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Challenging accepted versions of Canadian history
25 Plays2 months ago
Jessica McIntyre (Glebe Collegiate Institute, Ottawa, Ontario)
Recipient of the 2024 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching
For more information about the award visit CanadasHistory.ca/TeachingAward
Jessica McIntyre implemented Project True North in order to engage students in primary document research, to challenge accepted versions of Canadian history, and to share these stories — the truth of the True North — with the country. Over the last three years, English Language Learners and French Immersion students in her grade 10 Canadian History classroom have uncovered untold stories of the Great War by studying the lives of Canadian Nursing Sisters, members of the No. 2 Construction Battalion, and recipients of Great War medals housed at the Canadian War Museum. By poring over these documents, a story is created, and a person is remembered for their extraordinary sacrifice and bravery.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Awards
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Teaching Canada's History podcast. I'm your host, Brooke Campbell, and today we are speaking with the finalists of the 2024 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.
00:00:16
Speaker
Created in 1996, the award recognizes innovative and impactful approaches to teaching Canadian history. For more information, visit canadashistory.ca slash teaching award.
Interview with Jessica McIntyre
00:00:29
Speaker
Today I'm speaking with Jessica McIntyre, a high school history teacher in Ottawa, Ontario. Thanks for speaking with me today, Jessica. Thanks so much for having me, Brooke. Well, why don't we start by looking at an overview of what you have done in the classroom?
What is Project True North?
00:00:42
Speaker
Can you share the project that you've designed and maybe go over some of the main steps that your students are taking?
00:00:49
Speaker
So the project that we're talking about today is a project called Project True North. And the whole idea is that we really want to engage our students in primary document research. um with the aim of challenging our accepted versions of Canadian history. And so what I think we want to do in the biggest aim is that we want to change this narrative and we want to include a variety of voices, more experiences and really highlight the untold legacies of both remarkable and ordinary individuals. And overall, the goal in my history classes, really want my students to see themselves in the history being taught to them.
00:01:23
Speaker
um I think so often when we're not offering a culturally relevant or responsive learning experience for our students, to become really disengaged.
How do students feel represented in history?
00:01:30
Speaker
And so that was one of the reasons why over the last three years, as part of of my First World War unit, my Canadian history students have really uncovered the untold stories of the First World War by studying the lines of Canadian nursing sisters, members of the number two construction battalion and recipients of um Great War medals that are housed at the Canadian War Museum. And so um I feel like if our goal for this project is really to bring to light diverse experiences, one of the things that we really need to tell is the experiences of our our nurses, our Canadian nursing sisters. 2024 marks the 120th anniversary of the creation of the Canadian Army we Medical Corps.
00:02:15
Speaker
um And at the beginning of the war, if saying that this service was modest, I think is is very, very truthful. By the end of the First World War, you had over 2,800 nursing sisters. And this, I think, is one of these kind of untold stories that needs a lot more attention and greater attention in our Canadian history classrooms.
00:02:38
Speaker
When we started to uncover those stories, one of my students came to me and just said, you know, Madame, young girls and young women, we don't see ourselves in the past. And she said that she thought that this project allowed girls to see themselves in our history. And she said it was so important for them um growing up to see that, you know, women alongside men and along military service personnel all work together and all fought together side by side in the First World War. And so what does this look like in my classroom?
How do students engage as historians?
00:03:11
Speaker
It depends on the scope of inquiry. If we are as a class studying nursing sisters, then a student will choose a nursing sister to study. If we are as a class taking a look at members of the number two construction battalion, then they will choose and a member of the number two construction battalion to study.
00:03:29
Speaker
Or if we are working in partnership with the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian War Museum actually curates a list of award recipients um from the First World War, that they have a medal to accompany their story. And so students will then kind of really hop into the role of historian.
00:03:50
Speaker
We will access military service files through Library and Archives Canada. And honestly, for weeks, these students um hop into the lives of these people who lived over 100 years ago. So they take a look at their military service records.
00:04:06
Speaker
medical records, other primary sources, which could include um census records or photographs or newspaper articles in order to really breathe life into their memory.
00:04:17
Speaker
And my students love this because they've said that they feel like sleuths and they're trying to uncover this mystery that's outlined in the military service files. and what's neat is that, you know, as they're doing this, they're interweaving all of these amazing historical thinking skills that are acquired in our classroom to kind of um uncover limitations of primary sources and kind of fill in the gaps.
00:04:41
Speaker
And so once all of the rabbit holes have been explored using those documents, um we really try and give a bigger idea of what this person's life is like by consulting experts for contextual information or Ancestry.ca for obituaries or for um ah census records and things like that.
00:05:05
Speaker
We've also reached out to living relatives in some cases. um And from there, students then kind of have a more fulsome idea of the story of their nurse or their soldier. And then from there, they take all of that, they put it into a database um that's been created for this project.
00:05:21
Speaker
And in that database, it's actually super neat because you can put in where they've been throughout the war and it actually builds out a map of their movements during the Great War. And so,
00:05:31
Speaker
at this point, I think is like my favorite part of the project because students have a story. They're so invested. Like, who is this person? I want to learn more. What happened to them after the war?
00:05:42
Speaker
And they all come together and there's this like element of absolute magic. And so we sit down and we say, how do we want to share this story? Because, you know, the title of the project is Project True North. And this idea is that we want to share this truth, what what actually happened in the war and whose voices have been excluded or whose voices are not included in these in these common narratives. And so as a class, we determine how best to
Collaboration with the War Museum
00:06:11
Speaker
share our learning. So as we were studying our number two construction battalion, we created an exhibit
00:06:18
Speaker
And students created um exhibit pieces that took weeks, weeks, weeks, weeks to complete. Some students worked from home. I had a student who spent over 250 hours putting together a model boat. And that boat was the boat that brought the number two construction battalion um over to Europe.
00:06:40
Speaker
We showcased this exhibit with staff at Ottawa U and Carleton U and we actually sent it to the War Museum and had communications with Tim Cook about it. When we were taking a look at our nursing sisters, um we actually decided that the best way to share these stories was actually to create two documentaries.
00:07:00
Speaker
um We had students, as we were trying to learn about nursing sisters and kind of gain some context as to who these women were, who were supporting our men on the front lines, We we typed in nursing sisters in cook into Google and nothing really came up that students could watch on YouTube. And they said, you know, we need a documentary. We need to put together a documentary. And so as a class over a couple of weeks, we put together two documentaries, um one that really just shared the stories of over a dozen nursing sisters who perished in the sinking of a hospital ship called the Landovery Castle.
00:07:33
Speaker
And another one where some of my students reached out to Professor Cynthia Thoman and actually interviewed her about Canadian Nursing Sisters in the Great War. And so it's neat because, um you know, as this project continues to unfold, it really is brought into new directions.
00:07:51
Speaker
and um And once we were done our nursing sister inquiry, we actually were meeting with the War Museum and we were talking about a really neat program that they have.
00:08:03
Speaker
And it's called the Tilston Memorial Collection of Canadian Military Medals. And that's where soldiers, families who have First World War medals, donate them to the War Museum. And the War Museum uses volunteers in order to do some research on but on the stories behind the medals. And it is put up on their website. And so my students kind of as a natural progression of um Project True North started doing that with our museum. And for them, it was like this amazing thing because it became this, you know, multidisciplinary and curriculum packed experiential learning opportunity where they actually were trusted by this national museum to do the research. of people who were at the museum. And so honestly, to say that this experience um was impactful would be an understatement.
00:08:55
Speaker
This partnership continues today. And honestly, you know, i think at the end of the day, the highlight of this project is that, you know, a story is created and a person is remembered.
00:09:06
Speaker
And they are remembered by my students who are now using their breath to breathe life into their story and talking for those people who can't speak for themselves.
Developing Critical Thinking and Empathy
00:09:16
Speaker
diving Diving deeper into this project, you know you've shared how using primary source research is so you know so much at the center of the work that your students are doing and helps form the base before they can go out and do all this knowledge sharing and bringing it all together and all these wonderful you know outputs. Can you speak more about how your students are engaging with with other aspects of historical thinking, including including primary source evidence?
00:09:47
Speaker
So I feel like there is a world of difference between doing history and learning history. This last semester, I had the opportunity to be seconded to teach a class at Ottawa U in their teacher's college program called How to Teach History.
00:10:00
Speaker
And we actually did Project True North together as a class. And one of my students said to me, she said, you know, I haven't done history um since my undergrad. Like when she's talking about doing history, what she means is like actually becoming the historian.
00:10:15
Speaker
And I feel like learning history gives context, but doing history. So like uncovering and going through and and scouring these primary documents and building up this life, it builds something called historical contextual empathy. And what that actually means is you're relating to experiences and perspectives and emotions of people from the past in a specific historical time.
00:10:39
Speaker
And so um i feel as though, you know, historical thinking concepts and inquiry skills, you know, by doing history, it actually acts as the glue that binds all learning together in a history classroom, because without it,
00:10:51
Speaker
you know, your lessons remain really fractured and standalone lessons and your students' ability to understand the intricacies and complexities of history, it remains really limited. And so when we're talking um at Project True North and end specifically within the realm of historical thinking, you see how beautifully these concepts come. So as my students are talking about and working through these primary source documents, especially with my ELL students,
00:11:20
Speaker
um taking a look at a primary source document is really, really, really intimidating because you take a look at it, you're trying to decipher the cursive, you're not understanding some of the questions that are being asked.
00:11:34
Speaker
And um as we're working through all of these things, you know, i had just started to work alongside Project True North and you know I had been using some of my you know lessons that I've been using for a really, really, really long time. And I remember showing a video of First World War. And so I want you to kind of picture trench warfare, kind of black and white footage, and you know yeah the the sounds of guns and you know exploding shells.
00:12:02
Speaker
And I look over and one of my students has her head on her desk. And I realized that I didn't need to teach these students about war, they knew it.
00:12:12
Speaker
And so doing Project True North led to a really, really deep connection between the experience of my students as new Canadians and the soldiers that they were researching.
00:12:23
Speaker
The students and I had conversations and they revealed, honestly, that the trauma of war that we were taking a look at in class was really, really similar to their own experiences.
00:12:35
Speaker
um and many of them escaped war by coming to Canada. And so this really highlights really continuity and change throughout our history. um And also historical perspective taking, um you know, the the parallels and finding parallels between their own experiences with race and racism, as those of men in the number two construction battalion who lived over 100 years ago, is really another beautiful example of historical perspective taking.
00:13:02
Speaker
um When we're taking a look at nursing sisters stationed on the island of Lemnos and and kind of what they had to uncover there, my students were like so fueled to to kind of expand their research and and try and figure out what is it that made these women, you know, have this resilience and this grit. And then what kind of stemmed from this beautiful experience of leadership that these women had?
00:13:29
Speaker
demonstrated in the First World War and and later on, you know, kind of, so we start out by building the Canadian Army Medical Corps 1904. Well, what these women did led to social movements towards women equality.
00:13:42
Speaker
And that beautifully highlights cause and consequence. It also makes us think about the experience of our nursing sisters in the First World War and then also the nurses during COVID-19. So that's cause and consequence as well. And if we're taking a look at historical significance, the Metals Project, as an extension of our our partnership with the Canadian War Museum, writing biographies highlights historical significance throughout the war. But the aim of that biography, which is being then given to the War Museum, is really to tell the story of the whole individual. So it's like, what was their life like before the war? And what did they do in the war and kind of piece together their life after the war?
00:14:25
Speaker
And i feel as though one of the biggest lessons that my students learned through this whole process is that significance is not something that was only derived through military service, but it's also rooted deeply in the legacy that someone leaves throughout their life. And so that is certainly a lesson that they learned and that they're going to shine on themselves as well.
How do primary sources enhance storytelling?
00:14:46
Speaker
These are such great lines of inquiry and and reflections that your students have really been digging into. When you're thinking about this project, but also your classroom and how you teach in general, what what types of resources do you find best support teaching and learning about history and how do you use them?
00:15:09
Speaker
Honestly, I feel like there is a really, really deep desire now in history to get things right. And we've come to learn that a lot of the textbooks that we have commonly taught from are certainly not all encompassing.
00:15:28
Speaker
And it is our duty, if we want to get things right, to take a look um and kind of figure out what stories haven't been told and ask ourselves the question why. And the best way to learn about people from the past is to use primary sources.
00:15:41
Speaker
And so it's for that reason why so much of my instruction, and that's not just in the First World War, hinges on using primary documents to tell the story.
00:15:54
Speaker
um I teach the Cuban Missile Crisis just by looking through communication between JFK and Nikita Khrushchev. um I was trying to give historical context to my students about the Kenesatake resistance in 1990.
00:16:12
Speaker
That's formerly called the Oka crisis. And so i went through and pulled out newspaper headlines. So for the 90 days in which this resistance happened, and I had them kind of piece together that story.
00:16:25
Speaker
And what you're doing is you're building, you know, this amazing critical think critical thinkers in your classroom. and giving them kind of this opportunity to build knowledge, contextual knowledge for themselves. And so, um you know, within the scope of Project True North, the primary sources are endless for the First World War. you use military service files, you could use census records, newspaper articles, birth certificate, marriage certificates, um death certificates. You can use war diaries. There's um war diaries,
00:17:00
Speaker
for the number two construction battalion or even the Canadian Army Medical Corps. There's personal diaries of those that are involved. I mean, even just reading um the personal diary of Reverend White, who was the the Reverend of the number two construction battalion is is unreal. And students do that. um Individual nursing sisters have their own diaries. um Personal letters that were sent home to families were consulted.
00:17:27
Speaker
um there's a beautiful letter that was written by a nursing sister and alumnus to her family and asked, could you please send me a fruitcake because we have no food. And so students love this because you then start to see and hear and almost like breathe, um you know, the life that has been lived by these individuals that you're studying.
00:17:48
Speaker
um You can also take a look at court martial documents for the First World War ah for some of the the military personnel that we're studying as well. if they've been accused of a crime.
00:17:59
Speaker
And then from there, there's so many gaps, right? Because students get so invested and they want to learn more. How do we learn more? so then you consult Um, secondary source sources, when we've reached out to living relatives, um, to ask for additional information.
00:18:14
Speaker
Um, I have a book of almost a hundred years old written by a nursing sister named Mabel Clint. We have corresponded with, um, family members, um, from people who actually didn't even realize that there was a war medal, um, of their living relative at the War Museum.
00:18:31
Speaker
um The lady that we corresponded with lives in Vista, California, and she mailed us photos of her father and filled in gaps, shared a short story that she actually wrote about him. um Honestly, you know, from there, it kind of gave us this incentive to like, hey, if we can speak to living relatives, then we can let's consult some experts in the field as well. So we've interviewed university professors and journalists and historians and authors to fill in more gaps.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I think the best thing, and I think, you know, I feel like the reason why this project is so impactful is actually that my students have become secondary secondary sources themselves.
00:19:11
Speaker
My ESL students were very timid at the beginning of the year because their capacity in English was very limited. Between the 22 of us, we spoke 11 different languages.
00:19:24
Speaker
And they were asked to kind of film a very short segment for our school saying, you know, I love high school because And none of them wanted to do it because none of them wanted to be on camera.
00:19:35
Speaker
And what was really neat is through this whole process, they kind of mirrored the courage and the strength that they saw in these military service files of the soldier in the number two construction battalion that they studied named Harry Timothy Jones and used you know that strength and resilience and mirrored that and actually shared his story, um not only with Harry's great grandson, but also shared it with the rest of the country. they were interviewed by CBC and CTV. And so, you know, these primary sources, what they do is they make history matter, because it makes it relevant. And students from there buy in.
00:20:16
Speaker
And then they see that the experiences that these people have have gone through and have lived um you know, are stories that are worth telling. And so it kind of gives them almost this level of reverence when they're sharing those stories.
00:20:34
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. That's such a touching anecdote, I think, about about the impact, both of using primary source material, but also about Project True North as a whole, which goes very well into my last question, which which is about impact and about outcomes and I'm wondering if you could could reflect and and share more about the impact you have seen this project have on your on your students.
Inspiration and Personal Connection to History
00:21:04
Speaker
Honestly this project mattered that was it but this project mattered to my students and it inspired them to put everything that they had into this project because they saw value in what was being asked of them They let their curiosity drive their learning.
00:21:17
Speaker
They believed that they could do the work of archivists. And they also believed and trusted that they were capable of telling the stories of their nurse or their soldier really well. um Remembrance Day. I had a student tell me that Remembrance Day was a day in which she felt like she had no connection to. All of a sudden, almost overnight, it acquired this profound significance because um they lived alongside their nurse or their soldier And now when they're in this like posture of remembrance on Remembrance Day, they have somebody that they can remember really intimately.
00:21:53
Speaker
Project True North allowed my students to see their lived experience in the history being taught to them. um I remember I had ah an ELL student and she was a recent refugee from from Yemen.
00:22:05
Speaker
And she said that she knew what the member of the number two construction battalion was feeling when he left his country and his family and everything he loved there. um when he was in danger, and when he could be bombed at any moment.
00:22:19
Speaker
She said that, you know, she understood what he felt like when he couldn't sleep at night, and he hoped to be alive the next morning. You know, this new Canadian, this 15-year-old, felt represented and felt understood by a man who lived over 100 years before her.
00:22:35
Speaker
um You know, this project, as we're uncovering the lives of nursing sisters, allowed our female students to see themselves in our past, um you know, and also highlighting their importance as future leaders in Canada for talking about this continuity and change piece, you know, um what these women did is they showed our students that leadership and great leadership can be undertaken by anyone.
00:23:03
Speaker
And, um you know, my students kind of put themselves in their shoes and really just imagined, you know, like, you know, as a woman, their role would have been very similar to the nursing sisters.
00:23:14
Speaker
And it made them imagine, you know, like that person on the island of Lemnos or that person who died in that hospital bombing or in that, in that ship, um, that sunk, that could have been me, that could have been my best friend and that could have been my sister.
Community Support and Expansion of Project True North
00:23:28
Speaker
And so the connection that my students felt with their nurses, um, was very deep. Um, and I also feel like, you know, at the end of the day, this project's greatest impact, um,
00:23:43
Speaker
reminded my students that their story, their lives, like the story of their nurse or their soldiers, it matters greatly. And so just as we are thinking about the legacy that is left by these amazing men and women and members of our military personnel, it really inspires our students to think about how they want to be remembered as well. It allows our our students, you know, these this young generation, especially our marginalized and really underrepresented ones,
00:24:13
Speaker
um that they can see themselves in our history. It reminds them that their voice has a purpose and it has meaning. um And it really empowers them to think critically about the world around them and speak out against injustice or inequality.
00:24:29
Speaker
And I think through kind of, you know, how is this project seen by community partners? um We have had incredible community partners support this project um because of the enthusiasm that was brought in by our students. We had partners at Ottawa U. We had Dr. Dominique Marshall, who's in the history department.
00:24:51
Speaker
We had partners at Carleton University, Dr. Kathleen Moss from the sociology department um that actually partnered together with our history classes and their two undergraduate classes. And we researched nurses together and then we shared our information together.
00:25:07
Speaker
um I mentioned that Dr. Cynthia Tolman, gave us tons and tons of resources, both just her own depth of knowledge, and then also kind of curated some resources for us to take a look at um in putting together a documentary, but also just helping us fill the gaps when we were taking a look at Nursing Sisters.
00:25:27
Speaker
um And then also our partnership with the War Museum. I mean, James Whittem, Jim Whittem, he's the Director General of the Canadian War Museum, and he's the Vice President of the Canadian war canadian Museum of History.
00:25:38
Speaker
um The fact that he allowed our students to become and try on the role of historian by by partnering with them to contribute to this online database that showcases these the stories behind the museum's metal collection is is unreal. And you know kind of through a ah constructivist lens, the more community partners that you have you know, you get more meaning and there's so much more depth than more others collaborate. And so what's neat is that Project t True North really started out kind of as a pilot in a few of my courses and a few courses across our board, but now it's run in about 20 different schools and we've run it at Ottawa as well with our teachers college students. And so it's neat because you're starting to see a little bit of a shift in how history is being taught and people
00:26:30
Speaker
really want um they really want to be more culturally relevant and responsive in their in their instruction. And at the end of the day, you know, this this project, it really transformed my students into archivists, into historians, into detectives.
00:26:49
Speaker
um And the community saw that, you know, um my students, they interacted so reverently with all of the primary source documents. They brought a level of solemnness and intensity to the research.
00:27:01
Speaker
and a desire to share that learning with other people. And the community saw that. And that's why it was so well, so all received. i'm And certainly, you know, this this authentic learning experience, this experiential learning project is far more than just a history project. And my students have said that they're going to remember it for years to come.
00:27:21
Speaker
Thank you, Jessica, for sharing Project True North with me and and speaking to these reverberations that this project has had with your students and with the community.