Teaching the History of Residential Schools Through Graphic Novels

Abstract

This chapter considers how a critical multiliteracies approach to teaching graphic novels can facilitate pre-service teachers' critical awareness of literacy and history pedagogy while prompting them to challenge their own and their students' biases. After outlining the critical history of boarding schools, the chapter will introduce the graphic novel Sugar Falls (2021), a text which documents Elder Betty Ross' residential school experience. Then, the chapter will propose multiliteracies—an approach to critical literacy which responds to inequities inside and outside the classroom—as a pedagogy which can facilitate critical dialogue. Finally, the authors will model a critical multiliteracies analysis of Sugar Falls, reflecting on how engaging in such a reading can help teachers and students deepen their understanding of Indigenous boarding schools. The chapter will argue that a multiliteracies approach to teaching graphic novels like Sugar Falls can provide pre-service teachers with tools for facilitating their own students' critical literacies.