Of first Practicum just finished and I am now able to reflect on the spiral of inquiry better.

Scan: My main take away is that there is always something going on with our students. The first week what was going on was that I was there, a new person is here and my students had to figure out the order of operations that I work with. The second week was when the weather started to warm up so they can sense that summer is close they have more energy and were a little more restless. The Third week was about the fact that spring break was almost here. Attention and attendance went down but I expected that as so my final assignment was booked for the Thursday because I knew that a lot of students were not going to be there on top of that I planned the last 2 days as work/ catch up says to ensure my students could have everything ready to go.

Focus: I think the biggest impact was my lessons on the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshimas and Nagasaki and the impact Canadian women had on the war. The good thing about teaching World war 2 is that there are millions of photos and videos, these have a lot of impact on students as they get to see what happened. The most shocking on I showed was an arial before and after photo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My CT pointed about that I have no real issue showing and talking about these things with students. I always tried to humanize the people in the war. When I taught about Normandy I used interviews of veterans who served in the war. There were two interviews that stood out to my students, one was a man who said that his friend saw him getting into another boat and going “goodbye” and later he was the first man seen dead on the beach. The second was a medic who said “I held many men dying in my arms and they would be screaming ‘mama mama’ and not a night goes by i don’t hear them screaming when I close my eyes.” In both cases I would pause the video and go “do you think that might make it hard to make friends” or ” do you think that might effect your ability to lead a normal life?”

Developing a hunch: I found that the most students are interested about WW2 if you make it personal i believe it is because Canada’s History is relativity new and so we until grade 10 they don’t really learn a lot of the “cool” stuff not to mention most war movies of the period do not show Canadian soldiers which adds to an inferiority complex that students feel about Canada’s global impact. There is also a bit of a culture shock as most people see Canadians as Teddy bears so to show that Canadians were some of the most blood thirsty and were the reason the Geneva convention has a lot of rules. Say that to a room full of teenagers were thought Canadians did not do a lot of the war and watch their jaws drop.

Learn: Students should learn the cost of war. in World War 2 there were 76 million deaths that is double the population of Canada today. I also wanted them to learn that even though Canada had 1.1 million men serve that is from a population of 11 million that’s only 10 percent of a population that means 1 in 10 people were in the war. However we are taking from a population that is between 18 to 40 that is a population of about 2 million of those 2 million, 1.1 million served so 55% of men eligible to serve did. The school I did my Practicum had 940 students more or less that means 517 of those students would have served. Of those students around 36 will not return home. And for the remaining 481 who have returned from war they are haunted by the death of their friends. I did this math in class and my students were quiet. Anytime I used numbers in class I would tie it back to the school. The Battle of the Scheldt we lost 6367 Canadians in 5 weeks that is around 182 deaths a day so in 6 days the school would be clear and 146 other people would die. That sits with students more that 1.1 million people served.

Take action: I presented the war not only as this event that took so many lives but also as a time great social change. I think its important to show how revolutionary this war was for Canada and how Canadian women have so many liberties because of the war. I also showed how women having disposable income changed marketing and products. Cars became safer and more comfortable, advertising started saying “buy this” rather than “get your husband to buy this”. This all began because of a war and many people would not get their men back from war but it allowed women to gain power and independence.

Check: I would always pose questions at the end of a presentation as a way to gauge whether a student could use the information I gave them, interoperate it and show me what they took from it. Questions like “how do we justify the deaths of so many? should we?” or “do you think the creation of the atomic bomb was a net benefit for humanity” the idea was to ask questions at the end of a presentation to gauge thinking.