ABSTRACT
I began my teaching career in a Dene community in Northern Saskatchewan. With the optimism of a first-year teacher, I enthusiastically opened the year with a promising Language Arts unit focused on flight. The unit incorporated many of the latest pedagogical strategies and was centred around what I perceived to be engaging texts. Only after weeks of students showing disinterest did I discover that few of them had actual experience with air travel. What I had assumed would be engaging was in fact disconnected from students’ lived experience.
