Dr. Samantha Cutrara:      Mel, thank you so much agreeing to speak for the “Pandemic Pedagogy” series. I’m really excited to connect with you. Thank you.

Melanie Williams:        Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.

SC:        Yeah. Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit before we get started?

Mel:        Sure, not a problem. Hi, everyone. I’m Melani. I teach high school in Mississauga and I teach history and English, depending on what they feel like giving me for the year, and I’m also doing my master’s at York University. And I’m doing interdisciplinary studies as my discipline. Well, that’s redundant. And I’m looking at the lives of three Canadian journalists who were [inaudible 0:03:56.9] journalists who lived and worked about 100 years ago, and I’m seeing how their writing and their travels, interest like the femininity that they chose to live as well as how they chose to live that femininity in relation to social expectations at the time. [crosstalk 0:04:16.7]

SC:        You know, I said in my little introduction before we came together on Zoom that I think it’s really awesome to be able to foreground interdisciplinarity into these conversations. And so the fact that you’re also bringing in like journalism history with English, with history, with just like I assume also feminist theory if you’re thinking about gender identity —

Mel:        Absolutely.

SC:        — I’m just really excited to have this conversation. So thank you for bringing all of that disciplinary/interdisciplinary expertise to the conversation.

Mel:        It’s nice to meet somebody who wants to hear about this because usually people just glaze over right about the journalists part and they don’t hear the rest of [inaudible 0:04:58.4]

SC:        Not me.

Mel:        Great.

SC:        SC:        Not me. I like to keep this conversation to 30 minutes, but we could talk all day.

Mel:        Let me get some more water then.

SC:        Yeah, exactly. Hydrate. Hydrate.

Mel:        Yeah, sorry.

SC:        So why don’t we get started on our first question, which is have you thought of history any different because of this moment? And I say in all the videos, like I certainly have. I thought a lot more about like the structures that intersect with our lives and the evidence that we used to teach and learn and understand the past, but some people have not been able to like think about that. So have you thought of history any different because of this time?

Mel:        I have. Okay, so for two different reasons. One of them is there were several articles in various news outlets, CBC being one of them I think last week or the week before, and the articles were discussing how museums are right now attempting to curate the displays that make sense of the moment that we’re in. So I thought that that was interesting that they’re working on how do you frame the narrative that we currently live for the kind of consumption that normally happens well after the fact? I mean, I don’t associate museums with contemporaneity, and that’s fascinating to me how do we reframe what’s happening based on what story we want to tell. So that’s one.

And then the other thing that I was thinking of in terms of how do I view history? Just the amount of social media coverage that’s coming out of this pandemic, I wonder if any of us survives into the future if people will wonder about our fascination with bread, how it seems to have exploded a reason out of nowhere. Pardon the pun, I can’t help it. I haven’t been in front of a classroom in so long.

SC:        Ooh, a lot of puns and interdisciplinarity. Just like, buckle up everybody. This is going to be a wonderfully long conversation.

Mel:        I promise I will try to keep my punning to a minimum, but the kinds of things that people are choosing to record and how they’re choosing to record it. I mean in the past, I’m just going to go right to the 1918 pandemic, who was recording their experiences and the kinds of people who were recording those experiences and then which of those experiences were saved in order to be accessed at a later point for study is different from today.

I mean, I don’t know that we have the same class barriers to prevent different kinds of people. And I don’t know if that’s offensive, but we have sources from a variety of different people. So we have sort of a record of how different people experienced this pandemic differently, so I think it’s a little bit more wide-ranging the amount of material that there would be later to analyze and to say, well, what happened during this time period?

So certainly this experience, in looking at it and thinking how will we be remembered and how will we do that remembering and what will we choose to do that remembering with? There’s a lot more available to us now assuming that there’s not some great server destruction that happens in the next 20 years and all of our electronic media history is wiped out and then all of a sudden, future historians 300 years from now say, “There’s this dark period in the early 21st century where there are no records.”

SC:        I mean, I feel like that’s a real like consideration actually. But we don’t need to dwell on that during COVID time.

Mel:        Well, partially though, right now, I’m in the middle trying to conduct my thesis research and I can’t access any of the archives because they’re all closed. And in fact, one of them has decided they’re not going to open again until next year, which is the same from a researcher’s point of view as not having the records at all. I mean, I guess it’s a reflection on the type of media on which our records are stored is the kind of thing that I’m thinking about, like is digital, is hard copy, is analog have other advantage as well in this time period? I don’t know. Yeah, another consideration.

SC:        Yeah. I mean, you are touching upon some things that the archivists that I’ve spoken to, Chris Sanagan and Adam Birrell, have talked about like people are a lot more conscious of recording things now because we have our phones at hand and debit cards. Our phones at hand at all the times. And often we are recording things like through taking pictures or through our social media posts. And one, does that change the ways that the primary sources that we are creating will be available? Not available, but like are we crafting a narrative that historians in the future are really just going to pick up on, or are the primary sources going to be more available for interpretation? And I think that’s a really valid and interesting question to think about the historians of the future and the ways that we are hyper-aware of recording things.

SC:        And that with a cellphone, it can be a very democratized type of recording, which is I think what you were saying.

Mel:        Yes.

SC:        Like in 1918, people of lower classes weren’t like, “You know what, let me just sit down and write a lengthy diary entry about my feelings right now,” right? Whereas you can do that on Twitter, you can do that on Facebook and it is interesting. And I do think that this moment really does highlight this analog-digital split. So in one hand, if the resources that you wanted are available digitally on the archive’s websites, you are able to access them. But if everything is there, then what about when that technology is not available?

So I think you’re bringing up some really key important things that we do need to think about about history and the discipline in history moving forward.

Mel:        I’m glad that that last bit made sense, because sometimes you’re talking and you think, what am I saying? And somehow being on Zoom makes you really hyper-aware of that stream of consciousness just flowing out of your face and you’re thinking, okay. Well, let’s hope somebody can pull meeting out of this. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.

SC:        Well, what’s so great about doing 30 pandemic pedagogy conversations is that I hear different things from different people, but I can also make these strong connections. And although like Chris Sanagan and Adam Birrell, the archivists I spoke to didn’t necessarily articulate things in the same way that you’re doing, it’s the same concern.

Mel:        Oh, interesting.

SC:        That archivists are [inaudible 0:12:33.1*rejuvenating too.] Yeah.

Mel:        Well, that’s good. I’m glad that we all seem to have this common thread since we all probably have history as a common denominator among us.

SC:        Yeah. I mean, I guess that is the most common denominator that people that — I mean, I say teaching history, but really what I mean is mobilizing the past. Anyone that is able to mobilize the past has an open invitation for the “Pandemic Pedagogy” series. And because I’ve worked at archives, the archivist I have worked with, like they knew that their work would fit this conversation more than someone that might be like, “Oh, well, that’s not really how I conceptualize my work.” So it has been really awesome to get so many different perspectives.

Mel:        You know, I kind of — while you were talking about how future historians are going to process this, I kind of feel like maybe that’s a thing that I’d like to have my history students do, assuming I get a history class this coming semester. We still don’t know. We have no idea what’s happening next term. But I think that that might be a useful dear future historians article to let historians know this is what we were thinking when we were creating all of these records and it wasn’t necessarily because we wanted future-future generations to look back and know this about us, but certainly these are the things you have to keep in mind about what we were considering when we created these records for immediate consumption. But that sounds like a different task.

SC:        Yeah. No, I love that idea. Like, what were we thinking when we created this for immediate consumption? Not for like this diary that we will one day perhaps read or a business record that’s really just between two people in an organization, but what do the records mean when we created them to be publicly consumed? That is a brilliant question.

Mel:        Oh, thanks. Thank you.

SC:        And if you want to just switch your master’s thesis, you could do it on that actually.

Mel:        I might because like I said, the archives are closed until next year. One of my thesis is due.

SC:        Just focus on all the social media posts.

Mel:        Oh! Oh, great.

SC:        That’ll be fun. This makes me think of two things. So one, I published a blog post on a website called The COVID Chronicles, which Andrea Eidinger, someone that I interviewed for this series is one of the coeditors of. And the blog post was about my camera roll on my phone and how the camera roll really demonstrates this archive of grief, but that you don’t notice it unless you are me. Like if you were browsing through my camera roll as an archivist in 100 years, you might take a different narrative. And so it was really me highlighting like these are the narratives that I actually see and that I created in my own archive of this moment. And it would be really interesting to have students think about their own types of records they created during this time and what they meant by it, but then also what other meanings people could take from it.

Mel:        And I think that that’s the kind of thing — oh, I don’t know if I would do that as an online exercise unless I had previously worked with many or most of the students in the class, but something that I might want to do is have them do an individual assessment of look back at a specific — like look back at your April posts. All of your April posts, just that month, and then do the exercise. Think about what you were thinking at the time? What were you trying to capture? Why were you trying to capture it? Who were we trying to communicate with or to? And then have someone else look at it and do the same thing. What do you think this person was…(video trails off 0:16:42.3)

Mel:        — at the very beginning of the course to teach the idea that the historical thinking concepts, that this is a creation act looking at primary sources that might be a really good hook.

SC:        That is a great idea. I hope everyone steals it from you. Is that okay?

Mel:        You know, that one is free. That one, I’m not going to claim copyright, I’m not — yeah, absolutely. Do that if you think that’s a good idea.

SC:        But you can certainly cite the video. I mean, I think that’s really great. And I also just really want to flag something you said at the beginning. That like, I don’t know if I would do this online unless I met the students because Ian Duncan in his talk, he was like, “We don’t know who the students are going to be in our classrooms virtually or not in the fall.” And that is something that we need to ensure that the students feel trust in the classroom, right? So, yeah.

Mel:        Absolutely. And the only reason I thought of it is because I’m guaranteed at least one class of students who I’ve taught for the last three years, just because of the structure of one of our courses, I think I’m the only person qualified to teach it at my school. So I have one class where I’m going to be able to start in September virtually or in real life in a place where we’re very comfortable with one another and this is a project that I could rule out immediately. Whereas if we were online in September, I don’t know that I would necessarily trust the students and myself and my own liability to do a project like that, but we’ll see, right? We’ll see what happens in September.

SC:        Yeah, and we’ll see too I think like what students have an appetite for. Like are they going to want to spend a lot of time processing this or do they just need to like not actively process it in order to process it, you know?

Mel:        That is true as well. That is true as well. So yeah, I don’t even want to speculate on that because I feel like, if people watch this down the road, they’re going to look back and judge us with the post-COVID eyes and think, oh, my Lord, what are those people thinking?

SC:        It’s a no-judgment space. It’s a no-judgment space. I mean, but it’s also interesting. Like this is a bit of a time capsule in and of itself, right?

Mel:        Yes.

SC:        Yeah. The other thing I want to say is I don’t know if you have anything else in your head when you say what future historians will think because all I want to do is start singing this song Burn from Hamilton. Do you know Hamilton?

Mel:        No. I was going to try and go see it over the March break because I was headed to New York over the March break until Porter canceled their flights. So you know, I didn’t get that.

SC:        That is so sad on so many levels.

Mel:        Yeah. But you know what, that’s okay because — oh, am I allowed to [crosstalk 0:19:43.2] drop companies?

SC:        Yeah, I can edit it. No problem.

Mel:        Fantastic. Okay, so there is an online streaming service that is about to release Hamilton online obviously for streaming in a few weeks, in a few months?

SC:        Yes.

Mel:        And so it’s the Lin-Manuel Miranda version, so I will watch it then.

Mel:        But what’s the song about?

SC:        So for those of you watching that know Hamilton — I mean, I guess it’s a historical record so it’s not much spoilers, but if it is spoilers, cover your ears. So Alexander Hamilton, he does a lot of writing and he gets caught in a bit of a sex scandal and he writes about the sex scandal very, very publicly. And there is this song that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote that isn’t necessarily based in a historical record, where Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, is articulating her anger at the fact that he’s speaking publicly about an affair and having an affair. And the song Burn is about her saying that I’m going to burn all of the records that I wrote to you. So let future historians wonder what Eliza reacted when he broke her heart. And it’s this beautiful song because it highlights such anger, and the actress brings a candle onto the stage and she literally burned something on the stage.

And I’ve written about this and I’ve done a presentation about this particular song about how it demonstrates emotion in history. Emotions without records, but allowing us to imagine a particular response. Allows us to humanize history to some extent for our students and for ourselves, but also to remember that we also don’t have records for everything and we don’t know what the meaning is behind the lack of records, but we can also responsibly use historical empathy to highlight some of those narratives that we as people in today’s world want to process.

So anyway, just to flag Hamilton there, but yes, it is coming to streaming very soon if you haven’t seen it. But it’s also a really wonderful soundtrack to just listen to. Some musicals, you can’t like do that. You need to see the performances, but it’s a really beautiful thing to listen to as well. So flag for Hamilton because I know they need this flag.

Mel:        Oh, I can’t wait till they come back —

SC:        Yeah, yeah.

Mel:        — to see them live, hopefully.

SC:        So why don’t we move to the second question, which is about history teaching in the future. Do you think history teaching will change in the future? Now, some people say that they hope that it will change, but I wonder kind of in a broader way, do you think it should change? Do you think not just the delivery, but the types of ways we engage in thinking about the past, do you think that that should change when we get back into our classrooms in September in whatever way that looks like?

Mel:        I’m going to keep my responses to the kinds of history teaching that I’m familiar with. So anybody who’s listening, if you don’t teach in secondary and you think that the things that I’m saying seem far fetched or grounded in some mystery swamp, that’s where I’m coming from.

SC:        Don’t worry. Don’t worry.

Mel:        So I’m also going to I think restrict myself to grade 10 history or yeah, grade 10 history just because it’s cleaner for me, right? Like I think that way, my answers will make more sense in terms of less general, less platitudy something.

SC:        Yeah. For anyone watching that doesn’t know why grade 10 history is because that is the mandatory 20th-century Canadian history course taught in Ontario and that’s the only history course that students have to take in secondary school. So grade 10 history, adapt.

Mel:        Thank you. Thank you for the clarification. [inaudible 0:24:12.9*Sort of mention that.] So in terms of how it’s taught now, I mean, you have a real variety with obviously whichever teacher you get, and so you still have some history teachers who are — I hesitate to say old school because I don’t want to sound ages. I just mean of the mentality that there is set number of facts and dates and names that are important to know and that that collection of facts and names, when you put them all together in the right order and you assign the right deeds to the right humans and the right groups, then all of a sudden, you have the essential knowledge of history about a group of people or nation or culture or what have you. And then you have newer schools of historians. History teachers, excuse me. Not historians, history teachers in high school who are a little bit more willing to perhaps have their students question.

So they’ll present the same facts as the more classical history teachers, but then they’ll perhaps challenge their students with, well, what do you think of how — how do you interpret this piece of evidence and what has been done with it? But I feel like very rarely do we get the kind of history that focuses on not the big names.

Mel:        So I feel that if history education, the way that history is taught is going to change, I’m sure it will, but only if the people teaching it want to make a change and I think that that change should be driven towards learning about a broader set of lived experiences because I think that will also show students — I think it gives students an access point into Canadian history. Because if we’re just learning about these dead British men for the most part with a couple of tokenistic inclusions thrown in, it makes it seem as though history doesn’t exist outside of these exemplary lives. And I don’t think that that is a complete picture of what happened.

I don’t think it’s possible to ever get a complete picture, but I think that our purpose should be as history educators is to try and get students interested in learning what happened, how things changed, what does that mean for us? Because ideally, they want to learn about history, but it’s because they want to learn something from it that they can use today or tomorrow. I don’t think it should be a closed circuit.

And so I guess if I were to summarize everything I just said and bring it back into some kind of order, it would be, yes, absolutely, the teaching of history should change to include more stories about or viewpoints from other groups that have been traditionally excluded. There should definitely be more choice on the parts of students in order to find connections that they can establish between themselves and the history that was happening in the country, because those connections exist and it’s not fair to ask teachers to do all the work, and it’s not realistic. But what is doable is for the history teacher to say to the class, “Why don’t we work together? I’m going to teach you the skills of finding these sources, of taking textbooks, putting them together and examining what they say to each other and how they contradict each other, and seeing what kind of history can we make together?”

SC:        I love that for a lot of different reasons. I just want to highlight. One of the things that I heard from you is that like this actually, the ‘should’ in the change of history education, you are articulating that it isn’t just a COVID thing, and I agree. And what I think is that COVID can actually highlight, what I’m hoping personally is that it highlights for students and teachers the way lived experience manifested in historical moment and like that can be the hook to get both teachers and students to be able to do this more lived experience human-centric rather than kind of big names and big dates history.

I did a video about on March the 8th for International Women’s Day and saying, “Well, why is it so hard to bring in women to the narrative?” It’s often because we are focused on big names and big dates. And I think that that really broadens in a lot. And even though you connected old school with age, I don’t think it’s an age thing. I’ve seen a lot of teachers who are really interested in bringing in diverse histories, but like often go back to that narrative because that’s what’s familiar, that’s what they know and they might think that like that a base needs to be laid before anything else happens. But I talk so much in this series about connection, complexity, and care. And that complexity stories, I think students are just dying to hear. Like they really want to understand the complexities that connect with their own lived experiences. So thank you so, Mel, for bringing that up is kind of, for me, I feel like it’s a bit of a call to action about the ways that we want to frame our practice. So thank you.

Mel:        Of course. And it’s not to say that I wanted to go play with the big names, big dates, all of that and if somebody were to ask me, well, how do you intend to do this? It’s kind of a matter of finding a balance because I don’t think you can talk about say the history of okay, let’s go with the 1920s and let’s go with the advance for women, right? Starting with some of them getting the vote during the war years all the way up to the declaration of women as Persons. Yeah? I don’t think you can teach that without also teaching why do some of them were given the vote. I don’t think that you can teach that without going back a little bit and teaching them about women’s place in Canada during its formative years.

So yes, of course, and you have to teach about what the prime ministers were trying to do and, you know, big events about trying to get conscription to happen. Of course, yes. I know that some of the objections are, well then, you only have five months to teach. You can’t possibly do all this. That’s way too much content. And I think again that goes back to you have to pick and choose. And I don’t think you as the history teacher should look at all of the content and think how am I going to teach all of this? I think that there has to be — and I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to try and teach it all, and I think that we have to say, okay, well, if they get this, then I’m okay. And if they can do this, then that’s fine. And so we just kind of have to say find a balance for ourselves.

SC:        And you know, both history, element — excuse me. High school, elementary, and university professors have all said on this series that COVID has given them a lot more freedom to just cut things from the curriculum because they know they’re not going to get a chance to cover it. And I think — well, the people I spoke to at least, it really highlights for them that not everything needs to be covered. Like we really don’t need to focus that much on these things.

This makes me think about this concept of teaching history called historic space that I’ve talked about before. And for anyone watching that hasn’t heard me talked about it, a whole set of videos is going to go up at the end of June about it. But historic space is a way to frame history so that you get those big names and dates, but you spend the most time challenging it. So the beginning of a unit, you get students to just like go through the textbook, put out all the names, all the dates that are important, create a concept map of that, that takes a day or two, then spend just two lessons, two lectures or whatever just talking about some big kind of concepts, but then the majority of the unit can on complicating that through stories that students bring in, through questions that students have, through a piece of history that you just want to complicate like, well, why only white women got the vote and not other women that were in Canada? And it is a way to do that balance about foregrounds, the complexities. And I think if we are interested in foreground and complexities for our students, there is a lot we would recognize. There’s a lot more we can do in that space really.

Mel:        Mm-hmm, yeah. And also First Nations history. And not just history, but current affairs, right? There’s a lot of that. I think that’s a huge gap that many history teachers, I’m throwing myself in there too, we have to address that. And I don’t know how many of my colleagues share this particular sentiment, but I want so much to do right by of making sure that that portion of Canadian history is included in my syllabus, and at the same time, I wonder how much am I allowed to — how do I tell my students that I am not the expert while still teaching them, because I want them to know that. And yeah, that’s just a — is that a pedagogical piece? Is that a teacher piece? As a reflective piece as an educator?

SC:        Yeah. I mean, I think it’s all of those pieces. I think that like when you start a class by being like, let’s all build these histories together, it’s easier when there is stuff that you as an educator don’t know. It is easier for you to identify like, I’m not an expert in this, because you’ve already like laid that groundwork for this is a conversation.

SC:        And so often that indigenous histories have been taught as like acted upon. And I think bringing in histories that demonstrate resistance and resilience is such a strong way to acknowledge first nations people on this land in a way that helps build upon contemporary issues of allyship, contemporary issues of settler colonialism that I think many of us, especially there have been many of us who have thought about these things differently because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report really want to highlight our classroom. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up as well.

For me, this actually goes into my third question so well, which is about imagining a new ‘we’. So this notion of imagining a new ‘we’ is like the theme of like my whole video blog, but it’s also the name of my upcoming book “Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New ‘We’” because I argue something that you are saying, which is that we need to highlight more lived experiences in our classrooms, we need to acknowledge the lived experiences of our students in the classrooms, and we need to recognize that these are all Canadian experiences even if they don’t fit our ‘old school’ definition of Canadian history. Do you have any thoughts about ways that we might imagine a new ‘we’ differently or in a way that’s more complex during or after this period?

Mel:        I think that my answer will not necessarily relate to COVID, but —

SC:        Okay.

Mel:        And this is what I mean. I mean that it’s something that I’ve been working on for some time just because the struggle that I’ve always had to answer with my students, you know, they’ll say, “Miss, why are we learning this? Why does this matter?”

Mel:        And you know, in the past, I remember answering, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago now. I remember telling the students, well, you know, it’s important that we know these things about Canada because we share this space and the space comes with a history and we should know that history. You know, my answer is like that. But then over time, I started thinking, well, maybe what they’re asking me isn’t why do they need to know, but maybe they’re also asking me like, did I bother learning in the first place? Because certainly, part of their question has to do with what does this have to do with us being — you know, I’m a first-generation Canadian and a lot of my students are first-gen Canadian as well, and they’re asking a question that I used to ask too, which is how does this relate to me on a personal level?

And so I know that, for example, members of my community have been in Canada for — there was a large wave of immigration in the 60s I believe, so there’s been a huge community for almost, what? 60 years now? I don’t know anything about them. Nothing. I don’t know. Why? It’s never been covered and I’ve never done the work myself. And I was thinking when they’re asking me, well, what does the stuff that we’re learning in history have to do with us? I thought, well, you know what? Why don’t we find out by having them do the work?

Mel:        Let’s identify the parts of yourself that are important to you. Like don’t let me tell you which parts of your identity are important to you. I’ll let you self-identify and then I’ll let you find that, a reflection of that in Canada, and it doesn’t — I can help point them towards places where they can explore and find those connections, but that way, I think they can establish those connections themselves.

For example, I know I’m speaking in generalities, so let’s try and [crosstalk 0:39:34.2*nail this down a little bit.]

SC:        It’s okay, it’s okay.

Mel:        No, I hate doing it in class, I’m certainly not going to do it here.

SC:        But you are.

Mel:        I know, that’s why I’m going to backtrack. So I had students who when we got into the first World War units, they would say [inaudible 0:39:52.9], was it actually a world war though? Because like, you know, France and English and Germans was like, negative, negative. Hang on a second. Why don’t we have a look at all of these other participants? And I went and found a couple of photographs of British Empire soldiers from other parts of the world, and all of a sudden, I had students like, “Oh! Oh, my gosh. What?” And they were excited because they were seeing reflections of themselves and their own culture in here. And all of a sudden, they were into it and they wanted to know more about that. And that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, that it’s possible to find connections to make connections help them see them and then help them dig more deeply that way and establish that link with Canadian history.

I don’t know if I answered your question. I think I’ve gone way off-topic. Can you like refresh?

SC:        No, you totally answered the question because like when you’re showing soldiers from other parts of the British Empire, Canada was a part of the British Empire. Like, why aren’t we teaching World War I, for example, that Canada is within this empire, this transnational empire that there are similarities and differences across the empire because then that highlights the complexities of Canada’s involvement, but also the like ‘world part’ of World War? And the students in my research said the same thing. I love how you were like — I think they’re asking a different question. Because what I found was that students understand their Canadian identities in very complex ways, and they want their Canadian history to reflect those same complexities. Like, how can I be a Canadian, but never recognized, never seen in Canadian history, right?

SC:        And to me, that really highlights some central-central things that it is integral those of us teaching national histories really consider. So I thought you answered the question. I loved it.

Mel:        Oh, okay. Great. It’s just, yeah, I wasn’t sure if I got too off-topic there. But in terms of imagining a new ‘we’, I think another way of forming a ‘we’ — so I guess my first rambling answer was how do we get our students to buy in to the idea that, yes, they are as Canadian as the next Canadian and that we all have access points into Canada, right? Like, we can all find some way to connect with Canada’s history and thereby, attach ourselves to that longer tradition of Canada. But I think another way that you can forge a ‘we’ is by putting everybody in the same uncomfortable place, and that way, it’s not like you’re privileging some into like an originary category and then some into a newcomer category, but you kind of put everybody into the same, ‘oh, gosh, what do we do with this category in a story?’ Not story, difficult history I think is one of those really rich, rewarding, awkward, dangerous places where you can do that.

So I would never do it at the beginning of term certainly and I would never do it at the end of term, but certainly somewhere past the midterm, somewhere past the first report card is I think it’s a really good place to bring up aspects of the curriculum that are really uncomfortable to learn about Canada and Canadians, and the way that they behave and the actions that they took because I think in that way, you can connect that to today and the uncomfortable things that are happening today and how we are trying to deal with that, us right now, and how we are trying to stay together and forge connections at a time when we’re being torn apart.

SC:        Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, you know, a really key element of what I heard was like the triad of connection, complexity, and care that I was saying before, like when you’re like not the beginning, not the end, not where the first report card is, but like at a place where students are comfortable demonstrate to care for students so that they are in a bit of like a safer, but also like they’re just maybe more primed for it as well. And I think that’s a really good way for teachers that this might be new for them as a way for them to explore when to do this work. It doesn’t have to be all the time always put yourself in these positions, but maybe pick a time, and like that’s a good time for you to share the spotlight with your students and not just talking at them about Canadian history, but exploring difficult complex histories together.

So thank you for bringing that up. And I really enjoy this talk, and I hope we stay connected.

Mel:        Me too.

SC:        So like I said, I hope we stay connected because I’ve been saying to a few people we should get back together in the fall to be able to think about what this might look like, and it will be interesting how future historians will wonder about this moment. And let me know if you wind up doing that assignment with any of your students.

Mel:        Absolutely. I will. Yeah.

SC:        Okay. Well, have a wonderful afternoon and we will talk later. Bye.

Mel:        Okay. Thanks again for having me.

SC:        That was wonderful.

Mel:        Yay!