JBSI - Day 5

You can read more about our trip at Dispatches from Juno

Theme: Understanding Historical Hindsight in Operation Overlord
Where: Pegasus Bridge (where 1st Cdn Parachute Battalion and 6th British Airborne Division landed night of June 5, 1944), walk from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer (most Eastern edge of Juno Beach) to Bernieres-sur-Mer, then Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery
Questions/Considerations:
Getting students to better appreciate the technological constraints and challenges when assessing achievements and failures.
Getting students to better appreciate the multi-dimensional and interconnectedness of the Allied invasion from the airborne flanks perspective  of the landing zones.
What was the French civilian experience under occupation and on D-Day?
Getting students to engage with primary sources and soldier research projects.
Other Questions:
Operational Battle history vs. Narrative history?  How much Second World War content is TOO much?
How should the stories of these individual soldiers (like at Beny-sur-Mer) be incorporated as 'primary' research into your classroom practice?
What is the experience of being on the Juno Beaches for the first time for Canadian History teachers - how can we articulate this emotion for our students?

Reflections:
I really appreciate walking on the beach today from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Berneires-sur-Mer. And that was only about 1/2 the distance Juno covered.  We could see the change in tide just over the time we were there.  We also walked along one of the routes Canadians would have taken out of the town. It really brought home the importance of timing and planning/preparation involved in D-Day.

But possibly more powerful than that was the sharing of stories by the people living around here and the way they so openly shared their stories or the stories of the places around them.  We had the honour of being welcomed into the Canada House - the first house liberated on the Juno Beach June 6, 1944.  It is the house you see pictured in many Canadian photos from D-Day, and they have kept it pretty much the same.  We were told stories about the Canadian soldiers who fought there and came back many years later to tell their stories.  So powerful, the types of stories that are better passed on through oral history - an art that we need to try to  keep alive.

We were also welcomed into the courtyard of a family who are renovating buildings beside a field that was along the route out of town (Berneires-sur-Mer) as the Canadians pushed the Germans back.  We heard about the rose bushes that are still growing that were planted by the family in 1944 to honour the fallen Canadian soldiers, and how the chateau there was used as one of the first field hospitals for Canadians after June 6,1944.

It was simply local history, not "significant" enough to have made it into history books. But stories that have been passed down from person to person.
This is the type of thing that helps make history real for our students.  It is the stories that people can connect to and make history interesting.  We have to continue to find ways of bringing history stories alive for our students.  Not everyone can take a trip here to see it and feel it.  One of the things we are thinking about on tour, is how to do that.
How do you make history come alive for your students?  How do you share the stories that make the history?