The UCDSB’s We Were Here Project is a concept. It is also an evolution of a concept. Let me explain:

Over 20 years ago, Blake Seward discovered opportunity at the nexus of his personal and professional life as an educator. His fascination with history became personal and emerged in his family. He confronted the gap in a forgotten family tragedy, a scar left by the Great War. He asked, how did it come to pass that we forgot the service and sacrifice of our own blood? Later, standing at a Remembrance Day ceremony in his hometown, he recognized that same forgetting in a ceremony meant to commemorate the fallen. There was pomp and circumstance, poppies and the Last Post, and the roll call of names. Seward asked, who were these men? That question, wondering at the men behind the names, the lives that led and fell on the fields of France and Belgium so far away, so long ago, began a career defining shift to developing a learning experience that would place students at the centre of knowing the names, and following their footsteps through the careful reading of service files, the paper trails kept to document the lives of those who left the shores of Canada, many never to return, in an event we now call The First World War.

Then it was The Great War – named for its magnitude in how it shaped the world; the “War to End all Wars”. It didn’t succeed.

“Lest We Forget”, the project that Seward built with students, is an approach to learning history. Students interrogate primary evidence including service files, war diaries, period newspapers, letters, photographs, and construct a story of a life lived. We Were Here connects the approach to the communities in which the students live: names are taken off honour rolls in schools, cenotaphs in their towns and villages, and students follow the puzzle as it reveals itself. Students work with local historical societies and archives to further their understanding of the person they are researching to include pre-war life, family, vocations: as so many students remark, knowing the life beyond the war makes the connection profound and personal.

Mason Black is the catalyst for bringing the research project into the 21st century. Once students have constructed a story, they are encouraged to tell the story of a life in ways that make sense to them. Students contribute their research to a national data portal, develop apps to share their learning on a global stage, and incorporate contemporary storytelling and artistic mediums to share their learning beyond the walls of school. Following the student desire to take their research deeper, Black and Seward collaborated with the UCDSB to construct Mobile Archival Digital Labs (MAD Labs), state of the art archival technology that students use to digitize community archives as they learn the history of the communities they live in. An object, photograph, map or blueprint becomes the catalyst for wonder and storytelling.

Beginning in October 2024, the journey that begins in the towns and villages of Eastern Ontario, now reaches to Europe: students stand beside the headstones of soldiers they researched in postcard size cemeteries scattered all over France and Belgium and beyond. There, students speak of the life that led to the headstone. They read from stories they have written, poetry they have crafted, share art, artefacts, and the emotions that ultimately surface while trying to understand the events that led to this place – for themselves and the soldiers they are here to commemorate.

They were here.

We are here.

We Were Here.

“Here”, as in a place, a time, an event, a present, a past – as in people, standing on ground, in service of purpose. This is history.

We.

Were.

Here.

On a beautiful sunny day in June, June 15th 2024 to be exact, students at R. Tait McKenzie Public School attended the Rededication Ceremony at the Almonte Cenotaph where Private George B. Monterville’s name is now remembered.

Do they really understand the magnitude of what they did? Can we even understand that magnitude? Can you look back to the year you attended school as a grade 6 student? Did you correct a hundred year-old historic wrong as the learning you did that year?

More importantly, do they care? Do they care about this Nation’s, about Canada’s, history? There is no doubt. So, then, why do they care? They care because they learned about a life, a life that once walked the sidewalks of the town they live in – maybe even where Main St. West becomes Almonte St.; maybe even further down the road to Auld Kirk Cemetery visiting a friend or relative before he shipped off to Europe and the First World War. That life became a catalyst for learning about the past. A past that now lives in these students minds and hearts.

History is a living space: it is full of life, and when the human experience of the past is made central for those in the present learning the stories of those people, a connection is forged that does not diminish over time.

As you’ll hear, such connection with the people of the past is fundamental to purpose; what follows purpose like this shapes lives. And so, history, the past, shapes the present though story. In this case, a story of justice, for Private Monterville, a man who once was lost, and now is found; a story of the children of Almonte, Ontario who made it their duty to bring the past to the present for a fellow countryman and citizen who time forgot.

Student Video Story in English: https://youtu.be/piTC3kTxAJ4?si=G49W1bRskabhE1S-

Student Video Story in French: https://youtu.be/pY0SQP8pyn0?si=gVPh0Yf57oTeixS7

CBC Radio Interview: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/16074924-almonte-cenotaph-rededication

CTV News Feature: https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/forgotten-soldiers-name-added-to-almonte-ont-cenotaph-thanks-to-grade-6-class/

It may come across as trite, but if you want to know – if we want to know – what students are asking for, what they want and need, really, just ask them. I did just that when I sat down with Ben Russell and his students that make up Cave Studios at Carleton Place High School. After telling me all about making music, learning the technical approaches to recording from equipment to theory to application, songwriting, filming videos, and working within the music business as school, I asked Lukas and Sean, based on your learning experience in Music for Creativity – the course – what have you found that you wish was more a part of school?

Sean didn’t hesitate: “More creativity.” He went on to describe learning with actual objects – I take from his comment that in school we often replace real applications with simulations, the most reductive of which is the worksheet. In the studio context, we ask students to place hypothetical microphones in a hypothetical room to achieve the best hypothetical sound. Why do we do that? Why do we let the hypothetical stand for the authentic. Scarcity might be the response, but I don’t think that rationale works. There is an abundance of possibility for our classrooms and sometimes I think we lose sight of how important it is that we find a way, any way, to make those possibilities occur.

In the case of The Cave Studios, Ben Russell is leading from passion. Afterall, Ben is a musician. As you’ll hear, he chased the dream of making music for years. Now, he uses that experience and the inherent adolescent drive to make something indelible - as a catalyst for rock-n-roll: writing, performing, recording, videography, merch, promotion, if the music business has it, it is part of Ben’s Music for Creativity.

So, what’s the big question, then? How do you bring what has always been an underground, counterculture, garage formed, evolution through sweat equity process - into the walls of school? Ben has a theory that he describes that makes sense for all disciplines: there exists a menagerie of techniques and theories for making professional music. When students reach the ceiling of their experience and experimentation, Ben is waiting to add yet another layer. It’s the tried, tested, and truest form of learning, applied by artists and artisans for millennia: work to your capacity, and just when you think you’ve reached the peak, extend the journey with an additional question, skill, technique, or, even, a theory that until now will have meant little, and now means everything.

This is why for generations young people have made music and art: because it belongs to them, it is about them, and much of it is accessible without the expertise of adults. If we don’t know how, we’ll figure it out. If you’re a mentor, you’ll guide us while walking with us on the journey. We’ve got things you’ll need to learn also.

In the case of Music for Creativity at CPHS, the learning is about music and music production. It could be about anything. In fact, maybe it should be about everything, every subject, as a tool, as an object, waiting to be explored by minds that will shape it as the learn to use it, rather than store it for a purpose beyond knowing.

As Lukas explained, “I don’t really get it until I put it together myself. I would love to see experience like that in other classes, where I’m forced to go try it myself and see what happens.”

Before we get into the conversation, you’ve been listening to Lukas play Chopin’s Waltz in D minor. Later you’ll hear him play Billie Jean – yes, that Billie Jean. Sean’s Band Right comes in a little later on with their song, SASD.

The kids are alright!

Right Band: http://right.band/?i=1