Erin Quinn Transcript

My name is Erin Quinn. I'm currently the vice principal at Parkdale School in Wetaskiwin Alberta. Formerly a grade seven and eight social studies and language arts teacher. So, a couple years ago, I was teaching grade 7 social studies and encountering a problem. The social studies program of studies is about Canadian history and it kind of covers everything from preconfederation all the way up to like the foundation of the CBC. So it's huge and most of it was very disconnected from the lives of my students. A lot of it took place in Eastern Canada and these were experiences that they didn't have any context for. So, I really wanted to find a way to help my students kind of connect with that curriculum.

And so, I created a project with partners in partnership with the Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum where my students would be learning about the actual people who helped to found Wetaskiwin. And as they were learning about these people that in some cases were their direct ancestors, they were learning about why people chose to come to this community, how western immigration happened and how that impacted the Indigenous people that were in this place to begin with. So the students got to learn using primary sources from about real people and create an exhibit for the museum that they actually got to be curators of and put on at the museum.

So the biggest impact of this project was getting my students out of their classroom and connected to the community that they're a part of. It was an authentic experience where they actually got to do something important for their community. They actually got to create this museum exhibition that they put on and for them to be able to see the impact of that was huge for them. I think it also developed empathy for the people of this place. It helped them connect to this place. I hope in some cases showed them them how powerful they actually can be. The best kind of history learning is the kind that's hands-on. It's the kind that's hyper local. It's the kind where the students are doing inquiry into these big topics and learning about these really fascinating things like change and multiple perspectives and they're doing the critical thinking that is so important for them as citizens today.

What I think history can teach us is that people can enact change. Everyday people, ordinary people can change the world. And so if we position history that way, it can be actually very empowering for kids to learn about. History gives young people the context for the world that they're inheriting when they start looking at multiple sources and examining evidence and looking into the people that created the history that they're living in. They get to see multiple perspectives, examine those critical narratives and really think deeply about the world around them. I think the most profound impact of this project is that it showed students that they could be connected to history if they just look around them and that history is happening right here, right now in their backyard.