Kathryn Laframboise & Jonathan McPhail Transcript

KATHRYN: I'm Kathryn Laframboise. I'm a grade 11 teacher here at the Exchange Med School and I've been a teacher for about 11 years.

JONATHAN: I'm Jon McPhail. I've been a teacher for a lot less, three years? Maybe not quite. Two and a half. At our school, we often have different grade levels that will take on various events or various ideas, whether it's Remembrance Day or all kinds of stuff. And so we thought okay, how do we engage the entire school in Black History Month in a way that is not just one day that is actually getting every grade level involved and not just being a passive audience. So we said, okay, perhaps a history walk could work. Maybe what we do is we get our students to come up with locations and to come up with stories connected to those locations and create lesson plans essentially to share with every grade level. And then those grade levels with their classes will take that lesson plan and they will learn along with it, but then sort of infuse it with their own perspectives, with their own stories and shape that experience into something that they can share when we go on that tour. So each grade level sort of has a location. They're in charge of what it looks like when we're there, what the sharing of history sounds like and our students get to sort of see, you know, an interesting perspective of like here's what we put forward and here's what we got back and how is it different and in which ways is it different and use some critical thinking skills along that line as well.

KATHRYN: We sort of responded to events that had just happened and that's where it like transpired from. So there was a fire on Main Street to a pretty important building that was connected to the first Black union for the railway, the porters. And our students were pretty up in arms at the fact that there was not a lot of talk about like saving the building or like they didn't know about the building and that led to figuring out different places of importance in the community. And something that we take pretty seriously is the fact that like there are voices and stories that are here in our community that are going to be resilient that deserve time to be acknowledged and celebrated or also uncovered that like, "hey, that was pretty bad." So, it took the kids some time to figure out like what was what was something that they wanted to connect to and we kind of gave them like the autonomy to figure out in the community like where were all these different stories and voices that they want to share with the school community and then larger community. And so that part is really important to us because these aren't stories that are brand new. These are stories that have been told and like we're the students are trying to do the work to have those stories like out there again instead of being erased or silenced. So yeah, it was a really beautiful project and it's something that's also ongoing.

JONATHAN: And it was interesting to see how some like how difficult it was to find even though like the history of Black peoples in Manitoba is profound and it's everywhere and it's in every aspect, it's also really hard to find it in an obvious way because there's not nearly as many plaques or nearly as many statues or nearly as many pieces of that history that were protected from fire or demolition or erasure. Right. Yeah. And so, we had to connect with, you know, local historians, Black entrepreneurs group, Black History Manitoba, all kinds of folks to help sort of give us some guidance and give us some shape, as to where to look and what to look for which was really interesting.

KATHRYN: I think this project really helped kids understand the meaningfulness of place and how again kind of just like that there are stories and voices and people who we have to be thankful for, who have existed before us and who continue to exist, right? And so giving space and giving time and energy to people who deserve to be acknowledged and celebrated was really important and impactful.

JONATHAN: A lot of our students and us as well we talk about things that happen here and when you actually go to the place, it hits different. Yeah. And so we took that as a piece of learning for ourselves as well and have been applying that this year to some really impactful place-based learning around truth and reconciliation and around our shared history with the Indigenous nations of this place. And so that has been really profound too, sort of that ripple out effect of how we all felt coming away from, you know, our Black history project.

KATHRYN: All of this is living and it's going to continue, kind of, with or without you. And so to be able to show the students that it's not just like another chapter in a textbook that we're done. It's this ongoing work that is kind of essential to being a community member. So, it's just authentic, engaging, and developing those relationships.