Robert Jardine Transcript

00:00.00
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

Welcome to another episode of the Teaching Canada’s History podcast. I’m your host Julia Richards and in this special educator’s series, we’re speaking with the finalists for the 2022 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching. Created 26 years ago in 1996, the award recognizes best practices in teaching Canadian history and is an opportunity to highlight the important work that teachers and students are doing to interpret and share the stories of the past. I’m sitting down with Robert Jardine. Why don't you start by introducing yourself, you can tell us a little bit about your school or maybe the classroom you teach?

00:31.50
Robert Jardine

Sure, my name is Robert Jardine, I teach social studies, history, and law at Warman High School which is a small community — well small city just north of Saskatoon, I live in Saskatoon. I’m teaching now for — I’ll be going into my 27^th year and students I teach, it's a bedroom community of Saskatoon. Um, we do have — it’s a community that's seen a fair number of immigrants come in the last 5 or 6 years. We have people coming in from Ukraine and the Caribbean, and so we are seeing more diversity in the building than previously. Staff of about 45 teachers and but 750 students in the building.

01:26.00
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

All right, do you want to tell us a little bit about your project?

01:25.50
Robert Jardine

Right. Um, well I don't have a fancy name for it — I just I've always just called it the book project. It's a way for students to engage in the work that historians do; doing research, using information from the past, turning it into evidence, and putting it into a product that reads something like a textbook that they might have picked up in previous years.

So, it's very much a student-centered activity. My role is really guiding them through the technical aspects of research finding sources, and finding good sources, finding reliable sources, and at the end of the day and in the semester, uh, they come up with a five-chapter product which can range anywhere from 20 to 75 pages in length.

02:32.50
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

That's awesome! It sounds like really fascinating work for them too.

02:36.00
Robert Jardine

I find that most of the students really enjoy it. It's something that I have started to do instead of doing traditional research papers. They get an opportunity, if they so desire, to work with other students. So, I find for a lot of students it alleviates some of the stress that comes along with doing a major project on their own.

03:01.50
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

So, what inspired you to develop this project?

03:03.50
Robert Jardine

Um, well I guess I've over the years getting tired of doing the same old same old, I — you know assigned a lot of research papers in my time, wanting to do something that gives agency to the students. They're making the vast majority of the decisions around the project, what it looks like, what sources to include, what images to include, what maps and graphs, and primary sources to include. So, I really wanted to do something that puts responsibility for that for those choices on their shoulders and doing something that really does incorporate the historical thinking concepts in a meaningful way rather than just token attempts.

03:57.50
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

Yeah, definitely you can see that too in your project. It's not just a research paper like it really expands kind of like those same skills but just in a different way.

04:06.00
Robert Jardine

Right, right.

04:07.50
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

Um, so what do you think is the greatest impact of your project?

04:10.50
Robert Jardine

Um, well I recognize that most of the students that I teach in History 30 — it's a required course to graduate or one of the social science courses that's required to graduate I should say — most of my students will never take another history course, but they're all going to be citizens of Canada. And in 2022 we are all well aware of the impact of misinformation and disinformation and the need for all of us to be demonstrating good critical thinking skills around the use of media. And for them to go through the process of finding reliable sources to answer questions, it's a process that all adults really should be engaging in you know throughout their — certainly throughout their voting periods and just engaging with other people in discussions around, discussions around topics of the day. There's many things in our country right now that require people to be engaged in. As thoughtful citizens and the more that teachers can give students tools to do that efficiently and effectively by the time they graduate, the better off we all are.

05:38.50
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

So how do you keep your students engaged in the history or how do you make it relevant to them?

05:43.50
Robert Jardine

Well, I think one of the strengths of the project is the guiding questions that all of the students have to answer are really open-ended. They can choose the people, groups of people that — to research and incorporate into the responses. The time periods are delineated but there's a wide range of time in each of these groupings. So, if people want to focus on a certain immigrant group, or another group of people, a minority group or what have you, something that really speaks to them, they have that opportunity.

So, for example in one of the projects, one of the group projects a number of the students within that group are really interested in looking at um, the rules and the experiences of LGBTQ Canadians. And so, there is room within the project for students to explore topics that they find interesting. Other students really focused on — as many of my students are from a rural setting, the role of agriculture in farming communities and the experiences of those communities throughout Canadian history. So, it's I think it's got enough avenues and entry points to appeal to most students.

07:30.00
Julia Richards, Canada’s History

Alright, well, that's all the questions that I have is there anything else you want to add?

07:33.50
Robert Jardine

Um, no I other than I think that this project is um, fairly unique in terms of the latitude that students have to come up with the final product. Then you know, allowing them to choose topics and people that that speak to them directly. Um, I'm really quite happy the number of times I've done the project with the wide range of responses that I get. And so, I think for teachers that are looking for a project that are that is engaging for students and that will produce more than just the typical responses, I think this is a project that can speak to both teachers needs and student needs.