History teacher nominated for Governor General's Award.
Bishop Allen tenth graders (L-R) Sofiya Bobryk; Anastisia Martyts; Sophia Nunes; Meaghan Walker and Ryan Gomes help history teacher Jennifer Smoulders celebrate her selection as one of 25 finalists for the Governor General's Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History. The winner of the award will be announced in November.
Staff photo/CYNTHIA REASON
Max Eisen. Faigie Libman. Frank Moritsugu.
You won't likely find their names in any textbooks, but for students in Jennifer Smoulders' tenth grade history class at Bishop Allen Academy, their voices and shared experiences have brought the subject to life in a way no words on a page ever could.
From Holocaust survivors Eisen and Libman, to Moritsugu, a Japanese internment camp survivor - such are just three of the guest speakers Smoulders regularly invites into her classroom as part of All of Our Voices: A Collective Approach to Responsible Proactive History Education.
It's a curriculum that has garnered both Bishop Allen's social sciences department and one of their resident history teachers rave reviews: Smoulders was recently selected by Canada's History Society as one of 25 finalists for the 2010 Governor General's Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History.
"The highlight of all this is the guest speakers who bring a new voice to this curriculum, so that instead of just reading about the Holocaust, we get someone who has experienced it firsthand to come in and talk about it. And the more voices the better," she said.
"We have native speakers who, if a student asks them a question and it doesn't pertain to their own traditions or their own experiences, will often say 'that's not my story to tell.' I find that really interesting because, as a history teacher, I have to stand up in front of a classroom and tell all kinds of people's stories, over decades of time. It's a huge, daunting feeling not knowing if you're getting it right."
Enter her guest speakers - who not only share their experiences, but also their insights on the universal lessons to be learned from them.
As a child, Libman narrowly escaped death several times in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. She's shared her harrowing experiences with Smoulders' class several times over the last five years.
"Her story is just infathomable. There's so many points in her story that you're shocked she wasn't killed," Smoulders said.
"So that's why it's so cool that after you hear her story, she says 'and by the way, don't be like them by making fun of people or bullying people'...whenever she comes she reminds students that what she went through can be seen on a much smaller level in the halls of schools. It's really opened the kids' eyes."
To Smoulders, history class is the prime place to begin telling those not-so-good stories that have happened in history as a kick-off point to making connections with some of the world's current, sometimes voiceless, crises.
Eisen, an Auschwitz survivor, brought that lesson home for both Smoulders and her students.
"He once commented to the kids that they must feel enraged that so much of the world knew what was happening during the Holocaust, yet most did little or nothing to help him and people like him," she remembered. "He told them that circumstances like that are currently happening and that we have to make sure we don't take a passive role. He encouraged them to speak out about situations like the genocide in Darfur and the atrocities that are happening in Congo right now."
It was Smoulders' commitment to taking those particularly difficult moments in Canada's past and providing those opportunities for students to look at them from multiple perspectives, that caught the attention of Canada's History Society and led to her top 25 placement, said its CEO Deborah Morrison.
"If you do that well, as she does, you're really improving the capacity of young citizens to be way more thoughtful in how they approach issues of diversity and the complex challenges we'll increasingly face as we become a more global world," she said. "What really stood out is that she tackles those challenges head-on and that's a higher level of historical teaching that these kids are really going to benefit from."
Such are the lessons learned in Smoulders' tenth grade history class - lessons learned from those who've been there and know best, facilitated by a teacher who knows enough to know that her voice alone can teach but a fraction of the whole truth.
"This course has made me realize that no matter how many times you've taught something, when it's history, you don't ever know all of it - ever," she mused. "It's all about people's stories, right? You need other people to tell their stories, because a teacher, no matter how good, is just one person."