On Friday Tour for Humanity was at an Elementary School in York Region. FSWC Educator Elena taught 6 workshops in total to students from grade 5 to 8 and as you can see from the photo, kids were in good spirits and ready to learn in spite of the snowy conditions!

The majority of older students had been on T4H for the Canadian Experience workshop last year when we visited the school, so we adapted the program to build off of what was covered last time and got into more detail about Indigenous history in Canada, as requested by the school. Each workshop began with a short quiz about Simon Wiesenthal. Elena was pleased to find that most groups remembered that Simon was a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter after WWII. Students had many questions about Hitler and WWII as a whole so after discussing Nazi leadership, we watched the Heroes in history video to highlight positive examples of leadership in contrast to hateful violence.

We also went into more depth on the subject of Residential schools in Canadian history with the grade 7s and 8s. We used the photos of Thomas Moore Keesick to review different aspects of the school system, including the prejudicial attitudes that went into shaping the underlying logic of removing children from their families and communities. We watched a CBC video clip showing depictions of the schools in 1950s advertising, contrasted with the experiences of people who were forced to attend the schools as children.