Discovering our Roots

Discovering Our Roots: Building Wetaskiwin’s Story Together

A couple of years ago, I was teaching grade 7 Social Studies. The curriculum in Alberta focuses on pre- and post-Confederation Canada, and is vast - spanning from pre-contact to present day. To be honest, it's always been a challenge for me to find ways to help my students feel connected with it. So much of the curriculum focused on Eastern Canada. For my students here in Western Canada, the curriculum felt geographically and emotionally distant. There's a section post-Confederation with outcomes related to immigration and Western development and that's where I knew I could find a way to help my students connect.

This was a concept that really could be focused on local events, and this gave me an idea: What if we made this section of the curriculum hyperlocal? I wondered if we could learn about real people who lived in our community who had immigrated and learn about why they came and what their lives were like. I wondered, too, if we could learn about how this immigration impacted the Indigenous communities whose traditional territories we reside on.

With this spark of an idea, I reached out to our local museum, the Wetaskiwin and District Heritage Museum & Archives. I asked them if they might be able to provide us with some information about real people who were a part of the different groups our curriculum asked us to learn about: Indigenous peoples, European immigrants, Asian immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and migrants from Eastern Canada/the US. When I emailed the museum, I got a response back almost immediately: YES! The museum's curator invited to me to come over to the museum for a meeting to discuss some ideas. We had an exciting discussion, throwing around some different ideas, and we landed upon this: my students would become guest curators and create an exhibit for the museum based on the real Wetaskiwin people they researched.

The project took six weeks to complete, and had several phases:

Project Launch and Museum Field Trip

The project began with a field trip to the Wetaskiwin and District Heritage Museum, where students received a behind-the scenes tour of how exhibits were curated. Museum staff introduced students to historical artifacts, archival documents, and research techniques. This experience provided foundational knowledge and sparked curiosity about the contributions of diverse immigrant communities in shaping Wetaskiwin’s history.

Framing Inquiry and Conducting Research

Back in the classroom, students formed research groups, each focusing on a specific population that contributed to the region’s development, including Indigenous communities, Asian immigrants, European immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and migrants from Eastern Canada and the U.S. Groups developed inquiry questions to guide their research, examining themes such as the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the role of the North West Mounted Police, agricultural development, religious communities, and Treaty 6 negotiations. Students utilized primary and secondary sources, including museum archives, oral histories, and historical photographs, to gather information.

Analyzing Historical Perspectives

Students analyzed historical documents and visual media, engaging in discussions to understand multiple perspectives on immigration and its impact on Indigenous communities.

Designing the Exhibit

With research completed, students began designing their physical exhibit. Each group selected key artifacts, photographs, and stories to feature, creating written descriptions and informational texts to accompany their displays. The exhibit design process included writing exhibit text, making suggestions for artefacts to display, and ensuring historical accuracy. Museum staff provided feedback, guiding students in creating engaging and educational displays.

Exhibition Preparation

Students refined their exhibit content, aiming for professional quality worthy of public display. They revised their written work for clarity and coherence, ensuring their displays effectively communicated historical narratives.

Public Exhibition and Community Engagement

The project culminated in a public exhibition at the Wetaskiwin and District Heritage Museum. Families, community members, and museum visitors were invited to view the student-created exhibits, fostering public engagement with local history. Students acted as docents, guiding guests through their exhibits, answering questions, and discussing their learning journey.

The exhibition was amazing. My students were so proud of their work, and so eager to show it off to their friends and family. When they entered the museum on that June day, they peered into the display case, looking for their contribution to the exhibit.

Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching

I was honoured to receive a Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2025 for this project. Here is a video where I share the project and its impact:

In Ottawa to receive the award, I presented about my project and the topic "the power of the past" at the Governor General History Awards Forum. This is the text of the speech I shared.

When we talk about the power of the past, we often think about big moments and people: Confederation, Prime Ministers, and wars. But for my students, the real power of the past emerged when history stopped being abstract and started being personal.

I taught Grade 7 Social Studies in Wetaskiwin, Alberta — a small city of about 12,000 people, located near Maskwacis, home to four Cree Nations. Many of my students are Indigenous. Others come from settler families whose roots stretch back generations in this region. Some are newcomers to our area, with families immigrating recently from lands far away.

And yet, the Grade 7 Social Studies curriculum in Alberta focuses largely on Eastern Canada. When it comes to understanding Canada’s history, these stories are important. But for many students, that Canada felt distant — both geographically and emotionally. I wanted to change that, and find a way to help my students feel that history learning could be meaningful and relevant to them.

My project, Discovering Our Roots, was built around a simple but powerful question: What happens when students learn history in the very place where that history happened — and share it with the people who live there now?

After we spent much of our year learning about Confederation, I found a real opportunity in the topics of Western development. Instead of learning about immigration through textbooks, my students became museum curators. In partnership with the Wetaskiwin & District Heritage Museum, they researched, designed, and created a public exhibit exploring the stories of Indigenous peoples and immigrant communities who shaped our local community. They learned about the real reasons - not the abstract concepts - that pulled people to Wetaskiwin, and the impact on local Indigenous peoples.

From the very beginning, this project was about authenticity. Students weren’t completing assignments just for me. They were doing real historical work using primary sources like photographs, letters, and oral histories, and making decisions about what stories deserved to be told and how. The museum and archives staff were phenomenal, supporting my students in accessing challenging primary documents to uncover the stories of the people who helped create the story of Wetaskiwin.

The museum itself became an extension of our classroom. Students went behind the scenes, handled artifacts, and worked alongside professional curators. They learned how challenging it is to interpret the past responsibly — how careful you have to be with language, with representation, with truth.

They learned that history is not neutral. That whose stories we choose to highlight matters. They learned that different communities experienced the same events in very different ways. We deliberately included the Indigenous people who called our place home before colonization. This was personal, and the topic of Truth and Reconciliation took on new meaning when students saw how immigration impacted the traditional territories of the Cree and the people who lived there.

One powerful moment came when students realized that some of the names they were researching — early settlers, Indigenous chiefs, women featured in documented interviews — were the ancestors of people they knew. Suddenly, the past wasn’t “long ago.” It was sitting beside them in class. That’s the power of local history. This is the true challenge of the history teacher: to help students make connections between the past, present, and future. This is where history truly comes alive.

When the exhibit opened to the public, students didn’t just stand back and admire it. They became docents. They guided their families through the displays, answered questions, and explained why certain stories mattered. Parents, Elders, community members, and museum visitors all engaged with their work.

This project didn’t just deepen historical knowledge. It strengthened relationships: between students and community, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, between past and present. It showed students that history isn’t something done to them. It’s something they belong to. For many students, this was the first time they encountered the idea that history is something you construct, not something you simply receive. When history feels meaningful, it becomes powerful.

What this project taught me is that authentic history education doesn’t start with content. It starts with connection. With place. With people. With an orientation towards communities, and the people who were here, and continue to live here, and who will live here long after us. The power of the past is not just in remembering - it’s in understanding how those stories shape who we are today, and how we live together tomorrow.

When students see themselves reflected in history — and see their community reflected in the curriculum — they don’t just learn history. They care about it. And that, I believe, is where the real power lies.

Advice to Teachers

The beauty of this project is that it was authentically community based. My students researched people of the community from the past, whose connections to the present could still be felt. Some of the last names of some of the people they learned about were sitting right next to them in class. It was authentic, too, because what my students created was never for me - it was for a public audience in the museum's visitors. This layer of added gentle pressure meant my students took good care with their work.

My advice to teachers is actually really simple: just ask! There are so many people out there who want to engage students in real learning in their community. There are so many willing partners out there. Reach out, throw a wild idea out into the world, and see what sticks. Chances are somebody will say yes, and probably sooner than you think.

Though the resources I created for this project are fairly specific to this context, feel free to use and hack any parts that might be useful to you.

Here are some resources to share: