The Refugee Story: Students 'Doing' History

Perhaps Marymount's most ambitious interdisciplinary project came in the form of its "Refugee Story." John Jenkins, having learned that the CBC was launching an initiative to sensitize youth to the plight of refugees, chose to use this opportunity to explore the issue from various points of view, including the media perspective. The Media teacher collaborated and built a unit on refugees that had an amazing fit with the History curriculum. Also involved was Ms. Meg Howald, who incorporated the interdisciplinary project into her English Language Arts curriculum.

Despite the fact that the families of several Marymount students arrived in Canada as refugees, Principal Miniaci found that the "kids couldn't believe how little knowledge they had about the topic. It was an authentic learning experience which opened the world to them. [...] They had been used to texts [...] This was real and engaging." To support the implementation of the project, participating students were released from their regular school schedule for two days in order to allow them to investigate the film and the topic in depth.

The result was an incredible mobilization of teachers and students that led to further media coverage from the Montreal Gazette. (PDF Version | Web Version)

This project also had an impact on the teachers' approach to teaching and learning:

Audio Clip

| top |

Marymount Website