After receiving feedback and reflecting on our World War I (WWI) presentation, I think there were a lot of things that we didn’t consider when preparing a lesson on a war. The main thing being that war is not a heroic act and it doesn’t define who or what Canada is as a country. So much of Social Studies during both my time in high school years ago as well as in most of the Socials 9, 10 and 11 classes I have been in at Belmont this semester consists of lectures around one of the Great wars or battles that has happened in history. To be honest, before coming into the post degree program and taking our social studies class, I had thought that my undergrad in Geography (where I did not take courses in History) was setting my up to teach Social Studies which meant purely teaching about wars that have happened. It was a little uninspiring to me because I remember that feeling in high school myself, where I would go to another Social Studies class and not be interested in hearing another lecture on another battle. Seeing how this hasn’t changed a huge amount since my time in high school, I think it really calls us as future teachers to make a change. The presentation we gave was similar to an introductory lecture and activity that Nicole and I witnessed in a class at Belmont, and I think we automatically figured that that was appropriate to do with our own class as a mock lesson plan. However, thinking back I think there are other ways we could have introduced WWI – maybe spoke about it in different ways or gave different historical details (maybe more on Indigenous Canadians, French Canadians, or other minorities who were nowhere near accurately represented). I am very interested in learning how to teach the BC Curriculum that includes so much of wars and battles in a more inspiring, equal and truthful way to my future students because I haven’t seen it happen yet in school. I want to be able to teach students to be critical of what they read and hear and to see war and battle in a different light than how they do in other classes they take.
Some questions I have are: What are some good strategies for effectively teaching students about wars that happened in history? How do I teach these topics (because they’re mandatory) yet make them less time consuming and ensure students are critical and come away with different takeaways than usual? What activities or field trips could I take them on to make it more interesting and to have students develop a critical lens when viewing these historical events?
