Reflecting on rights
Charlottetown teacher instills peace-driven Remembrance Day message with students
Remembrance Day is about defining peace at Spring Park Elementary School in Charlottetown.
The exercise that sees students define and describe what peace means to them is part of teacher Jo-Ann Esseghaier's Grade 4 French immersion Remembrance Day unit, when she works alongside the school's other Grade 4 teachers and students as they memorize poems and decorate wreaths. Esseghaier also leads her own classes in thoughtful discussions about the rights and freedoms they have as Canadians. Rather than focusing on the dark and gritty details, she teaches her young students to value their rights and respect others and focus on why peace matters to them in the wake of remembering what has been sacrificed for such freedoms.
“It's a very moving period of time when we point out how thankful we are for the opportunity to live here, to vote and to be free. They know there are other people around the world who still don't have these rights and freedoms,” says Esseghaier.
EMOTIONAL LESSONS
Students in Esseghaier's class work together to examine poetry and texts relating to Remembrance Day and then reflect on and discuss what these mean to students. These poems typically include In Flanders Fields alongside longer materials like the Story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about the bombing of Hiroshima, as well as video material from Heritage Minutes.
With many students' parents working at the nearby Veterans Affairs office also in Charlottetown, Esseghaier says the department also provides bilingual materials for students to dissect and reflect on.
They focus on past conflicts rather than current ones and always focus lessons on peace and peaceful conflict resolution and issues like the right to vote rather than violence and death of conflicts, due to the young age of the students.
“They grasp it quite well because it's not a new topic for them. There are a range of reactions and some are more emotional than others, especially if they have stories of their family in war. If a child has lost a family member, talking about this can bring that up,” says Esseghaier, who says the class also discusses hard-fought victories like the right to vote and freedom of expression that now exist in Canada.
“We reflect a lot on the sacrifices others have made and we also talk about the federal election and voting, since people have fought for different things along the way,” she says.
A MOVING CEREMONY
As the students further their understanding of Remembrance Day and prepare for the assembly, they also work with music teacher Nancy Thornton Smyth on a program of songs, poems and more reflections to be shared at the ceremony with the school and students' parents who attend. The Last Post is also played and a minute of silence is observed.
A Grade 4 student will also be chosen to carry a wreath to the front of the ceremony Nov. 7 and again with their parents at the Charlottetown Cenotaph during the city's ceremony. Each year also sees a different speaker attend the ceremony who normally speaks to what role Canada has played abroad and how students can support peace in the world. With many children of refugee families being students at the school, Esseghaier says this is why focusing on peace matters most of all. “War hasn't just happened in the past — it's happening in the present day. So we have to support one another and be strong so we don't find ourselves in that situation,” says Esseghaier. She says students often also take away that voting is a form of expressing their voice in a calm, democratic manner and that this form of expression can also help resolve conflicts diplomatically, rather than with fighting and can be applied to everyday life. “We learn that when we talk things out, we understand the other person's side, compromise — these negotiations on a daily basis are how we live our lives. But it's also how they see ways of settling things other than going to war,” says Esseghaier. “The veterans we meet always say they hope such world wars never happen again and this helps ensure they won't.”