Jo Anne Broders Transcript

My name is Jo Anne Broders and I am an English and social studies teacher at Smallwood Academy in Gambo, Newfoundland and Labrador; currently I teach junior and senior high. So our project really was giving history back to the Mi'Kmaq cemetery here in Gambo. The history was known by people — some people from the community by the heritage society — but students and I worked together with Chief Joe, Fred Jeans from the heritage society, and we made the history visible in that cemetery because there was no written history there. So it was quite a proud moment for all of us to collaborate with people in the community and to give history back to the Mi'kmaq cemetery, to Madeline Joe, and the people buried there.

So at the end of that people from the town of Gambo erected the signs displaying the history of Madeline Joe and the history of the people in Gambo and then we came back to the classroom and one of my students drew Madeline Joe on the wall. So now Madeline is a part of our everyday learning and every student that enters this classroom — every person — knows who Madeline Joe is.

So I think as a teacher one of the things that you want to do is to take students beyond the book and create bigger life moments and life learnings for them, so giving visible history to that cemetery is something that will stay with them forever and help them to realize that they are critical learners that really can change how a community sees history. And the community worked with the students in such a way for all of us it created great pride, and certainly to be recognized on Land and Sea was a wonderful wonderful feeling of pride and respect for all of us.

You know, I think as a teacher we all have different approaches and your approach can change from one day to the other, one project to another. I'm very comfortable doing projects with students and not really being totally ahead of them. That we learn together, that we collaborate together, but I will have goals in mind and I'll make sure that they understand the goals so that together we can figure out how to best get there and to maximize learning and make the learning more memorable and more fun for them. So that they're becoming critical learners and they don't even recognize sometimes that they are becoming critical learners and that they're developing a critical relationship between known history and unknown history and understanding that it's not always complete.

So I think that understanding the past is our teacher, helps us create a better path forward for people and so that people like Madeline Joe, who's now displayed on our classroom wall, would be very proud to be here to understand that she will not be forgotten by students and that her history has become meaningful to our history, to our class, so that we then can work together to create a better path forward for all people.