This is a special educator's series of the Canada's History Podcast, where we speak with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

Created in 1996, the award recognizes best practices in teaching Canadian history. It's an opportunity to highlight the important work that teachers and students are doing to research, interpret, and share the stories of the past.

2021 Governor General's History Awards for Excellence in Teaching

This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shannon Leggett is a teacher at Brockton School in North Vancouver, British Columbia, where she has developed a new take on a history classroom staple: the research essay. Shannon requires her students to create a 2000-word analytical historical investigation on a Canadian event between 1919-2011 with plenty of feedback from Shannon regarding anything from writing tips to gaps in research. In this process, students learn how to conduct in-depth research and produce papers using a multi-faceted, scaffolded approach. Once the paper is complete, students are tasked with defending their research finding in a 15-minute presentation/Q&A session with their peers. The purpose of this project is not only skill based but also to have students become experts in one area of post-WWI Canadian history, and be taught about a wide array of unique, often unknown events in Canadian history.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.

Interview with Shannon Leggett

This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The Keeping Tobacco Sacred project, started by Michel Blades at the Ranch Learning Centre in Lamont, Alberta, is a reconnection to land, culture, language, and identity for youth growing up in government care. Inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, this project is ultimately a grassroots answer to the assimilation of Indigenous people that resulted from the Residential School System and the legacy of their children. The process of learning to grow, cure, and prepare tobacco from seed to offering provides students with a daily connection to caring for oneself as well as the life of another. Additionally, in acknowledging the length of time it takes to grow medicines, it reinforces the importance of positively connecting the mind, body, and spirit to protocols, language, teachings, ceremony, and elder prayers.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.

Interview with Michel Blades

This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

For over ten years, teacher Mark Perry has led students of various grades (1, 5, 11, and 12) in four different schools in the Kennebecasis Valley, New Brunswick, in a commemorative project called "The Kennebecasis Valley Remembers." The students have uncovered thousands of primary documents and have video-interviewed over sixty Second World War veterans to write five books, of which three have been published, and to produce several documentary films. These products detail historical accounts and the biographies of over 180 people from New Brunswick and the greater Wabanaki Territory. This work has been used by university students and University of New Brunswick historians as they have conducted their own research on the stories of New Brunswick. The present focus is on the development of biographies of veterans of the Wabanaki Nations: the Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Peskotomuhkatiyik.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.

Interview with Mark Perry

This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Student members of the Westwood Historical Society at Westwood Collegiate, along with teacher Kelly Hiebert, have made a documentary film about student voice and social justice regarding the issues of hate and anti-Semitism in Canada today. The project was inspired by a Holocaust Tour where Kelly and the students in the historical society visited Warsaw Ghetto, POLIN (Museum of Polish Jews), Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Lidice Village just outside of Prague, Czechia. The film includes student-led interviews with eight local Winnipeg Holocaust survivors and Angie Orosz-Richt, who was born in the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Angie has dedicated her life to continuing her mother’s story of bravery, courage, hope, and love to protect her daughter in unimaginable circumstances. Students have also interviewed specialists in Holocaust education, local historians that specialize in the Holocaust, and many others who helped in getting the film off the ground. Kelly hopes to hold a viewing of the film in Winnipeg in October 2021.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.

Interview with Kelly Hiebert

This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In Randall Keast’s project, The Human Rights Symposium, students must conduct in-depth research into a marginalized group in Canada and the challenges they faced in their pursuit for equality. Once they have conducted their research, students must present their findings in seminar-style groups. This allows for students to not only engage in a conversation about the historical influences that led to marginalization of these groups, but also provides students an opportunity to directly engage with the history and teach their peers what they’ve learned themselves. At the end of the symposium, students are asked to reflect on the process and explore the notion of a just society.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.