Canada Connections saw students act out history
A nation like Canada is built for song, with its expansive geography, multicultural population, multifaceted history and impressive range of natural wonders.
Dave Schulte is a teacher by vocation and a musician by avocation. He combined his passions into a history unit for his elementary class that helps drive home the interesting characteristics of our nation, or rather, they sing them home.
His class at École College Heights Elementary spent weeks rehearsing for a show they put on this past week for family and friends.
It was called Canada Connections and it made them better at performing as well as more knowledgeable about the people and places of our country. Snippets of acting helped form the roster of songs into a little story. Some of the topics included Arctic hunting, the sinking of the Titanic, Metis leader Louis Riel, the battle of the Plains of Abraham, the westernmost Haida culture, and other elements of the Canadian mosaic.
“It’s just a light skim over aspects of Canadian culture and history, but doing it this way makes it more interesting for the kids and helps to lock it into their minds,” said Schulte, who did this kind of presentation once before, 10 years ago while a teacher at Spruceland Elementary School. This mix of 23 students had the particular kind of personality needed for doing that different sort of educational exercise.
“This is a phenomenal group of young singers, and they really listen to each other and pay attention to what’s going on in the presentation. There is a way to feel the music, be conscious about it, and they are impressive at that,” said Schulte. “It’s amazing how musically inclined they’ve become.”
The songs that melodified the performance were ones Schulte culled from the canon of Canadiana tunes. Some were relatively modern like the Canadian adaptation by The Travellers of Woody Guthrie’s song This Land Is Your Land or the Stompin’ Tom Connors hit The Hockey Song (sung with expressed permission), while the majority came from the substantial pool of public domain songs dating back through time like 1842 rebellion ballad Un Canadien Errant.
“It’s cool to hear kids sing about these moments in Canadian history,” Schulte said. “When they read about it, that’s one thing, but to have them act out being a French soldier looking across the field at a British counterpart, that internalizes it better. It puts them in touch with these events.”
In addition to the classroom time the kids put in, Schulte said he heard them talking about work they did on their own, outside of school. Sometimes there would be Facetime rehearsals as students worked out their parts together even when they were not physically in the same space.
“When you see that level of commitment, you know the kids are buying into the lessons,” Schulte said. “It’s haunting to hear children’s voices singing songs that were really intended for adults, singing songs that were intended to tell really important stories that make up who we are as a nation.”
There is some proof that this style of teaching works in Schulte’s hands. Prince George fiddle star Chloe Nakahara credited him with inspiring her, as a child in his class, to explore music and it snowballed into her profession and being a competitor at the Grand Masters’ Fiddle Championship.
He’s a known public musician himself, as part of local music acts over the years like Kathy Frank’s blues band (her song Highway Of Tears is a modern historical ballad in the same spirit as these he chose for the kids), acoustic band Mud River, the country-folk solo project of Gordon Dorish, bluegrassers Red Barn Brigade, and many more.
He was featured on the Shaw TV program Earl’s Music Emporium and he penned the seasonal ode Christmas In Kandahar which again draws on modern Canadian events to sing the national soundtrack of the future.
The student performances were for inschool audiences only, but to see Schulte perform as a solo artist, come to Cafe Voltaire (at Books & Company) on June 22 for the admission-free and all-ages Friday Night Mics show at 7 p.m.