During the tour I walked amongst the headstones of the Canadian war dead…row upon row… reading the epitaphs. Outside of prayers from family members on distant shores the epitaph represents the last words from a mother to her son, a father to his boy or vice versa, a son or daughter to their father. Sometimes a family decides to not have anything written at the bottom of the headstone. Do they do this because the family is angry and their son has died in vain? Or is the family so overwhelmed with grief they are unable to bring closure to his death? In many ways what is not written says just as much and sometimes more than what is written. In the space provided by the War Graves Commission there is just weathered and pebbly concrete.
Silence on the stone is deafening.
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Dear readers/teachers who are searching for a perspective from a sixteen year girl,
All right. Lets face it. You probably haven't gone out searching for that before. Unless you’re a teacher, a desperate friend trying to figure out if those jeans are a yay or a nay, or even a hopeless uncle trying to find a present worthy of their teenage niece, your never going to be handed a teenage opinion. We’re quiet. Or sometimes we just plain don't have one. You will often hear the answer, I don't know. Frustrating. I know. But I am just an ordinary teenage girl who is going to give you a perspective on learning in school from a teenage mind. I had never been to The Netherlands before this battlefields trip and the country`s geography is leaving a lasting impression on me. Aptly named one of the Low Countries, The Netherlands is arguably the flattest country on earth and literally mean "low lands." Thanks, Captain Obvious, you're thinking.
Now that I have your attention, think about fighting a battle on ground so flat you can barely see over the next hedgerow, let alone gain an advantage by taking a high point and seeing your enemy`s position. THERE. IS. NO. HIGH. GROUND... For the past month, I've been working on a biography for soldier that served in World War II. The only information we were given were their names. Harold Chappell. That was my soldier, and for the past two months I searched through over 200 pages of him. From what his hobbies were, to the details of his death. For this tour, we were given a list of names to choose from. I chose Harold not randomly, but as I looked through the names, his looked quite familiar. Chappell. 48th Highlanders. These were the key factors in my decision.
I am mesmerized by the process of creating a headstone rubbing. For each soldier we speak about, a rubbing is created of his headstone on paper for us to take home so that we can continue to tell his story and we can be sure his life won't be forgotten. Charcoal is rubbed gently over the paper to reveal the inscription on the limestone beneath, care has to be taken to ensure that the stone is left unmarked and undamaged.
The first day of school in history class I was fully prepared to do board notes and textbook work. Mr. Seward came in and asked us about topics of history and wrote them down on the board. We were about twenty minutes in and we had created this giant think wall with all these topics. We were asked to pick three. For my first project I picked a soldier biography. Being completely honest I had no idea what I was doing. The thought of writing about someone whom I don't even know made me nervous, I wanted a really good mark in this class. I thought I was just going to write down his height and weight hand it in and pray for a good mark.
The following days, we would come to class and Mr. Seward would talk about world events and ask us our opinion. I thought to myself “Why does he care what we think? It's not like it really matters, right?” C'est la fin du voyage. Retour sur les grandes questions. Il y en a eu une multitude. At times, it was almost overwhelming. Plusieurs de ces questions restent avec moi. Je les poserai à mes élèves, nous chercherons les réponses. Ce voyage ne s'est pas limité à l'histoire de la libération des Pays Bas par le Canada. Nous nous sommes tous penchés sur notre rôle d'enseignant, sur les façons d'améliorer nos pratiques afin de rendre les élèves plus actifs dans leur apprentissage en leur posant, entre autres, de grandes questions.
Malgré tout, quelques unes des ces questions, à mon avis essentielles à la compréhension de la construction du Canada, ont été à peine touchées... |
AuthorsParticipating educators and high school students share reflections on their professional and personal experiences during and after the program. Some posts link to the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society's blog, Studeamus bellum causa pacis. Archives
August 2015
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