Strike project a labour of love for Kelvin teacher, students

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This article was published 23/11/2020 (2011 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A project in which Kelvin High School students made the Winnipeg General Strike come alive on its 100th anniversary has earned their teacher top marks.

History teacher Chris Young is one of six recipients of the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

“It’s a really amazing honour. I’m super humbled by it,” said Young. 

Grade 10 students built a streetcar, dressed as strikers and one female student played a guitar and sang a tune to commemorate the strike’s anniversary, May 15, 2019.

“I think ultimately, the project worked pretty effectively because they created some really good academic work. They learned a lot about the discipline but at the same time it was pretty creative, and I think they enjoyed engaging with the community and meeting some of the experts in the field and getting to know their city a bit better,” said Young.

“I’m just so grateful that I had a long career working at Kelvin and working with a community that’s unbelievably supportive, with really talented teachers and… some of the most wonderful, hard-working and bright, compassionate students. So, I just feel really privileged to have had these opportunities over the course of my career.”

Young added that his students took the project seriously and even interrupted other classes to share their work.

“At 11 a.m. on that day, two of my students got on the intercom and interrupted the whole school to read a script about the importance of the Winnipeg General Strike,” he said. “They did it at 11 a.m. because that was the exact time that the workers walked out 100 years earlier from their jobs.”

At 11 a.m. on May 15, 1919, workers from the building and metal trades, who were joined by thousands of unionized workers and non-unionized workers, went on strike. More than 35,000 strikers protested against their low pay and poor working conditions. The strike pitted them against the city’s business elites.

Kelvin students enjoyed learning about the strike’s influence on Winnipeg and the labour movement, Young said.

He awarded bonus marks to anyone who visited strike locations throughout the city on their own time. He said some students visited the Ukrainian Labour Temple on Pritchard Avenue, the headquarters of the labour movement, and two students went to Brookside Cemetery to visit the tombstones of the two men killed on Bloody Saturday, when the two factions clashed on downtown streets.

“I loved how excited my students became in terms of learning about local history. They just seemed to be living and breathing history, and as a teacher you really can’t ask for anything more than that,” said Young.

The highlight was when an Earl Grey School educator asked Young and his students to teach grade four, five and six students about the General Strike, Young said.

“They dressed up and two of my students took a board game they had made for their project; the girl who had written and sang the song with her guitar, she went there,” said Young.

“They taught the strike from multiple perspectives. As a teacher, that’s kind of a dream come true to have your students become the next teachers.”

Award winners receive $2,500 for themselves and $1,000 for their school.

kellen.taniguchi@freepress.mb.ca