By the time the afternoon rolled around, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to have to blog about our day today. I know. I’m hooked.

Today was a great day. Division 2 was responsible for the school’s Remembrance Day assembly this year, and this morning I could not have been more proud of them. The sincerity and grace with which they carried themselves and fulfilled their roles as presenters was amazing. They set the bar high on assemblies to come.

Knowing we would be planning the day’s assembly, a few weeks ago we set out to learn more about Canada’s role in the World Wars and the Korean War as well as current military operations. It was one of those ideas I had as a teacher that started out small and then grew and grew and grew. I started to wonder why I hadn’t spent more time on these topics before with other classes.

We invited a small number of residents from our community to come into our classroom. Our target being individuals who had served overseas since the end of the Korean War (1953).  In small groups of five, students interviewed each guest who gave us permission to make an audio recording of his/her responses so that we could have them for future use. Now, the information we’ve collected is being compiled into a class project that will be added to throughout the year. To help others connect with the Canadian service men and women currently being deployed on peace missions, we included some of this information in one of our Remembrance Day presentations (see the video below).

My only regret is not including one individual’s information in the video. At the time the video was made, I didn’t have an image of Master Warrant Officer Nigel Pollard to include. After the ceremony, we made sure we snapped a few. While a more detailed account of his service is included in our larger project, his 29 years of service and several tours as a Construction Engineer need to be mentioned here. He’ll be first on the list for who we will personally thank in our assembly next year.

Our goal is to find and document the names, details and photographs of local people who have served in peace operations around the world, and we’ll be continuing with this project after Remembrance Day for some time.  Having the opportunity to connect with people in our community, and the exposure to different cultural elements being discussed has had such a positive impact on the students’ level of engagement. How could we possibly stop now?

Poppy image courtesy of Veterans Affairs Canada