President’s Message: Fall 2025
Rachel Collishaw
Welcome back to school! This issue of Salon is dedicated to giving you some foundational tools and resources to help you take inquiry to the next level in your social studies classroom.
Maybe you are looking for ways to strengthen your students’ historical thinking skills. BC educator Nathan Moes’ can get you started with Assessing Historical Thinking – a new resource to support your students with bite-sized tasks that highlight skills like corroboration, contextualization, close reading and sourcing.
We also highly recommend the rich teaching resources developed by TC2 about the National Internment Operations, 1914-1920. These primary-source based document sets and teaching guides can help your students understand and evaluate how Canada’s policies and attitudes towards Ukrainian Canadians have changed over the last century, as well as to think deeply about what we should memorialize as a nation.
Memorialization is also a strong theme with the new programs offered by the Vimy Foundation. I had the distinct pleasure to chaperone a Beaverbrook Vimy Prize trip in 2017, and I was blown away by the depth of the conversations among our students as we explored all kinds of First and Second World War memorials, and critically examined their purpose, positionality and how they have changed over time, and what they mean to us today. Students can also apply for that trip or the Vimy Pilgrimage Award to experience key Canadian sites of the First World War in Europe. The new Vimy Inspires Tomorrow grant program is an exciting way for students to make connections at home and to imagine ways to bring the past to life in their own communities.
Veterans Affairs has so much to offer for students of all ages. Check out their new resources for primary, middle and secondary students. Everything you need to prepare for Remembrance Day, but many resources work year-round. I can especially recommend the learning resources about Chief Joseph Dreaver as a way to integrate learning about Indigenous military service through art, and with links to important Indigenous veterans from across Canada. They also can ship you a copy of our very own SSENC resource, Canada’s Participation in the Korean War: Inquiry, Historical Thinking and Action. You can, of course, find all of the lessons on the SSENC website for free to copy and download, but sometimes, it’s nice to have a book too!
Of course, the best resource is time spent collaborating, networking and sharing with your colleagues. Our member associations in Nova Scotia, PEI, Manitoba and BC are looking forward to facilitating those conversations at their conferences this fall with some really inspiring keynote speakers and engaging workshops to keep you going all year.
Our SSENC executive is not meeting in person this year, but we continue to connect and build the network virtually every month. Learn more about your provincial member association, and stay tuned for more opportunities for connection and resourcing throughout the year.
The next issue of Salon will be in December and the deadline for submissions of articles and advertising is October 20th.
