Dr. Samantha Cutrara:       Jan, thank you so much for making the time to talk with me today. I feel so lucky to have some of your time. I know that you are so busy right now because you are still a principal in St. Lucia, while also being in Canada. Thank you so much for talking with me today.

Jan Haskings-Winner:       Well, I’ve been thinking about these questions a little bit anyway because I have a teacher in St. Lucia teaching history, which I’m very excited by and jealous of. But I’m also about to start teaching an online Additional Qualifications (AQ) course in history. So I’m thinking about how the current moment influences how I’m going to support teachers. I mean, how does this moment change our understanding of what’s going on? And I don’t know the answer to that exactly, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.

SC:        Well, what I have found with these interviews is that nobody has the answers, but the fact that we’re having the conversation has been really great for everyone.

So let’s start the first question. I know I have changed the way I just think about history itself because of this moment. Has that been the case for you? Are you thinking about your social studies subjects any differently because of COVID-19?

JH:        I mean, yes and no. I mean, you can always tell when something big is happening. I remember 9/11. I was teaching. I had period one prep when 9/11 happened. I was teaching in a large school in Scarborough, and you don’t know what was happening. You know something is happening, but you don’t know what’s happening.

I had an American history class in the afternoon and I had to move classrooms because my class didn’t have cable. The classroom I was in, I had to switch classrooms so I could actually get a classroom with cable so I could turn on the television with my American history students to try to figure out what was going on. I said to them, ‘I actually have no idea why or what this means, but I guess we’ll try to figure out this bit by bit by the end of the semester.’ [But] I don’t know that we’ve actually figured it out, this many years later.

So I think we have to think about when we’re trying to say. Yes, this is historically significant. It’s also economically significant. It’s also, from a social science perspective, significant. So I think, yes, it’s significant, but from a historical point of view, we need the concept of hindsight to be able to put things in perspective.

I think we have to be careful not to rush into historical significance. All the historical thinking concepts [can help us here], but historical significance jumps up too fast. And that’s my sort of worry that we go, ‘this is historically significant. This is never happened before.’ Well, actually, no. There had been pandemics in the past. There have been events that we knew at the moment were going to be significant because things were going to change. But how is it significant?

I mean, I just watched the Prime Minister’s daily briefing a little bit ago, which it helps us understand continuity and change, but also perspective in comparison to the country on the other side of the border and how they are responding to the same situation in a different way. That’s from a political side, that’s from an economic side, that’s from legal side.

We know we’re living through a moment. But this it’s the difference of between history and the past. The past is everything and history is what we construct. And where is our evidence, beyond social media memes, about if this is historically significant? And I think that is something I think we have to kind of keep in mind as we move forward as historians and history educators.

As a principal, but also as a teacher, because I still think of myself as a teacher first, and now as an AQ course professor, I think, how I’m going to navigate this with my keen students who want to be history teachers?

SC:        I think that’s really interesting about not jumping to particular conclusions. One thing I was talking about with some other videos is thinking about how your students are going to be experiencing COVID differently than you are as a teacher because you are an adult.

And I think about when we get back into our classrooms, whether they’re virtual or in person, will it change because of these different experiences? Do you think about teaching history will shift because of our experiences of this moment?

JH:        Yes and no. I mean, I think good educators always try to make connections to the present, right?

There used to be, when you’re talking about the 1920s and prohibition, about marijuana being against the law. Well, now it’s not, right? So, you can always find those examples of continuity and change.

I think that’s the bigger piece that we can use whether we are teaching online or in person, is to use those examples of continuity and change. We always want to make connections to the present to help students understand the past.

This one is just rather big and in your face, so kids will remember it for a while. But even when there was the power outage in August 2003. I mean, I remember it like vividly. But, of course, nobody else who I teach will remember it because they were not alive at the time. Or maybe they are results of that power outage. Who knows, right?

SC:        Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. [laugh]

I remember, Jan, you had said at one of the OHASSTA conferences that the grade 10 students in your classes this year were born after 9/11 happened. So, we need to really think about how we position our own historicity because these students won’t have the same touchpoint as we will, right?

JH:        That’s right. Yeah.

SC:       To move to my last question: This video series is called “Imagining a New ‘We’” about ways to make history more transformative, meaningful, and inclusive for students. And I say that we need to keep imagining these greater circles of inclusion. So the last question is about how do you think that this ‘we’ might look like after this moment? Do you think the we would change? Do you think the imagining could change? Do you have any thoughts on that?

JH:        I don’t know. I mean, it’s an interesting question because this moment is also reinforcing differences … So I think that becoming less of a ‘we’ and more of an ‘us and them.’

The difference I think is that we have a shared experience, right? And I think that, whether you are in Italy or New York or in Toronto, I mean, we all have that shared experience of living through this as educators, but the students that we teach will have that different experience than their perspective.

One thing I’ve seen posted online during this time is that teachers should ask kids to keep a journal which will become a future primary source. So allowing them to kind of think through this moment, like Anne Frank who lived in a box this big for how many years without access to anything. We can survive in our relatively more comfortable lives and with social media access, right?

But I do worry that it’s not going to be a ‘we.’ It’s going to be more of an ‘us and them’ and we’re going to make those lines clear and who gets access will come across. We already cut off access for irregular migrants coming across our borders because how do we support kind of work, right?

I think that worries me in the sense that we’re not a ‘we.’ We’ve become much more an ‘us and them’ in this current moment. We have a shared experience, but it’s all different. I mean, if you live in a family of five and you all have to share the one bathroom… I mean, I live in my house with my puppy. It’s a different, there’s issues of isolation and resources, and I have had dog food delivered by a friend yesterday, right, because I can’t go out. But not everybody has that network.

I mean, the government today is looking to look ahead and trying to figure out how to cushion all of the different groups who need to be cushioned, whether it’s seniors or indigenous groups, and like it’s imperfect. And as I say to my staff, this is an imperfect experience. We’re not going to get it right. It’s okay to make mistakes. We just have to do our best.

I think in teaching history, it’s going to take a while to figure out the historical significance. Like, what’s going to change? Are we going to change so that a universal basic income is now an assumption? Because the government’s support that they’re providing is predicated on the idea of a universal basic income. So if this moment is a turning point, then I would argue, back to the idea of historical thinking, I would argue that we will be able to look back and say, ‘yes, something changed.’

Because if it’s just survival, like we lived through it the power shut out in 2003, then this is just a moment, right? It’s not important.

9/11 changed something – so then why is it historically significant?

And then this event, does it change anything or we just kind of live through it and then everything goes back to the way it was?

And that I think becomes a question to think about whether when we teach history through this, when we look at the idea of ‘us and them,’ are we going to just build up our walls as that leader south of the border wants to do? Or are we going to make it bridges instead of walls?

SC:        Yeah. You know, when I posed those questions initially, I too had some serious concerns: Like what can a ‘we’ look like?

For me: energy, affect, and emotion is really important in teaching, and it’s hard to communicate that over a screen. So I also was kind of worried about what this ‘we’ could look like. In a lot of the videos that I’ve done, people have been really optimistic, and I think that you raised some really important points. What I hear from what you’re saying is how important it is to recognize our connections, because our experiences are going to be so different that we don’t want it to exacerbate differences any more.

I think that’s such an important point to think about and I really appreciate you bringing it up. Thank you.

JH:        I’m trying to figure out, I mean, trying to figure out questions of daily survival, but also on the bigger scale: how do I support my students?

Like my students in my school, so we are experimenting with Google meeting and we’re having a Google Hangout Google meeting. We’re doing it by grade. And the kindergarten and the grade two class had one this morning and I attended, and it was very messy because they keep talking over each other, but that’s what they do when they’re at that age, right?

But it was just as important for them to see each other, right? And to realize that they’re not alone. Unless they have a sibling, but mostly, they’re home alone. So part of that reaching out which we are experimenting with is, how can we use something like Google or Zoom to connect. And if they have a question about math, that’s a separate question. But just build community.

And we’re a small school so it’s a little easier. Like if I was in my previous school, you could never bring all the 11s and 12s in the same meeting because there are too many. So it’s just complicated, it’s messy, it’s imperfect, and I think the best we can do is just to try our best and figure out the next steps the next time this kind of stuff will happen, because I think this is going to last.

SC:        Yeah, I think this moment will shape things for while to come in ways we can’t predict, especially when you are in the teaching and learning sector because all these new things pop up that you’re like, ‘oh, right, there’s that to think about because we’ve organized so many of our decisions or so many of our ideas within a particular structure and now that doesn’t make sense.’

So anyway, thank you for these ideas and for your time, Jan. This has been so great. Thank you so much.

JH:        My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.