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Jo Anne Broders brings international education to her classroom
10 Plays2 days ago
Jo Anne Broders organized and facilitated an international collaboration between her grades 9 and 11 students and a classroom in Germany.
This episode of the Teaching Canada’s History podcast is part of our series speaking with the finalists of the 2023 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award recognizes excellence and innovation in the teaching of Canadian history. To learn more, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.
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Transcript
Introduction to Teaching Canada's History Podcast
00:00:03
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 for the 2023 Governor-General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.
00:00:14
Speaker
Created in 1996, the award recognizes best practices in teaching Canadian history and is an opportunity to highlight the important work that teachers and students are doing to interpret and share the stories of the past.
00:00:26
Speaker
For more information about the Governor-General's History Awards, visit canadashistory.ca slash awards.
Meet Joanne Broders: International Digital Classroom Project
00:00:33
Speaker
Today I'm speaking with Joanne Broders, a junior and senior high school teacher in Gambo, Newfoundland and Labrador. Welcome Joanne, it's so nice to speak with you today. ah It's so nice to finally speak with you Brooke, very wonderful. So thank you for the opportunity.
00:00:48
Speaker
Well, let's then dive right on in um Can you share with us more about the International Digital Classroom project that you designed and walk our listeners through the main steps and components of this project?
00:01:02
Speaker
Okay, yeah. um So I guess for me, it started in the classroom. ah For years, you know, we talk about Germany, and in particular, when I was teaching about World War two And we read about our role in the war, Germany's role in the war, and it was always about them and about us, the good and the bad. And I said to my students often, i wonder, as we learn here in Canada,
00:01:32
Speaker
under our curriculum, what did the students learn in Germany about their role in that war? And so strangely enough, when COVID happened, of course, we all had to transition to a new form of learning while trying to keep the students engaged.
00:01:52
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And one of the positives coming out of COVID is that we all improved our digital literacy. So I thought it was a good opportunity to, well, let's see if I can find a way to get Germany online with us and talk about their history.
Collaborative Perspectives on WWII
00:02:10
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And i don't speak German. So after a couple of failed attempts to try and make connections with different people in Germany, I decided, okay, what I'm going to do is call someone who does speak German. So I picked up, um,
00:02:26
Speaker
you know, just a number from online at Memorial University. And I found this wonderful German language teacher and she's, ah yeah, she was fantastic. And she was 100% on board right away. And so through the jigs and reels and lots of planning and contacts, I found this wonderful teacher in Germany, Annika Weiss. And Annika was a young teacher And she was immediately interested. So she said, sure, let's start the conversation.
00:02:57
Speaker
So then on my end, I told her what I had in mind and i invited other people to the classroom who had a lot of expertise to offer and who I thought would enjoy the conversation as well as, you know, the students, myself and other people involved. So that's really where it started. And the whole goal from the beginning was to kind of understand that as we suffered here in Canada during war,
00:03:22
Speaker
ah you know, and during different times that the Germany people, ah people in Germany were suffering as well in a very different way that not every German was a Nazi supporter.
00:03:34
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or a supporter of Adolf Hitler, that they had fears as well. And we wanted to hear that side of the story so that when we looked at studying history, we had a little bit of a different perspective.
00:03:47
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And we certainly gained that.
Educational Goals: Promoting Understanding
00:03:49
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And also, at the time in Canada, we were beginning and still are beginning to understand the history of residential schools and the atrocities that occurred there.
00:04:02
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and It was really another layer to understanding how we in Canada can use education as a healing tool, as they do in Germany. And so that really became the overall goal for me is how do we use our education to improve our understanding and to improve really the world around us for students and for everybody. So, um It worked out really well. We've had lots of guest speakers, lots of people involved in the conversation and lots of friendships have grown because of it. So it's wonderful and it's still continuing, which is wonderful.
00:04:39
Speaker
That sounds like a wonderful learning experience for for your students, but also, as you said, for for you and for the other adults in the classroom. um Throughout this project, how did you integrate, you know, historical thinking and allow your students to really, you know, deepen their there ways that they learned about and thought about this project and and what they were learning?
00:05:07
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You know, I guess um first and foremost, I talked with the students and said, history is sometimes what we believe to be accurate. But as we dig deeper, uncover things and explore more, we realize that sometimes it's inaccurate.
00:05:26
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And that's the importance of studying history, that it's not just part of the past, it influences our present and our future. And we have to be as accurate as possible ah to make it more meaningful, more ethically accurate as well for the students. So you know that was a big thing for me. So I think the first thing that we did When um and students realized, when we realized, okay, this is going to work out because now we have the right people on board. I mean, it was a collaboration. It was absolutely impossible for me to do this on my own. i wouldn't We wouldn't even get to stage one. So once we realized we have very um great people on board with us as collaborators, we started research. Okay, what is it we want to do? So we researched Germany, their role in the war, and also how...
00:06:19
Speaker
ah German people today look back at their role in the war. Because of course we realize today that Germany is one of the most beautiful, peaceful countries on the planet. So they learned a lot. And you know so students
Guest Speakers and Global Education
00:06:34
Speaker
researched that. We also researched because I knew from my early discussions with Annika, they wanted to understand more about the different indigenous people in Canada, and also about residential schools, because that was very, a lot of unknowns for them. So yes, we wanted to be competent in our understanding there. So of course we brought in guest speakers with us to um speak about the history. So the first person I invited to speak about that was Judge Jim Idlo-Leorty. And he's got really, really, um
00:07:13
Speaker
great history in the understanding of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador and throughout Canada. So we could not have had a better person to speak about that. And we also had key leaders in education.
00:07:26
Speaker
You know, Anthony Stack was the chair of the Newfoundland Labrador English School District at the time. And he was a great supporter of the collaboration involved with us in the conversation. And he was very important because if we're talking about education as a healing tool for uniting students in different countries and, you know, in a global scale, uniting countries and future leaders, then I wanted him to speak on behalf of the education. so I think the invested interest that the collaborators put into the student learning was remarkable, are absolutely remarkable. And you know together, i think we all learned in that initial conversation that history is so continuous.
00:08:13
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it's it's never in you know It's never complete, ever. ever And that the more we talk, the more we share our stories, the more we listen to each other, we grow our compassion, we grow our ethics, we grow our understanding, and we grow the learning.
00:08:29
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And it has a very unifying effect on all of us, that initial day and still today with every classroom that we have. And so I think that historical thinking that students learn was so natural and it's going to stay with them forever.
00:08:45
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as they lead the school community and progress into the community of the world and the you know the local communities around them. I think that, you know, that critical thinking that state will stay with them forever.
00:08:59
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And the historical perspectives that they gained are ones that will grow too, as they are learning continues to grow in life. Wonderful.
Empowering Students Through Collaboration
00:09:10
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And can you,
00:09:12
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you know, if possible, identify, you know, what may be the biggest impact that this project has had on your students' learning or or even just some some highlights and some high level, you know, some outcomes or stories if you have them. But just sharing more about about the the reach and the impact that this work has had. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
So, you know, as a teacher, when I answer questions like that, I always think of certain students and i think, well, what would they say about that? But I think the biggest thing, probably one of the biggest words is collaboration.
00:09:45
Speaker
You know, in when you talk about people, like we talk about the German people as a subject, it was just wonderful bringing them into the conversation about their history. And we're not talking about them, we're talking with them. So that collaboration is crucial, invaluable, and so empowering to them. So collaboration becomes the first word.
00:10:13
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And I think too, it's, not being afraid to ask questions, to ask people, hey, would you like to join us in the conversation? you know Because I think sometimes we put up obstacles ourselves before we ask. But once you ask and you realize that people really are interested in coming to the conversation, it grows your confidence to ask more people to get involved. And of course, the more you involve, the better the learning becomes, the more accurate the learning becomes.
00:10:45
Speaker
So I would say the collaboration, um not being afraid to involve people in the conversation, ask the questions. And i think, too, it's about relationships.
00:11:00
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I think when we teach students to reach out and involve people from the community, we build relationships. And the more relationships we build in the classroom, within the school community and outside the school community, I think it just improves us as people, as learners in so many ways. So I think the relationships that we gained, that the students gained, from the classes will stay with them forever and it helps them to become leaders.
00:11:33
Speaker
It helps them to come because we're not talking about students and what they should learn. We're bringing them into the conversation and we're saying what do you want to learn?
Cultural and Historical Exchanges
00:11:42
Speaker
You know students from Germany ask students from canada Canada questions, students from Canada ask students from Germany questions, basic things about their social lives, their school lives, about their war history, about what's happening in your school to improve learning. So there's so much collaboration on so many levels.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's difficult to bring it down to a few key points, but definitely the word collaboration is the key word that I would highlight. That conversation is invaluable, invaluable. And I'm i'm grateful to everybody from students in the classroom to certainly Annika in Germany and her principal, Holger, to the professor at MUN, Dr. Maria Mar, to, you know, Tony Stack, to Dana Branding, Dwayne Smith, Judge Jim, everybody was just wonderful. And, you know, they were, we were all equal players at a very digital round table.
Reflections and Future Potential
00:12:38
Speaker
Thank you so much, Joanne. i really appreciate you sharing with me and chatting with us a little bit more about this project. You're quite welcome, Brooke. It's been honor. you know, it's a conversation that I hope will continue well years ahead.