The document outlines a vision for place-based education at UBC's West Kootenay Teacher Education program. It details a collaborative project between the program and local communities to tell the story of Japanese Canadians interned in the area during WWII. Student teachers, faculty, elders, and filmmakers worked together to create documentaries and oral histories. The project strengthened place-based learning, cultural understanding, and connections between educational institutions and communities in the region.

2. Setting the stage: a vision
Naomi Ross, and Linda Farr Darling co-create the
2009-10 Growth Plan for UBC’s West Kootenay
Teacher Education program. The Growth Plan:
 Sets “place-based” education firmly at the heart of
rural teacher education
 Seeks to use the resources found in the West
Kootenays to create powerful curricular experiences
for teacher candidates
 Demonstrates a commitment to collaborative
practice

3. The project: Beginning to
Tell the Story of the Nikkei
 Tell the story of the Nikkei:
 1942-1945: 22,000 Japanese Canadians
interned; camps throughout BC’s West
Kootenays
 Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre – a
National Historic site and museum located in
New Denver, BC
 Integrate place-based education in WKTEP, and
with the help of student teachers and faculty, into
classrooms across the Kootenays

4. The convergence of place…
Linda Naomi Terry
• UBC • WKTEP • WKTEP
• Rural Ed • Faculty Sessional
• Place-based Collaboration • Lucerne School
education film project
• New Denver • Nikkei Centre, • New Denver
New Denver

5. The compelling
richness of place
 As you see the following images of New Denver
and listen to how this place inspired our educational
focus, consider the riches of your place
 What stories are there to tell in your school and
community? What community is there to support
your place-based education vision?
 After the slideshow, we will pause and with a
learning partner, reflect on these questions

6. The Place: New Denver
New Denver, BC -
on pristine Slocan Lake in the West Kootenays

7. Images of New Denver

8. The power
of collaboration
 “Teaching is a complex endeavour…We believe that together
we are better, that working as a member of a team and within
a school helps us grow as professionals and supports us in
being the best we can be in the classroom, and in having the
greatest impact on student learning.
 When teachers work together as interdisciplinary teams …
they develop approaches that help students connect to,
process, transform, and personalize important concepts and
thinking skills. Their schools become learning communities,
the most important unit of change.”
Faye Brownlie and Leyton Snellert,
“It’s All About Thinking” Portage and Main Press, 2009

9. Start with a vision; add
partners; watch it grow
• Foster place – based education
• Cultivate collaboration
• Inspire student teachers
• Bring history education alive
• Weave in film and media education
• Create authentic learning experiences

10. Kyowakai: Peacefully
working together…
WKTEP 26 Student
Vision and Teachers +
support 2 Faculty
35 students 6 elders
+3 +2
teachers filmmakers

11. WKTEP Faculty
Collaboration
 Cross curricular connections in Social Studies and
English methods courses (LLED314 and SSED 314)
 A Gallery walk of diverse text on the Japanese
internment: films, photographs, redress speech, charts
and tables, maps, Path of Leaves
 A field trip to the Nikkei Centre with Nobby Hayashi
 Collaborative unit plan assignment on the internment

12. 26 student teachers co-plan
 Each student teacher team developed a unit plan on the
Japanese internment with the aim of teaching it in their
13 week practicum
 Student teachers “loved the collaboration”. They were
“able to talk lesson ideas out with colleagues”.
 In their feedback on the course, student teachers
identified that “the field trip to the Nikkei Centre and
the classes in New Denver allowed them to integrate
different types of learning to this area.” They enjoyed
“learning how to do field trips” and the “hands-on
learning of the Gallery walk on the Japanese Canadian
internment”.

13. WKTEP student teachers
share ideas…

14. 35 students + 3 teachers
 Two teachers and one WKTEP student
teacher collaborate, co-plan and team teach
 Grade 10/11/12s in Social Studies 11, History
12 and English 10-12 work together in multi-
grade groups creating 60 – 90 second
documentaries
 Synchronicity: an Artists in Residence project
with filmmakers Mo Simpson and Catrina
Longmuir, “Telling the story of the Nikkei”

15. Lucerne student filmmakers

16. Artist Statements – a
synthesis of student learning

17. A sneak preview…
Five student films:
 Japanese-Canadian Internment
 Never Lose Hope
 Propaganda
 So Fast
 Winter of 1942
Your feedback? Thinking?

18. 5 Student Films

19. 6 elders + 2 filmmakers +
community
 Interviews with 6 remaining elders in New
Denver filmed by the students and by Mo
Simpson and Catrina Longmuir
 The New Denver Kyowakai Society partners
with the school, the Village, the Valhalla Fine
Arts Society to document the stories
 Public screening of student films along with
Animation/Digital Storytelling for adults

20. Synergy:
the inexplicable magic
 National Historic Site recognition for the Nikkei
Centre in 2010
 Kyowakai Society yearns to film elders before it’s too
late
 Collaboration between National Japanese History
Museum in Burnaby, Nikkei Centre and the school
 www.citizenshift.ca - a voice for youth and shift in
perspective towards greater educator involvement
 www.thenhier.ca - a place for innovation in history
education

21. Your connections?
 Talk with a partner
 Explore your ideas around place-based
education, collaboration, synergistic
connection
 What can you take away from “Tellling
the Story of the Nikkei”?

22. Pulling it all together
• Place- • Team • Connection
Vision
Collaboration
Synergy
based beyond the
• Partners plan
Learning

23. Next steps
 Future WKTEP collaborations – SSED 314 and LLED
314 team teaching
 Possible UBC teacher education collaborations: UBC -
WKTEP and UBC – Vancouver (eg: National Museum of
Japanese History in Burnaby; Nikkei Internment
Memorial Centre – New Denver)
 Teacher Candidate – School Advisor collaborations
 Teacher collaborations online – Online Information
Circles using Moodle
 Collaborations online throughout Canada
(www.THENhier.ca and www.citizenshift.ca)