Ben Gross and Daniel Kunanec Transcript

Gross: My name is Ben Gross. I teach here at Don Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto. I teach history grade 10, 11, and 12, as well as social science, and this project was a grade 12 world history course project.

Kunanec: I'm Dan Kunanec. I teach at Don Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto. I teach technological study subjects such as green industries, tech design, and hospitality and tourism.

Gross: My colleague Dan Kunanec and I created this project looking at the history of European Jews and their food histories and stories of migration to Canada in collaboration between my history classes and his green industries and hospitality and tourism classes. We found historical recipes and recreated them and cooked them together with a Holocaust survivor and shared stories of childhood remembrances of food and stories, of migration and coming to Canada, and being and becoming Canadian.

Kunanec: Yeah, it was a great project I got to do with a good friend of mine, Ben Gross — and colleague. We looked at the experience of the different diaspora of the Jewish experience, different food, food history. That really was kind of my side was — was the food part — and just the the commonalities and the differences between the different experiences in the different parts of the world.

Gross: It brought a lot of kids together. Our classes are sort of in different silos in the school; Dan's are tech classes, mine are sort of in the more sort of classic academic kind of area. So we have kids from different vantage points learning about the same thing and working together so I think it really brought a lot of people together and kids have really stayed in touch. I got an email yesterday from a kid that was part of this project just saying "I really enjoyed that project." So it's really sort of stuck with kids and I've — yeah that's been really great to see.

Kunanec: Really it was fantastic for the students. I think they opened up a lot more than they already had through experiencing both Mr. Gross' classes and mine. Understanding their place in history and the similarities that they had to other cultures, other people, other times — it wasn't differences, it was "I've done that. Those are also my foods. Those are my experiences." So I think they just — they found their place in history.

Gross: So my approach to teaching has changed. I think it's sort of like a realization of the change that one of the things that this project really pushed me to do is to give full service to the different ways that we can do history outside of like an academic space, and not just sort of giving it as like an add-on but really making it a full part of the entire course, and that was something that really stuck with me and I think stuck with students as well.

Kunanec: I think every subject has a history component to it and if you're not teaching the history of that subject you're missing a real opportunity there. So for the courses that I teach whether it's history of farming, history of food, history of of cooking, history of design, those are deep rich connections and as a hands-on teacher, as an experiential teacher the contextual approaches to that just make it that much better.

Gross: I think it's important for young people to engage with history because they have so many questions and worries and hopes about the present and the future, and studying history gives them some context and some skills to think about what all those things in the past mean and how that might help them better understand what's going on in their own lives and what might be going on in their futures.

Kunanec: I think it's important because they need to recognize that they are history. What they are, what they are doing, the choices they make, who they are as people, how they they treat other people, these are the moments that create history and it doesn't have to be a giant big experience. It could be just the day-to-day kindness that they show to each other and appreciate, and also appreciate the other experiences that that their peers have as well. How do we bring the everyday experience into the class and recognize how powerful it is in the future?