me a lot of street cred when she did, and I loved seeing their faces light up. The novel is a little dark at times, and I’m not sure it would work with every class, but this particular group loved it and so did I.

Another favourite is Catch a Falling Star by Meg McKinlay. I studied this with a Year 7 English class and it was a raging success. Perhaps it was partly my enthusiasm, and the fact I dressed up as Newt for Children’s Book Week that year, but it was also a lot of fun researching real-life news articles about Skylab crashing near Esperance in 1979. I would love the opportunity to teach this again!

What is the worst?