As we've participated in stands, explored topics, and continued conversations in the vans and over meals throughout the past few days, the image of a giant web keeps popping up in my mind.
In many ways, the campaign maps we've examined look like webs, with the lines of the different regiments spreading out across the continent. Certainly, many civilians in the occupied countries must have felt like they were caught in a web with few good options available to them. Those impressions have been essential to my learning over the start of this tour, and are probably what prompted my focus on the web image. Further reflection on this image, however, also extends it to the present in our studying and teaching of war...
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Professional Development (PD) days are often a day of great joy for students, who get the day off, and most times, a day of dread for teachers. Ministry mandated seminars, slips, trips and falls training and staff meetings take up the majority of the day. This leaves very little time for personal professional development, collaboration within departments or collaboration with other departments.
Thanks greatly to some of the experts on this tour there has been a focus on how to use the information we have been gathering with our own students. The idea of using big questions, maps, and having students drive where the class goes. In the winter of 1944 - 1945, 3.5 million Dutch civilians in German-occupied Holland were facing starvation after the Nazis had cut food and power, creating the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944-45.
Today we "experienced" what it was like to eat what the Dutch civilians ate during the Hunger Winter. I use quotes around the word experienced, because the food that we ate was within no comparison to what the starving population ate to survive. Each of the group members was given half of a raw potato, about 4" of a baguette, a slice of spam meat, as well as a carrot. This small amount of food totalled up to be just 600 calories, which was similar to what a Dutch civilian would consume over the course of a day. Today on tour we heard another story and description from Lee Windsor about how the Canadians battled the Germans in a situation that seemed complex to comprehend, if not downright impossible to see a way out of, then Mark Milner would also add in some more tidbits of information to consider. MIND BLOWN. That’s how I felt; how we all felt. How could our troops be faced with such desperate situations, time after time, here in the Netherlands and be expected to complete the job successfully for the most part? And as a history teacher who loves to teach about the world wars and has even been on a previous teacher battlefield tour, how come I have never heard the whole story about the Canadian army here??
Our platoon of intrepid Canadian educators has now reached the halfway point of the 2015 Flemer battlefield tour to the Netherlands and the experiences and learning are continuing unabated...
The sacred spaces of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission graveyards are undoubtedly some of the most memorable places that we are visiting during our tour... Canadians In Germany Consider War Commitments
Canadian teachers caravanned into Germany to study the role of Canada in the war from the air by examining bomber command. As we began our day we were faced with very difficult decisions, these were the decisions which faced our leaders near the start of the Second World War. We were asked to consider the role that bombing should take in total war. As teachers we examine these questions while considering our pedagogy and how we might help our students to confront the past in order to gain an appreciation for the challenges that faced the leaders of the era. Today was a fabulous day in many ways. It was stimulating weather being warm and sunny, it was stimulating seeing and learning about more of the fight to liberate the island of Walcheren, and it was stimulating conversation all day about military necessity and humanitarian concerns. That was an excellent focus given what was done on Walcheren Island to neutralize the German forces there when the dikes where blown open destroying life for most of the Dutch people in the area.
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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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