This interview is part of a special series of the Teaching Canada's History podcast where we spoke with the finalists for the 2021 Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Jackie Cleave is a teacher at Laura Secord School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she developed a project about making the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action accessible for younger students. As Jackie notes, the 94 Calls to Action are a set of directions towards reconciliation but they were not intended as a teaching tool. To make the Calls to Action more accessible, a team of educators worked with seventy-five grades 4, 5, and 6 students to reword the calls in child-friendly language. Her students researched history, explored current reality, toured the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and listened to Indigenous leaders. The students used art, poetry, dictionaries, and thesauruses to identify the problem and rephrase each Call in their own words. The result is a book containing the art, poetry, original Calls, and the students’ wording of the problem and the solution the CRTC TRC proposes.

To learn more about the Governor General's History Awards or to nominate a teacher in your community, visit CanadasHistory.ca/Awards.