Remembering the Children Educational Package

How can you prepare yourself for having difficult conversations with students about the history and legacy of the Residential School system? How do you respond to students’ questions and feelings? How can you support students when they are learning about these histories?

In this lesson, students will assess their knowledge of the Residential School system and the ongoing investigations related to students who died while attending Residential Schools.

This lesson encourages students to reflect on the role of the media and the impact of the “news cycle” on public awareness of current affairs.

These activities encourage students to investigate conditions at Residential Schools and to consider how the schools disrupted traditional Indigenous ways of learning.

In this lesson, students will explore the concepts of cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Students will research contemporary Indigenous people or groups to understand the way they are revitalizing and sharing aspects of their cultures as part of the process of reconciliation.

Students will explore the cultural and personal losses that children suffered while attending Residential Schools. Students will generate their own ideas about reconciliation and community action.

This set of lessons encourages students to consider multiple perspectives of historical events and to explore what it means to be an ally.

In this lesson students will learn from residential school Survivors and consider what they can do to support the Survivors and their families.

Through engaging in two acts of reconciliation, students will begin to understand the way humility puts us in a place of feeling small within the larger picture of issues and events.

In this lesson, students will assess the outcomes of individual and collective action, and design a personal plan for reconciliation in their own lives and communities.