Shawna Audet

Teaching Canadian history is my passion. Specifically, my passion is teaching Social Studies 10. I know that (to some of you) my passion might sound more like an illness. If you just read the last two sentences and thought to yourself, "This woman needs to get a life," then it's time for me to let you in on one of the best kept teaching secrets in Canada: Social Studies 10 rocks!

Of course, I didn't always know about the greatest teaching secret ever. It took me a while to come to the truth about Social Studies 10. When I first arrived in School District 54, in Northern B.C., I had the dubious distinction of being the "newbie" on the Houston Secondary School staff. Being the "newbie" means that your teaching assignment is a mishmash of courses that the senior teachers don't want to teach. When I looked at my schedule, I found that it was heavily weighted with Social Studies 10 classes.

"Why doesn't anyone want to teach Soc. 10?" I wondered aloud, as I made my way to the bookroom to pick up the course texts. The librarian, who was handing out texts, heard my musings and decided to enlighten me. "That course is a sleeper," she said dryly and handed me a big black texbook. "Enjoy."

The librarian was not kidding. I dutifully tried to read the dense black textbook, but it had magical sleep inducing qualities. The black book was not cutting it. I knew that there had to be a better way. The answer came to me one day when I was strolling to class (with the black book under my arm). I was on my way to teach a lesson on Louis Riel and I started humming the tune to "Louie Louie." I added lyrics to tell the story and I tried it out on my class. "Louis Louis Riel" was a great hit. I created more Soc. 10 class hits like the "Lower Canada Rebellion Rap" and "Prime Ministers are People Too." Social Studies 10 gained a new reputation. Students were excited to be there. Test scores soared. This much was clear: I was onto something great.

Since the creation of "Louis Louis Riel," I have put most of the Soc. 10 course to song. Historica gave me a grant and I turned my songs into the Beaver Tales CD. Next, I became a historical reseacher and wrote history stories to match the curicullum. In my stories, I stayed true to events and tried to include lots of juicy historical details that you don't find in the textbooks. My next step was to create computerized historical figure personality quizzes.

This year, I created the Miniature Earth project. Finally, I organized all of my resources and created this website for you. It is my great hope that these resources help you to create the kind of classroom where students are excited to come into the room each day because they can't wait to see what they are going to learn.

Sincerely,

Shawna Audet

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