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Audio "sneak listen" of Transforming's 1st chapter!

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Audio "sneak listen" of Transforming's 1st chapter!

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Audio sneak peek: Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We' by Meaningful Learning with Dr. Samantha Cutrara

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Audio sneak peek: Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We' by Meaningful Learning with Dr. Samantha Cutrara

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Enjoy this reading from the introduction of Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We' by Dr. Samantha Cutrara. We are all our history. Yet in Canadian classrooms, students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present.

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Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New "We" is OUT NOW! Published by UBC Press, you can buy it where ever books are sold, such as the UBC Press website, Amazon, Indigo, or independent book stores such as A Different Booklist.

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Source Saturday Introduction Video - {Imagining a New 'We'}

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Samantha Cutrara is a curriculum specialist with the Office of the Vice Provost Academic at York University. She is a history education strategist who has developed museum exhibitions and related programming, written curriculum and resources, and led professional development sessions for educators. In 2015 she won the Ontario Museums Association Award for Excellence in Exhibits for the Dear Sadie exhibit at the Archives of Ontario.

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transforming the canadian history classroom - imagining a new "we"

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UBC Press | Transforming the Canadian History Classroom - Imagining a New "We", By Samantha Cutrara

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Samantha Cutrara is a curriculum specialist with the Office of the Vice Provost Academic at York University. She is a history education strategist who has developed museum exhibitions and related programming, written curriculum and resources, and led professional development sessions for educators.

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Imagining a New We - Introductory video!

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How to you teach racism in your Canadian history classroom?

Do you teach racism in your Canadian history classroom?

Do you mention racist actions or events and then move on to the next part of the chronology?

Do you acknowledge that there were ethnically and culturally diverse peoples in the Canadian past but fail to introduce any of these people or communities in your lessons in any substantial way? Maybe there is no time, maybe it doesn't fit the narrative, or maybe you just don't know these histories enough to teach them.

Or maybe there were no Black students

Or Asian students

Or Indigenous students

and you didn't think histories related to Black/Asian/Indigenous people needed to be addressed.

Do you say things like "Black History Month is every month!" but really only teach histories related to Black experiences in February? Or do you say, "Black History Month is every month!" but don't seem to feature these histories in February or any other month either (the "All Lives Matter" of history teaching).

Do you really "only" teach Canadian history, and so you don't have the time or space to teach "alternative" Other histories? "These histories are important!" you might say. "But I gotta get through the survey/curriculum! There is only so much time."

Do you think this work is important but don't think it is your job to get into it? The students can take a Black Studies course or a Women's Studies course if they are really interested, or there's that resource in the library they can use, or you heard a rumour that a Black history course will be taught this summer by that graduate student who you haven't met but whose name looks ethnic and you're sure they'll do a good job? (They might not get a good job though, as seen from the findings of the CAUT in 2018. It is important that the history community in Canada shows greater support to Black students and scholars to bridge this gap in employment and earnings.)

Can you identify the racism in other places and spaces (because you are an ally!) but the context is so different in your own places and spaces that you just don't think the general critiques apply.

Do you teach about racism in your Canadian history classroom?

If you don't, are you scared to?

Really. This isn't sarcasm.

Are you scared of what you don't know? Are you scared of not knowing where to start? Are you scared of doing it wrong? Are you scared of what your students or colleagues might say?

Are you scared to call out racism in your teaching, in your histories, in your curriculum, in your institution because maybe it doesn't affect you or maybe you don't think it is a problem or maybe you realize you are part of the problem or maybe you don't know if that student/colleague had the whole story or maybe because you feel that experience (historical or contemporary) should be validated by a person of colour?

Are you scared because you don't know what you don't know?

Are you scared to think about what it might mean to substantially integrate the histories of structural racism and the experiences of diverse peoples into your teaching, because if you did, everything in your course would have to be rethought: the chronology, the themes, the reading list, the evidence, the slide deck, the textbook, the assignments.

Yes. You're right. They would have to be rethought.

And do you feel that?

That is the ground shifting beneath you.

That discomfort is bearing witness to the deconstruction of systems that were never fully whole to begin with (that's a little Derrida reference).

I want to validate that fear. I want to validate all those fears. They are real. Fear is scary.

Now move on.

Move. On.

Don't stay in that fear. Staying in that fear is a bait and switch for real action.

Let me ask: Why do you "do" history? Why do you research it? Why do you teach it? Why do you present it to the public? Why do you write about it?

I go to multiple conferences. Mainly education but also history. I sit in rooms full of white people like me. We share our work. We ask questions. We may follow up and exchange cards.

I have an interest in Black histories and the experiences of Black students learning Canadian history, so often I go to sessions related to these topics. I have yet to be at a session where I am not challenged in my thinking and where I do not leave excited to make change. There is an energy and enthusiasm in many of these sessions that is not just about sharing the results of a last project, but also about illuminating aspects of a past that will shift and change the way we move forward in the future.

After talking with American preservationist Joe McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, for a project I am doing, all I could think of is: if you're not doing history to make change what the f- are you doing it for?

Do you know what history's superpower is? History shows that things don't happen in a vacuum. It shows how lived experiences interact with, shape, and are shaped by structures. It provides evidence for and narration about people's lives different from our own. It highlights how things were bad, things are bad, and this didn't come out of nowhere. It shows that people survive in spite of trauma, and that people remain alive by remembering legacy.

You know what historians and history educators' superpowers are? They read. They research. They learn about the past.

Use those superpowers in moments like these when you feel the need to make change but you don't know where to start. Read, research, learn about the past.

Know that doing this will change what you know.

Be ok with that.

Be welcome for that.

Strive for that.

Don't be afraid of that. That is the goal.

I am not going to end this post by listing resources for anti-racist allies or resources to learn about Black history or other histories that centre experiences of marginalized peoples and histories of structural racism. This stuff is not that hard to find. Google it. For decades, scholars and historians have done amazing work in developing and making available resources and histories like these. You just need to read them, engage with them, make change with them.

Last week on an unrelated project, I was interested in the history of Newfoundland and specifically whether there were histories of Black people in Newfoundland. So, I Googled it: "Black history Newfoundland." In less than a second, I got 27,800,000 results.

Five minutes after that, I learned about the connection between Newfoundland's cod fisheries and slavery in the West Indies, and now I will never not teach Newfoundland or slavery in the West Indies without mentioning those connections. I will never not mention the racism of not knowing this to begin with. I will use this connection to talk the history of slavery in Canada and the transnational and transatlantic linkages of European imperialism and colonialism.

What if, you may ask, students ask me questions about this history, and I don't know the answers?

Well... I can tell the truth: "I just learned this! Let's, as a class, see if we can find more about these histories, and how it shapes/shaped this period in history."

What if they don't want to do this work?

I will do it myself and come to class the next day saying, "here is what I found...."

I have used this strategy of broadening the class's knowledge by being honest with what I don't know in many sites of learning: university, college, high school, elementary school classrooms. Consistently, I have found that acknowledging what you don't know, and that you don't know, and then following up with promised research creates greater conditions of trust and meaningful learning for students, because all I am doing is using some of my superpowers to shape what is possible in the classroom. I'm reading, I'm researching, I'm learning about the past, and I am modelling this for my students.

My superpower as a history educator isn't to know everything. My superpower is to demonstrate to students that things don't happen in a vacuum; that lived experiences interact with, shape, and are shaped by structures; that things were bad, that things are bad, and that this didn't come out of nowhere.

My superpower is to read, research, and learn enough to consistently demonstrate that people survive in spite of trauma and that people remain alive by remembering legacy.

My superpower is to "do" history to make change. Otherwise, what the f- am I doing it for?

This is how I've learned to use my superpower - How will you use yours?
Note
The author would like to acknowledge that this work was created on land that is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and most recently, the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This territory is also covered by the Upper Canada Treaties. Today, the meeting place of Toronto (from the Haudenosaunee word Tkaronto) is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and the author is grateful to have the opportunity to write, study, teach, and learn in the community, on this territory.

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If you're not doing history to make change, what the f- are you doing it for?

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How to you teach racism in your Canadian history classroom? Do you teach racism in your Canadian history classroom? Do you mention racist actions or events and then move on to the next part of the chronology?

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The essays in this collection seek to bridge the divide between our research expertise and how we impart the knowledge and passion we get from this expertise in our classrooms. Undergraduate and graduate programs in History are not designed to teach historians how to teach, so if and when we get in front of a classroom, we can often draw on our experience as students to help guide this work. And for many of us, drawing on our experience as students means setting up our classrooms to mimic a traditional lecture-style class that may not resonate with our students nor the passion we feel for our research. We may feel that we need to go "beyond the lecture" in how we teach history, but what this may look like and how we'd go about it could feel very unfamiliar and intimidating. While traditionally it may have been assumed that the goal of an undergraduate history course was to foster appreciation of the past and the work of historians, the work of teaching and learning today is more nuanced and complicated - as we know from being both a teacher and a student.

While my undergraduate degree was in History, my graduate degrees were in Education and thus I rarely engaged in History without also connecting it to how it could be, or was taught. My work, more broadly, continues to focus on the nexus between the two. So, while things like learning theory, SoTL or STLHE, may be new to some, instructional theory and instructional design are neither new nor revolutionary to those who have been working with educational theory. This work is grounded in decades of formal research and centuries of teaching experience and practice. I have found that engaging these ideas with the study and practice of History allows for more robust way to think about History and its connection to the world around us.

In particular, I like to use educational researcher Joseph Novak's conception of "meaningful learning" as a way to clearly summarize principles of learning in regards to history. Novak is an educational psychologist who worked with noted cognitive theorist David Ausubel in the 1960s and drew on this work in the 1970s to develop concept mapping as a method for demonstrating learning. For Novak, concept mapping is a method that leads to "meaningful learning": the constructive integration of thinking, feeling, and acting leading to empowerment for commitment and responsibility. While Novak comes from a traditional educational theory background, elements of his definition of "meaningful learning" can also be found in works of critical and radical educators interested in transforming schools into emancipatory sites of education such as Paulo Freire, who Novak cites directly.

According to the meaningful learning theory, meaningful learning is able to occur when three things happen:

First: The content has to connect with what the learner already knows. Learning does not happen in a vacuum. New content has to be scaffolded onto a learner's cognitive structure in order for the new content to stick. Sometimes connecting to prior knowledge means connecting with a false or inaccurate narrative in order to in order to dispel with more accurate information, other times this connection just provides depth and breadth to information they already have. But this connection to prior knowledge is key for any and all learning. Instructional methods that connect to students' prior knowledge can include games, reading supports, field trips, discussions, but there are more ways for us to do this in classroom. What knowledge are your students bringing into the classroom? What instructional strategies can you use to bring these out?

Second: The learner has to make the choice to learn. Another way to say this is that the learner needs to feel that learning is safe for them; that adding to or expanding their prior knowledge won't challenge or betray the cultural or social connections they hold. If a learner does not feel like the learning environment is safe for them, they will shut down and make the active choice to resist learning. Herbert Kohl's classic essay " I won't learn from you" is a really nice rumination of this point. Some ways to make the learning environment safe in the history classroom is to simply acknowledge that history is personal, or that some topics need greater guidance for working through than others, or that there is content that should be holistic and respectfully taught rather than quickly added to a lecture. Safety for student is also tied to pedagogy. Students can make the choice to learn if the learning environment is set up in ways that are familiar and comfortable for them; if they feel that they can engage in learning new information in new ways without seeming "stupid." So, for example, if we make use of online and digital learning environments or if we create supports to guide students in their reading, we are setting up conditions for students to engage with materials in ways that may be more individual to them, and thus more safe. There are many more ways that we can create space for students' safety and choice in the Canadian history classroom. What are ways we can bring this idea of student choice into our classrooms more holistically?

Finally: For meaningful learning to occur, not just general learning, the content itself has to be meaningful. While Novak does not define explicitly what he means by "meaningful," I like to think of it as content that has connections to students' lives now and in the future both inside and outside the classroom in and for the wider world. Meaningful content is always defined and redefined as we learn more as historians, as we get to know our students, and as we respond to the world around us. In particular, at this moment in time we can see meaningful learning opportunities in how we are able to expand our notions of Canada in ways that Indigenize and decolonize our understanding of this land and Canadian history. Many historians are also active in public history and demonstrating "real-life" avenues for bringing history to the service of the public. History can also be meaningful in the projects we set our students up to create and in the opportunities we provide to them to bring primary sources together. However, meaningful student learning can, and should, be meaningful for you as well. Investment in and excitement for classroom practice is infectious. If you are teaching with enthusiasm, as many of the instructors featured in this collection are, your classroom will soon become a place that does not just provide meaning, but is meaningful as well. What other dimensions of "meaningfulness" can we bring to our classrooms?

This collection has brought together examples of the ways in which your teaching and learning strategies in the higher education history classroom can enhance your students' experiences learning history, as well as enhance the ways history can be conceptualized and defined. As historians, educators, and academics, our abilities to think and communicate come down to the ways we build and develop networks of evidence, collegiality, and innovation, all of which can be practiced and developed in the classroom. It is so easy to think of our students as the ones in need of information and our job in the classroom is to give them this information. But the classroom is a space where knowledge is co-created and a thus place where we can learn the nuances of our arguments along with our students. Being open to the ways we can both teach and learn in our classrooms, allows opporutnity for your research to grow and take on new life - it allows for our pedagogy to go "beyond the lecture," it allows for our research and analytic arguments to as well.

The collection is not exhaustive for going "beyond the lecture," but it does provide many rich examples for the possibilities for meaningful learning in traditional history lectures and seminars. By thinking about the principles of meaningful learning in your classroom - the connections to prior knowledge, the safety for the student, and the incorporation of meaningful material - it can better enhance what we do in the classroom and, as a result, the history that will be produced in the future.

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Beyond The Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History

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The essays in this collection seek to bridge the divide between our research expertise and how we impart the knowledge and passion we get from this expertise in our classrooms. Undergraduate and graduate programs in History are not designed to teach historians how to teach, so if and when we get in front of a classroom, we can often draw on our experience as students to help guide this work.

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Pandemic Pedagogy with Dr. Samantha Cutrara

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Future of Commemoration for Parks Canada

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Future of Commemoration for Parks Canada

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June 19, 2019

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Remembering (for) the future - Dr. Samantha Cutrara (HSMBC100, June 20, 2019)

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Last week the hashtag #LastNormalPhoto was circulating on social media. I thought I'd play along. It seemed innocuous enough. I take a lot of pictures and I thought it would be interesting to identify when things changed. Would the fear and anxiety of the time manifest in the banal photos I take everyday? Would I be able to sense the worry and stress in the copious pictures of my cats?

When I scrolled up through my camera roll to see if I could pinpoint the "last normal" moment without looking up the date, I was struck by how many photos I had taken since a "last normal" moment. It feels like yesterday. But it isn't. Over two months have passed since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. I have taken almost 2,000 photos since then. These photos are of nothing special. From 2015 onward, I started taking photos as a way to bear witness to the precarious emotional landscape of care work and to regain agency in a situation that felt out of my control. The photos and my photo taking kept me company. I could capture beauty and love and intimate moments of silence and reflection without sharing or qualifying or explaining them to anyone. I could remember who I was separate from the situation I was in. While I'm no longer in that situation, I was surprised to see the familiarity of all the photos I have taken since March. Apparently, I'm still engaging in that practice despite the context being different.

Nevertheless...

As I was scrolling through to find the #LastNormalPhoto, I felt my chest constrict as I moved further up in time. I remembered the sadness and emptiness I was feeling over the last nine weeks, but also the focus of the puzzles I was doing or the #pandemicpurchases I had made (don't you need ten Nancy Drew novels to get you through a pandemic?), or the continuity and comfort of my two cats and the cuddle times we get to have.

When at last I found the #LastNormalPhoto, I couldn't post it. It was too hard. What constitutes a "last normal" photo anyway?

Instead I posted another one. One without worry. One with only joy. It is a photo of a friend and I after a performance of Hamilton thanks to her winning the $10 seat lottery. Three days later Hamilton had its last performance in Toronto.

My real #LastNormalPhoto is this one.

Taken March 12, the photograph is of my sister and her husband about to enjoy a beautiful and delicious Ethiopian dinner. I hadn't seen them in two years. This was our first time spending time together since they arrived in Canada from Thailand. This restaurant is one I get takeout from, but we thought we should go and eat at the restaurant instead. When we walked into the restaurant, did I detect confusion by the staff that we wanted to eat in or was I just projecting? Hand sanitizer sat on the counter and I told my sister that she should be more discreet about her heat-induced runny nose because we didn't want anyone to think she was sick. There were symbols of a shift, but nothing really had shifted for us.

This is the #LastNormalPhoto because it was at this moment that everything changed.

As they were sharing their teaching and travel adventures, as they were showing me videos of the weekend with all their friends on a beach in Thailand, as they were discussing that they may be in Canada longer than they had planned because of the travel restrictions in Italy (the next stop in their adventurous life!), my phone silently vibrated. A half a dozen texts were coming in telling me that the Disneyworld Resorts had closed. I had just been there after a conference and had been planning on returning for a food festival in the fall. Disney parks had only closed three times in the last 16 years and that was for weather. Never had week-long (and now month-long) closures had taken place. As a money-making machine and a customer service focused corporation, closing was serious. For me, this, more than the WHO's declaration, felt weighty, felt like things were changing, felt like COVID couldn't be ignored.

As I sat telling my sister and brother-in-law about the video series I started in January and the extra work that went into the follow week's video (a video I still haven't posted because the enthusiasm, optimism, and ignorance of what was to come hurts my heart too much to share), as I was telling them of the things I wanted to do with them while they were in town, as I describing the type of birthday party/ book launch I wanted to host in August, people were lined up in stores across the country stocking up on groceries, toilet paper, and other items that might get them through an unknown situation with unknown needs. I already knew about the shopping, I knew about the shortages, but when I sat down for dinner I still understood it as a larger panic response in a world that seemed increasingly scary and unpredictable. "You know why people are buying so much toilet paper? Because they can't stop climate change and they can't stop Trump! Toilet paper is something to control!" I would emphatically tell people.

The next photo in my camera roll was taken three hours later at a 24-hour grocery store. There was one cashier on. I waited in line for 35 minutes. I bought frozen food and fruits and vegetables. I bought cat food and a bottle of off-brand mineral water. I didn't know what to get, I don't really cook. But I got stuff anyway. Everyone politely waited in line, watched each other's baskets when we ran to get another item, and ignored the one or two people who loudly complained that a manager should be on the floor. The photos of the line are interspersed with screenshots of library books I was taking off hold. I realized I should self-isolate since I just had shared food with international travellers. I didn't want to have to go to the library to pick up my holds so I wanted to remember what they were so I could put them back on hold the following week. Of course, I didn't know the libraries would be closed the next day.

The next few images in the Camera Roll were other screenshots from that first weekend of quarantine. Cancelled movie tickets, astrology memes about stress, and work by artists and creators trying to make sense of this moment.

If you weren't me, you might think the #LastNormalPhoto was this one of me all dressed up in my office, looking happy and poised to work. But it isn't. This photo was taken March 16. It was a moment when I was trying to figure out how to navigate this new world. I filmed a series of videos for my YouTube channel; ones I never used because they felt too inauthentic.

I look hella cute though.

This moment of showering, getting dressed, doing my make up, and posing for the camera, reminded me who I was in this strange world. And that this didn't change just because there wasn't a foreseeable opportunity to dress like this in the future. I look happy in this photo because I was happy. I felt familiar. I was, for this brief captured moment in time, normal. "This is still me," I might imagine myself thinking. "Looking hella cute in a hellish world."

Later that day I also took a screenshot of my horoscope for that week. You said a mouthful there, sister. In hindsight, I wish I had taken that advice more to heart.

The moment my "pandemic normal" started was in this video shot a few days later.

When I watch myself, I see someone lost, searching, confused, and trying to be of service (#virgolife). This was an authentic professional version of myself at this moment. The moment when the space between normal and new normal became liminal. This moment started the Pandemic Pedagogy video series. A series I have been so grateful and humbled to develop and host. This was the time where I found who I was and what was needed during this moment so that I could cope with and define a "new normal" on my own terms. This was both the end and the beginning of something else. In many ways it is the #FirstNormalPhoto of a world that is emerging.

The 2,000 photos taken over the last two months is a timeline of grief and coping. It is a map of a life in action and a life being acted upon. It is a collection of moments frozen in confusion and clarity. It is a witness to community and isolation. It is demonstrative of how "normal" shifts and changes and morphs to become something new. Sometimes you see that, sometimes you don't. The 2,000 photos on my camera roll is an archive of an emotional world that can only be seen through narration.[1]

Although my #LastNormalPhoto may trigger the precipice of a world that is sad and scary and lonely, the #LastNormalPhoto I project to the world is the one that reminds us (reminds me) to look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Dr. Samantha Cutrara is a History Education Strategist based in Toronto. Find more about her work at www.SamanthaCutrara.com Follow her on Twitter at @DrSCutrara or on Facebook at Notes @ImaginingaNewWe
[1] A consideration perhaps explored in another post for all you history people

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Guest Post: #LastNormalPhoto - A Camera Roll of Grief

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Last week the hashtag #LastNormalPhoto was circulating on social media. I thought I'd play along. It seemed innocuous enough. I take a lot of pictures and I thought it would be interesting to identify when things changed. Would the fear and anxiety of the time manifest in the banal photos I take everyday?

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Quick Pitch: Transforming the Canadian History Classroom

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I went into self-isolation about a week before many others. Because I had come into contact with family traveling abroad, I worked from home while the university and college I work for continued to prepare for what felt like an inevitability after the WHO's declaration. Being by myself that first week exacerbated the sense of shock that schools would be closing and learning moved online. I thought of the release of my upcoming book and my new video series talking to K-12 teachers about ways to expand their pedagogies and practice related to history. Would these conversations even matter any more? Would history be understood as an indulgent and frivolous subject of study when there was an urgent need for health care, economic stimulus, a reorganization of work and home? How would we teach history after this, I asked on my video series. I didn't know. I didn't even know where to start. But, as with most things, when you explore topics within a community you lessen your sense of isolation and broaden your capacity to understand perspective and approaches far beyond yourself. So came the " Pandemic Pedagogy " video series where I've been talking with historians, history teachers, and people in the heritage community about how we can think about history and teaching history during and after this moment.

When I posted my initial video questioning how we might teach history after this, I ended by saying that I wasn't sure if I was going to post videos during this time. I had been posting once a week on topics such as meaningful learning, historical empathy, teaching about women, and teaching about labour issues in elementary school. I even did a video - and corresponding webpage - on resources to teach about the Spanish Flu the night of the WHO's declaration. While I had already planned a schedule of videos through spring and summer, these explorations of theory and suggestions of practice seemed trite when schools were closed and parents, teachers, and administrators were worried about getting students enough information to meet curriculum expectations to end the school year.

But when I posted this first (admittedly maudlin, but honest) video, it sparked a conversation among some friends who said that they too had these questions and they too were without answers. Knowing I wasn't alone, I reached out to colleagues to see if they wanted to have these conversations more publicly. These conversations have turned into the " Pandemic Pedagogy" series. (Now available as a podcast).

At of time of publication, I have interviewed twenty scholars in the history and heritage fields - 12 videos are currently available - and each conversation has focused on whether our current understandings of history have changed because of this moment, whether teaching history will change after this moment, and the ways that notions of community and creativity - the " imagining a new we" that is the focus of my larger video series - may shift, change, or develop because of this moment.

Because I have the privilege of conducting all the interviews, I also have the privilege of drawing together all their connections. Here are a few key learnings I've drawn from the conversations I have had to date:

1. This moment allows us to explore the structures that frame our lives - to witness their deconstruction, drawing on Derrida - and see how they work or, more often, do not work. History allows us to trace, track, and understand the development of these structures and the ways they have become naturalized as "normal." It is with this historical knowledge that we can then push and develop for the necessary changes we see are needed during and after this moment.

2. This moment is shifting how we teach history and, in doing so, will (should?) also shift the histories we are teaching. The medium is the message, referencing McLuhan, so how does online and remote instruction shift the narratives we share and the ways in which we share them?

3. This moment can help us understand ourselves living within history. This moment can make us be aware of how we are historical actors who can record and make our mark on this moment, but that these records are not being created, shared, or accessed equally. Whose experiences are going to be marked during this time? How will this shape how people in the future will come to understand this moment? How does thinking about these questions change our perspectives on the histories we've already learned?

4. This moment can help us understand the important balance between hard evidence and emotional response in our study of history. There shouldn't be a "democratization of knowledge" when dealing with health issues, but there should still be space for the ways humans are feeling, reacting, and responding to the knowledge being circulated. Future historians will have evidence of the political and public response(s) to this moment, but how will they explore, and then teach, the feelings and the anxieties of this moment? How can we use our heightened feelings during this moment in history to think about how we've been missing the feelings of historical moments in how we teach them?

5. This moment is not a moment at all but a continuum of what was and what will be. We feel this as a moment or an event because of the uniqueness of this time but even when it is over, it won't be over. How can we use the fragility of this moment to ensure that we are bringing the lessons of compassion, care, and vulnerability into our classrooms and our practices when we return to them in ways we recognize as "normal"? How can we allow space for our students to process what they have went through/are going through without pushing them to determine its significance before they are ready? How can we allow space for ourselves to process what we have gone through/are going through without adding additional pressures to ensure our teaching, learning, and research practices return to a "normal" that may have not been sustainable anyhow?

As you can see, our explorations of answers have resulted in more questions; but important questions that strike at the heart of teaching and learning history in the 21st century. I invite you to watch the videos or listen to a podcast to make your own meaning about teaching and learning history after this moment. I'll be continuing the series through June - please contact me if you'd like to have a conversation for the series.

My thanks to Neil Orford, Mary Chaktsiris, Jan Haskings-Winner, Sean Carleton, Chris Sanagan, Nathan Smith, Andrea Eidinger, Kat Akerfeldt from Toronto's First Post Office, Kristina Llewellyn, John Bickford, Kathryn Whitfeld, Aaron Stout, Geoffrey Reaume, Adam Birrell, Andrea Hawkman, Sarah Shears, Sarah Glassford, Funke Aladejebi, Sean Kheraj, along with the other historians, teachers, and practitioners who I have spoken to about and for this series.
Note
The author would like to acknowledge that this work was created on land that is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and most recently, the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This territory is also covered by the Upper Canada Treaties. Today, the meeting place of Toronto (from the Haudenosaunee word Tkaronto) is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and the author is grateful to have the opportunity to write, study, teach, and learn in the community, on this territory.

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How do we teach history after this? Thoughts from the "Pandemic Pedagogy" series

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I went into self-isolation about a week before many others. Because I had come into contact with family traveling abroad, I worked from home while the university and college I work for continued to prepare for what felt like an inevitability after the WHO's declaration.

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education; history education; history; teaching

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An Introduction to the 2020 video series by Dr. Samantha Cutrara that is designed to help history teachers teach history in ways that are more transformative, meaningful, and inclusive! For links and resources featured in this video, visit: https://www.imagininganewwe...... Pre-order Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We' at your local bookseller today!

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Hi Jessica,

I want to thank you again for the nice conversation yesterday because you gave me some things to think about.

I thought I'd put them down for both you and I, because there are some really interesting kernels there to unpack. (Or to "pop," if I was to stay with the "kernels" metaphor.)

You said that since you're from Egypt you didn't share an experience like the one I shared in the HSMBC talk about my grandfather's childhood home. You said that you didn't have the same connection to land.

First, I wanted to clarify that the story was about a connection to place, not to land. Colonialism was about rupturing the relationship to the land, so, as a settler, I don't really have a relationship with land. As part of my ongoing efforts of developing and living reconciliatory relationships, I am trying to garner a relationship with the land, but I'm not there yet. So I just want to add that level of reflection.

But to extend your thoughts, if you were saying you don't have a connection to place in Canada because you're an immigrant, let me say that I didn't realize I had a connection to place in Canada either until I told that story.

I moved around a lot as a child. We lived in Florida, California, and the Caribbean. I always said that Toronto was our "base," even though I didn't really believe it myself. Saying it was our base just storied "where I was from" to people, but when we lived in Canada, we mainly lived in the suburbs north of the city. We only lived in Toronto-proper for maybe 2 years in total before I moved downtown at 20 to go to the University of Toronto.

As a child who lived in a lot of different places (14 elementary schools), I would cringe when friends showed me the high schools their now, kindergarten-aged children would attend 10 years in the future. 'How can you be so sure about place? How can someone stay in a place that long?' I'd think(/shutter).

But when I was preparing that talk, I realized that I am a 5th generation Torontonian. 5th generation! And that's just on my grandfather's side. My grandmother's mother is French Canadian and, according to AncestryDNA, we have very long roots in French Canada.

Seeing this, realizing this, was a shock to me.

I hadn't connected historically to a place in a way that you may have heard in that story, and that is true now that it is storied.

This also makes me think of my mother, who can't seem to drive down a street without saying: "that's where I worked for one summer when I was 15," or "this is the building where I bought a pair of dance shoes," or "this is where I opened my first store."

I used to (and still do) sigh loudly when she'd tell these stories because it was like, "Mom! That was in the past. Live in the now. It's a Korean grocery store now!"

But as I get older (and I am not that old), I find myself telling the same type of stories as my mother, and often in the same places: "There's the first place I had Thai food, and above that was the store where my mom got dance shoes."

I tell those stories more as I get older because I like to remember - to bring to remembrance - these experiences from 10-15 years ago. They are stories that give me legitimacy to where I am now, especially as the neighborhoods change and other people are claiming it, making their own memories and seemingly leaving little space for my own. (That is how space and place work, especially in a big city and university town, so not a critique, just a fact.)

In telling these stories, I am storying a particular narrative of myself grounded in my connection to then as a way to claim my belonging to a changing and quasi-unfamiliar place now.

So, you may not feel any connection to place (/land) in Canada in the same way I shared in the story about my grandfather, but I guarantee you will.

In 20 years, you'll be telling your daughter or niece or friends' children or a stranger on the street - "that was the building where I took X class with Dr. X. It really changed my view of things." Or "that used to be a Starbucks where I once wrote a paper I was really proud of." Or, "I knew someone who lived in that building. I even went to a party there." Or "that was my first house."

You will have connections to these places because you have connections to these places, they are just too present for you now to see them as a set of stories that ground you to this place.

I know that when they tear the building down that I lived in throughout my 20s (and they will tear it down: old building in prime real estate), I know I am going to feel that they took a piece of me with it, even though I haven't been there or had experiences there for ten years. I will always point to that spot, even when it is unfamiliar to me, and say, "I lived there."

So, if " memory is performance," (Gobran, 2019), then when we are thinking about young people in schools, we can maybe think that maybe they aren't in a place to perform those connections, those memories, yet.

Most young people are focused on the future or the present. They don't need to story into the past to make sense of themselves for now because their focus is on "growing up."

And so, if we're talking about the "can of worms" of all the connections outside of Canada - yes, that is difficult, but shouldn't be our focus. History educators have to think about connection to the lived realities of young people now. We need to think about their lived experiences of the present. The stories in the making that will be bringing them into the future.

History education is a way for us, as adults with more knowledge about the world, to provide some (hi)story to those realities, so when young people are in the future they can look to a national past to see themselves there, and here. To see that both we were there/they were there.

To link this to another part of our conversation: I had said that the statue wars are about tradition versus progress.

This can be expanded to think of youth, by their very nature, are progress. They are interested in the future.

Adults, who are older and therefore have a longer past, represent tradition. Because they are living memories of what was. Because I remember 25 years ago, in a way that you don't (or can't).

When we focus on teaching over learning in the history classroom, we're focused on tradition over progress.

When we focus on learning over teaching - when we prioritize students over the grand narrative or skill development - we are allowing in space for progress over tradition.

This emphasis on progress over tradition is what provides greater space for justice and the stories we should be telling ourselves about the future.
To connect us with place in ways that remind us how we are connected to place. And that we are important in these places. And worthy of being in these places. And this is what history education should be about.

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Samantha Cutrara - Thoughts on Place and Connection - a conversation with Jessica

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Hi Jessica, I want to thank you again for the nice conversation yesterday because you gave me some things to think about. I thought I'd put them down for both you and I, because there are some really interesting kernels there to unpack. (Or to "pop," if I was to stay with the "kernels" metaphor.)

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“Connection, complexity, and care for a precarious 21st century world.” July 5, 2019

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Meaningful Learning in Precarious Times.

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Meaningful Learning in Precarious Times.

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Wilson Institute, July 5, 2019

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Wilson Institute, July 5, 2019

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Future of Commemoration for Parks Canada

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Future of Commemoration for Parks Canada

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June 19, 2019

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Hello and thank you.

Like my fellow panelists, I've been asked to make some remarks as to the future of commemoration. Or to ruminate on the question of what national commemoration could look like over the next 100 years.

This question is very interesting to me because while my work has looked to the past, I have a keen focus on the future. My interest for the past two decades have been on teaching, learning, and commemorating history for youth. And so in many ways when I speak to the past, I always have one eye to the future because I'm trying to advocate for what a 15 year old or 10 year old or 6 year old needs from their history education in order to bring them to the future. And so I am interested in commemoration as a future endeavour, because we are marking, and remarking, spaces not just for those who experienced the past, but for those who need to experience the past in the future as well.

But to start my remarks I will look to the past and to the origins of the word "commemoration."

The word "commemoration" comes from Latin " to bring to remembrance." The structure of this definition is interesting. "To bring" is an infinitive, without a subject or tense. "Remembrance" is further defined as " to bring to mind." So, with the roots of this word, commemoration means "To bring being brought to mind."

Another way we could think about this is that commemoration is intended to be the spark of people's memories - whether they have that memory or this commemorative moment is trying to make that a memory for them. In national commemoration, these memories are intended to put a stake in the ground, literally, about the people, places, and moments that define and defined Canada. To bring to peoples' minds, who we are and what we have done and where, so that we remember - linking with Quebec's motto.
To lead us into the future, however - to think not just about what has come but what can be to come - this stake in the ground for defining Canada is not enough.
To think about the future, commemoration for the next 100 years has to be democratic, it has to be participatory, it should be restorative, and, if you're brave enough, commemoration for the next 100 years be radical.

And so what do I mean when I say democratic and participatory? Well, I mean when you think I mean, and what other speakers today have demonstrated: we need to ensure we are representing the histories of many people in Canada and that the determination of what and who is commemorated should be an activity that many people can participate in. Because of you look around the room and everyone looks like you in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, then you need to develop some new criteria for inclusion.

However, I also mean more than that.

There is no reason in today's highly connected extraordinarily digital world that we shouldn't be using commemorative tools to engender greater conversations about what and who should be remembered and how.

There is no reason we shouldn't be asking people to share the memories they want brought to remembrance so that we crowdsource, for lack of a better term, a network, a matrix of stories, experiences, and memories that better demonstrate the past, present, and future of the diverse lives in Canada.

Why can't our plaques invite us into the past present and future of that space? Why can't our exhibits?

In driving up to see family in northern Ontario, I often pass a plaque for the Oro-Medonte Township. A place I am familiar with from my research on Black History in Canada. What if rather than pass the plaque, I was able to stop and scan an image that led me to a website with a reconstructed 19th century community and artifacts and records from those community members. What if I could see whose traditional land the settlement was on, and which treaty covers this site? What if I could read about contemporary fundraising campaigns and community groups, or if the website invited me to share artwork or memories that linked to this site and other sites in the Black diaspora in Canada? What if I could post and share research that demonstrated the transnational nature of these histories. Where in America or Britain many of the first Black settlers came from, and, stepping back, where in Africa their ancestors may have been taken from.

With this as a commemorative portal, what would then be brought to remembrance is not just a place in the past, but a participatory experience of past, present, and future as well. An experience that could better situate who I am in that place and connect me with a longer legacy of community across and beyond place and space.

That moment of being brought to remembrance is now not just a stake in the ground, but a layered conversation. A layered democratic participatory conversation not just about the past, but about our present and futures as well.

Thinking about the multiple ways we can spark and engender memories, means that we can start thinking about how more memories can rise to the surface and be shared with each other as part of the stories of this place.

My grandfather, for example, grew up in Toronto. A long told family story was when his father caught him gambling (again) and my grandfather hurriedly ran out of the house and away from home. My grandfather's youngest brother threw my grandfather shoes out the second story window so at least he wouldn't be barefoot (as well as potentially homeless).

This was always a funny story in our family but also never had a clear a location. Even though I knew the street where they lived, memories shift, place names change, I really have no idea where, or even if, this place currently existed.

And then, I shared a Toronto Public Library archives photograph posted on Facebook by Vintage Toronto, and my great aunt, my grandfather's sister said, "Wherever did you find this photo. I remember those large windows." This photo was of the building where my grandfather's family lived and worked, although this photo was taken a decade or two before they moved in.

And, because it's the 21st century, I was able to do a Google Street View search of this building and found the location. In the present. I could look at the window, or even just the location of the windows, of where my great uncle threw my grandfather's shoes down to him before he escaped to my grandmother's house in Cabbagetown. (I also found the building in the 1980s!)

This is a silly little family story with no national, provincial, or municipal significance, but it's fun and foundational for my family nonetheless, and could be mapped onto this site as a way to demonstrate the layers of stories we make and bring with us to places.

And so when I say democratic and participatory, I mean that (1) we should have a greater diversity of people and say into our commemorative spaces, I also mean that (2) we should encourage the interaction with these moments with the public, and I also mean (3) making space for stories like this to be able to live somewhere, to map onto something, as a form and function of commemoration.

This is what fully democratic and participatory remembrance is about: the ability to have your memories be seen and respected as an integrated part of a larger story. Because it is not just my stories I want to share, but the stories I have yet to know. The stories that can colour these places with a greater variety of experiences that expand my understanding of place beyond myself. And this is what it means to be both democratic and participatory.

So future commemoration should be democratic, participatory, and restorative.

What do I mean when I say restorative?

Reconciliation can be a term that I feel can quickly empty out if non-Indigenous Canadians, such as myself, don't constantly check as to what we really mean and do when we say that we are interested in reconciliation.

A key element of the TRC report is underlying that it's not teaching about residential schools that is desired but the development of ongoing relationships of dignity, peace, and prosperity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Part of this is Call to Action number 79.ii, which says that a key element for the heritage community is in revising the policies, criteria, and practices of national historic commemoration in order to integrate Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada's national heritage and history.

This is not just adding history and stirring. Adding heritage values and memory practices that align with Indigenous epistemologies also means bringing in and integrating knowledges that colonialism attempted to erase from this land.

And by doing this, by seeing this as a fundamental part of our commitment to developing and maintaining ongoing reconciliatory relationships, we can better bring into alignment, into harmony a relationship with the earth, with the land, with the water, with the air, in ways that can lead to greater climate justice.

This is so important. So very important in today's world. Because we are out of alignment. And the knowledges that developed from the land are the lessons that can bring us into greater alignment. We can't forget them. We can't forget that they were there. We can't forget that our colonial system of government actively tried to erase this knowledge.

This, to me, is what is meant by heritage values and memory practices: to ensure that there is space to restore what was lost and to act on this restoration as a key element of what we bring to remembrance.

I visited a small park that opened in Toronto that was identified as a part of the provincial project of reconciliation. Yes, there were engravings of moccasins and trees bent as traditional marker trees and they brought in stone from the Canadian shield, but what I found missing was this concept of restoration. Identification of the plants around us. Identifying if they are native or not. Identifying stories related to these plants and their interaction with other species of plants and animals. I wanted to know them, know their names because as Robin Wall Kimmerer, professor and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has written,"Naming is the beginning of justice."

For me, if this space was a space of reconciliation, it would a space for restoring the knowledge popularly lost due to colonialism in ways that restore memories to the land and water that makes us greater stewards of this place.

In other words, we need our commemoration to restore what was, or had been, or could be lost so that we are able to restore it, and move into the future with this knowledge.

Finally radical. Commemoration should be democratic, participatory, restorative, and radical.

If you're brave enough.

All these activities I've talked about can be engaged with in ways that doesn't fundamentally challenge the status quo. But they can also be engaged with in ways that are underlain with a desire for change. For greater equity. For greater democracy. For great justice.

You can always go a step further out of your comfort zone to make space for others. Because this is what radical really means. Radical is defined as "relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something," but to change the fundamental nature of something requires a shift in seeing, doing, and experiencing. And these shifts come from allowing Others to take space.

Thus, for commemoration to be radical what needs to be brought to mind are the stories and experiences we don't, yet, have memories for. By being radical about our commemoration we can shift the narrative, change the narrative, to one directed toward justice. To make space for commemorating, to make space for what needs to be brought to mind: the future we want, the future we need, and the future that we have to make space for if it is to bring greater justice.

Thus, to sum, commemoration for the next 100 years can't just be about the past. We need to commemorate - to bring into remembrance - the future. Our future populations, our future relationship with land and environment, a future with greater moments of justice for all peoples.

For example, Toronto is my home. Situated next to a river and a valley that has been in use for centuries. Beyond and around this river is one of the globally influential cities in the world and the capital of commerce and trade in Canada. If I look down and around to the people who make this their home, I would see people representing 230 different nationalities and I could hear upwards of 200 languages.

How can the past, present, and future experiences of this place, this moment, these people, be brought to mind?

How can we remember what has been, so we are clearer about what could be?

Commemorative practices in the next 100 years can be a key part of this conversation.

If you're brave enough.

Thank you

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Samantha Cutrara - HSMBC100 Talk - Future of Commemoration

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Hello and thank you. Like my fellow panelists, I've been asked to make some remarks as to the future of commemoration. Or to ruminate on the question of what national commemoration could look like over the next 100 years.

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Doing Digital Humanities and Social Sciences in Your Classroom - Open Textbook

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Doing Digital Humanities and Social Sciences in Your Classroom by Samantha Cutrara, PhD, for the Office of the Vice Provost Academic, York University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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Using Primary Sources as a Form of Social Justice by Samantha Cutrara

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Transformative History: The possibilities of Historic Space. Canadian Social Studies

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Transformative History: The possibilities of Historic Space. Canadian Social Studies

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5 articles (+2) I have found helpful in my research as a doctoral student

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5 articles (+2) I have found helpful in my research as a doctoral student

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Digital Humanities and Social Sciences for Experiential Learning

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Digital Humanities and Social Sciences for Experiential Learning