RECIPIENT NEWS RELEASES
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Sanikiluaq teacher, John Jamieson, honoured by Governor General
John Jamieson, a teacher in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. Jamieson was given the award in recognition of his dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
Jamieson, who has taught 14 years in the community, is "almost an institution," according to his colleagues. Under his supervision, his students literally rebuild the 3,000 years of local Inuit history, passed down from generation to generation through tool making, skin preparation and legend.
In one of Jamieson’s earliest teaching innovations, students constructed a full-sized sod house, typical of those used earlier by local inhabitants as winter dwellings. Putting their workmanship to the test, the students spent several nights in the dwellings, curled up under caribou blankets. Sewing clothing in the dim light of seal oil lamps, the mounting numbers of lost needles soon revealed why the archaeological record is rich in needle holders, worn strapped to the wrist!
More recently, Jamieson has spear-headed a unique program that combines historical and cultural themes with entrepreneurial skills. In study units focussing on specific local cultures, students sculpt stone "snapshots" of life in the past with the aid of local artists. Looking towards their own futures, they next are plunged into the complex world of art marketing. Beginning with the purchase of locally crafted relief stone carvings, students then mount the carvings on mat board, frame them into professional-quality object boxes and sell them to art shops across the country.
Working through a non-profit group he helped establish, Jamieson has founded both an FM radio station and a dedicated TV station, piped into every home in the community. Bridging the generations in both directions, members of the community can tune in to classroom sessions, while after-school programming features community elders demonstrating the finer points of traditional bone games.
The other recipients of this year’s award are: Ken Marland (Saskatoon), Nick Brune (Oakville), Josette Bouchard-Müller (Toronto), Barbara Brockmann (Ottawa) and Carol White (Kingston).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award, which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
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Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
If you wish to contact Mr. Jamieson directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, he can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following this he can be reached at Nuiyak School, 867-266-8817, or at home at 867-266-8124.
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Saskatoon teacher, Ken Marland, honoured by Governor General
Ken Marland, a teacher in Saskatoon, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. Marland was given the award in recognition of his dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
Taking his students out into the community as much as he can, Marland’s creativity and enthusiasm for history are his hallmarks. Typical of his approach, he introduces his students to the city of St. John’s by having them purchase and dissect squid. Students continue their "tour" of this historic maritime city through experiments in creating fog, constructing models of lighthouses, and sending signals; the latter tied into Marconi’s famous trans-atlantic transmission, received at Signal Hill.
Marland connects historical events to contemporary events and the students’ own lives. In a teaching resource examining how the annihilation of the plains bison dealt a staggering blow to First Nations peoples, Marland relates the resulting food shortage amongst Native families to how his students’ families would cope with a sudden stoppage in the supply of milk. Marland’s students then examine how the cod moratorium has brought an end to a way of life to thousands of Canada’s maritime families. The unit culminates in a dramatic retelling of the story of the bison’s demise with students performing for the community. Props for the performance include a life-size sculpture of a bison, created by the students to give them a sense of scale of this once-ubiquitous prairie icon.
Recognized by the academic community for his outstanding work, Marland was asked by the University of Saskatchewan to share his expertise. His monograph The Affective Dimension of Concept Development illustrates how to present stimulating lessons in social studies, and to teach social studies from a problem-solving perspective. Marland is also involved in leading professional development courses throughout the year.
The other recipients of this year’s award are: Nick Brune (Oakville), Josette Bouchard-Müller (Toronto), Barbara Brockmann (Ottawa), Carol White (Kingston), and John Jamieson (Nunavut).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award, which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
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Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
If you wish to contact Mr. Marland directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, he can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following that he can be reached at Buena Vista School, 306-683-7140, or at home at 306-955-2198.
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Oakville teacher, Nick Brune, honoured by Governor General
Nick Brune, a teacher in Oakville, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. Brune was given the award in recognition of his dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
"Nick knows Canadian history, loves Canadian history, and enjoys teaching Canadian history," says Mark Bulgutch, Executive Producer at CBC Newsworld.
In the classroom, Brune has developed and implemented "Historiography," a series of four units that encourages students to critically examine four historical time periods. In subunits entitled Uses and Abuses of History; Versions of Truth and Reality; and Facts and History students view videos, conduct research and present their viewpoint on the "truth" and "historical portrayal" of the subject to the class. Following class discussion of the presentations students write two-page position papers on the topics at the end of the lesson. Subjects studied include: Columbus, Riel, JFK and the bombing of Germany in W.W.II.
Brune’s tremendous impact is summed up by one of his students, "Ultimately, Mr. Brune not only acts as a teacher, but as a model and an inspiration..... In the company of Mr. Brune, the space between the classroom walls not only comes to life, but the door bursts open and the possibilities are endless."
Brune does not limit his activities to classroom instruction. He has co-authoured two textbooks currently used in Ontario high schools and is working on a third. He was the education writer for the award-winning CBC video series, News in Review, which covered more than two hundred historical stories and was viewed by over two million Canadian students. Brune has also published over 50 newspaper articles, written several teaching packages for the Dominion Institute and co-edited Rapport, an Ontario teachers’ History and Social Science Journal.
The other recipients of this year’s award are; Josette Bouchard-Müller (Toronto), Barbara Brockmann (Ottawa), Carol White (Kingston), Ken Marland (Saskatchewan) and John Jamieson (Nunavut).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes, The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
-30-
Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
If you wish to contact Nick Brune directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, he can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following that he can be reached at: 905 845 0012 (Iroquois Ridge High School) or 519 658 4016.
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Toronto teacher, Josette Bouchard-Müller, honoured by Governor General
Josette Bouchard-Müller, a teacher in Toronto, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. Bouchard-Müller was given the award in recognition of her dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
"It is the duty of the history teacher to make the student see the difference between commemorating and understanding the past," says Josette Bouchard-Müller, an innovative teacher who creates whatever resources are needed to develop that understanding. To provide materials relevant to the lives of students she taught on the Mistassini Cree Reserve in Quebec, Bouchard-Müller wrote, Recits d’Un Chasseur Cri, (Tales of a Cree Hunter). This multidisciplinary social science textbook and collection of elders memories is based on the history, traditions and lives of the Cree people in the community.
Bouchard-Müller has used the knowledge gained on the Mistassini Cree Reserve to develop and implement Les chasseurs cris de Mistassini, (The Cree Hunters of Mistassini), a teaching unit about Cree life. In this unit, students use a variety of sources from geographic to literary to research the rise of First Nations political movements. She has also mounted an exhibit of paintings, artifacts and photographs collected from her experiences.
Bouchard-Müller creates events around historically significant dates to spark students’ interest in history. For a one day event, 2000-Where do we stand on human rights in Canada?, students’ studied Canada’s accomplishments and presented their findings in the form of plays and exhibits. The bicentennial of the French revolution was used as a springboard for studying revolutionary movements in Canada.
Bouchard-Müller currently teaches at the Toronto French School where she has created, Le Canada et le monde du XVIIème siècle à 1914, which helps students see Canada in a global context. Students learn about the settlement of southern Ontario by examining primary source documents in Colonisation du Sud de l’Ontario XIX ème siècle: Sandford Farm. Both curriculum documents have been approved for use in schools by the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Bouchard-Müller’s students aren’t confined to book and paper research. They have met Nelson Mandela and Paul Martin and have gone on field trips to places such as Ottawa, Montreal and Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons, a reconstructed 17th century Jesuit mission.
The other recipients of this year’s award are; Nick Brune (Oakville), Barbara Brockmann (Ottawa), Carol White (Kingston), Ken Marland (Saskatchewan) and John Jamieson (Nunavut).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes, The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
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Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
If you wish to contact Ms. Bouchard-Müller directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, she can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following this she can be reached at: 416 484 6533 (Toronto French School) or 416 462 1590 (home)
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Ottawa teacher, Barbara Brockmann, honoured by Governor General
Barbara Brockmann, a teacher in Ottawa, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. Brockmann was given the award in recognition of her dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
Teaching in inner-city classrooms, Brockmann has personalized Canadian history for her multi-cultural students, helping them feel a part of their class, neighbourhood and country.
Her play, Ebony Road: An African Canadian Journey, takes its audience time travelling to witness the key events of the African Canadian story. Weaving a spell-binding tale through drama, dance, music and drumming, the play has been produced several times in the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, with a combined cast, choir and crew of up to 200 students.
Bringing history even closer to home, Brockmann’s students research and write pieces on personal and family history, based on interviews they conduct with family members. Students collect a broad range of stories including amusing anecdotes, significant milestones, immigration experiences and recollections from world events such as war, civil unrest, or environmental or economic disasters. Students’ findings are published in hard-cover format along with photos, drawings and copies of original documents.
A simulation project takes Brockmann’s students back to the years immediately preceding World War 1, researching and learning about events as they unfold. Assuming a persona of their choice, they pen a series of three letters, reflecting their chosen persona’s perspective of the war experience and their own growing understanding of the period. The letters are "aged" and presented as a packet found by accident in the students’ attic, or can also be performed.
The other recipients of this year’s award are: Nick Brune (Oakville), Josette Bouchard-Müller (Toronto), Carol White (Kingston), Ken Marland (Saskatchewan) and John Jamieson (Nunavut).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes, The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
-30-
Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
If you wish to contact Ms. Brockmann directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, she can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following this she can be reached at Fisher Park Public School, 613-729-5054, or at home at 613-565-8564.
| For immediate release |
November 16, 2002 |
Kingston teacher, Carol White, honoured by Governor General
Carol White, a teacher in Kingston, received the 2002 Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History in a ceremony at Rideau Hall earlier today. White was given the award in recognition of her dynamic and innovative approach to teaching Canadian history.
The Award program, established in 1996 by Canada's National History Society (the Society), is designed to recognize and reward the efforts of outstanding Canadian history and social studies teachers, celebrate Canadian history and promote the sharing of great teaching ideas.
White uses a diverse array of innovative teaching methods and integrates local history and modern technology into the cirriculum, to make the past exciting and relevant.
Her students use community resources extensively for their research, which is presented in a multitude of ways; web sites, video productions, plays, models, sewing and creative writing. A website created by her students, featuring the Kingston community has won national and provincial recognition.
White has created and implemented an immigration simulation, Utopia-Why Not?, in which students study the culture of a variety of countries including Canada and then create their own perfect society, "Terra." By participating in the simulation, students experience the day to day life of an immigrant. As part of the exercise they also use primary and secondary sources to research the challenges faced by Canadian immigrants and compare them to those faced by the immigrants to "Terra." Through this activity, students not only learn facts but they develop crucial teamwork, problem solving and decision making skills.
White is currently co-chair of the Kingston Regional Heritage Fair which provides students with an opportunity to explore and share their own and Canada’s history with peers and community members.
White has also written teacher’s guides for almost every grade seven and eight history unit in the Ontario curriculum. As well, she is the co-authour of a grade eight textbook and has written curriculum at the school, board and Ministry levels.
The other recipients of this year’s award are; Josette Bouchard-Müller (Toronto), Barbara Brockmann (Ottawa), Nick Brune (Oakville), Ken Marland (Saskatchewan) and John Jamieson (Nunavut).
As part of the Award program and to further the sharing of great teaching ideas, Canada’s National History Society has developed Canadian History Lesson Plans, a sampling of plans from the Award-winning educators. The booklet is distributed at conferences and the plans are presented by year on the Society Web page at http://www.historysociety.ca. A searchable database of all Award nominees is also available.
Recipients received $2,500, a gold medal and an all expense paid trip for two to the Award weekend in Ottawa; thanks to the generosity of Bell Canada. Recipients’ schools also benefit, receiving $1,000 towards furthering Canadian history education.
Winnipeg-based Canada’s National History Society is a charitable organization with a mandate to popularize Canadian History. The Society publishes, The Beaver, and honours the winner of the annual Pierre Berton Award which recognizes individual and community efforts to promote history.
-30-
Editors' Advisory:
For additional information contact us in Toronto:
Deirdre Van-Lane, e-mail: DeirdreV@CommunicationMatters.com
Voice: 416-599-9229, ext 4; Fax: 416-599-0456
I
f you wish to contact Carol White directly, from Friday, November 15 to Sunday, November 17, she can be reached at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa at 613-235-3333. Following this she can be reached at: 613 542 2796 (Calvin Park Public School) or 613 384 1208 (home)