2025 UNLOCKED Webinar Series

Sessions at a Glance

OCTOBER 29, 2025
7-8pm

Rethinking Remembrance: Tools for teaching Remembrance Day in your classrooms
Anthony Badame (Honouring Bravery)

Remembrance Day is an opportunity to teach students about Canadian history – but are students really engaging with that opportunity in a meaningful way? What does Remembrance Day actually mean to them? Using Honouring Bravery’s free classroom resources, participants will learn how the stories of diverse Canadian heroes can be used to help foster empathy in the classroom and empower students to find ways to make a difference in their own communities.

Guiding Student Reflections on War
Andrea McArthur (Red Cross)

Help your students think critically about the wars they are witnessing around the world. Explore new, FREE multimedia resources that foster critical thinking and compassion by introducing the principles of International Humanitarian Law and related humanitarian issues alongside the perspectives of people facing humanitarian dilemmas in armed conflict.

NOVEMBER 12, 2025
7-8pm

Unlock Civic Action with your Students
Melissa Chan (Elections Canada)

How can you take action to make a difference? That is the inquiry question at the heart of Civic Action: Then and Now. Experience this hands-on activity that engages students in analyzing case studies of women and Indigenous people who took action that resulted in real change. Students then create their own civic action plans to make a positive impact in their own community. Participants will hear from Markham regional education coordinator Melissa Chan who will share her experiences piloting a case study of Chinese Canadian civic action with her community. This free resource is available in English and French, and in a language learner version. Join us to discover how to use this resource in your civics, history, politics, law or equity studies classes.

The Ethics Bowl: Improving Discourse through Ethical Debates
Elliot Carter (Ethics Bowl)

The Ethics Bowl is a new way to debate, which involves teams of high school students designing the best position on contemporary ethical dilemmas–e.g., should healthcare be culturally sensitive? What do children owe their aging parents? Should we limit online speech to prevent misinformation? Students make their best case using reasoning and persuasion, not rhetoric. Ethics Bowl is competitive but also collaborative; teams are encouraged to incorporate feedback from opponents and judges to refine their positions. There were nine regional Ethics Bowls in Ontario this year, involving hundreds of students from all over the province, and it has been enjoying explosive growth since beginning in Ontario in 2020. Learn how you and your students can get involved!

NOVEMBER 26, 2025
7-8pm

Bringing Diverse Historical Perspectives into the Classroom: Historica Canada’s Educational Resources
Mira Goldberg-Poch (Historica Canada)

This informative session will familiarize participants with Historica Canada’s free, bilingual resources designed to promote critical thinking and diverse perspectives in history and social studies classrooms. Historica Canada’s programs encourage students, educators, and the general public to explore, learn, and reflect on our history, and what it means to be Canadian. Teachers across Canada use our themed learning tools, lesson plans, and education guides built around curriculum topics, with interactive activities aimed at promoting critical thinking. Our recent offerings include a focus on the integration of new, diverse histories, including Indigenous Canadian perspectives, the experiences of Black Canadians, and often-forgotten stories of Canadian women. This session will equip teachers with an understanding of how to use Historica Canada’s free resources in the classroom.

Opening the Door to 2SLGBTQI+ Hidden Histories: Canada’s LGBT Purge
Walter Cassidy

The systematic discrimination of 2SLGBTQI+ individuals from the 1950s to the 1990s has come to be called the LGBT Purge. The story of the Purge is complex, interwoven with many other movements and events spanning multiple decades. One of the many educational free online teacher resources offered by the Canadian Museum of Human Rights is Opening the Door to 2SLGBTQI+ Hidden Histories: Canada’s LGBT Purge. This free downloadable resource can be used in conjunction with the large touring exhibit, a smaller touring pop-up exhibit or on its own. The resource engages students in innovative methods through inquiry and hands-on engagement.

DECEMBER 10, 2025
7-8pm

Why Peace Museum? Engaging Students Through Museum Learning
Elaine Law (Asia Pacific Peace Museum)

How do we teach history that doesn’t just inform but ignite curiosity, critical thinking, and a commitment to peacebuilding? World War II in Asia is overlooked, despite its profound and lasting impact on East and Southeast Asian communities—and beyond. Using examples from the Asia Pacific Peace Museum (APPM), this session demonstrates how peace museums engage students in historical inquiry, fostering understanding of war, memory, and reconciliation. Additionally, it provides educators with inquiry-based strategies which engage students to explore overlooked histories, make connections between the past and present, and take actions in shaping a more just world.

Game On: Designing Education Board Games for the Classroom
Hafiz Printer (Archives Ontario)

Interested in incorporating game-based learning into your teaching? In this session we will explore the difference between gamification and game-based learning and how board games can contribute to meaningful learning experiences. During the session teachers will go through a step by step process for creating a board game for their class. By the end of the session teachers will have the tools and confidence to create games for the classroom. The session aims to provide teachers the opportunity to explore an innovative pedagogical approach.

Presenters

Anthony Badame is a museum professional with over a decade of educational programming experience. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Archaeology and a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. Anthony is passionate about making history accessible to everyone and enjoys creating programs that integrate experiential learning in the process of meaning-making. He currently works as the Ontario Coordinator for Honouring Bravery, a program dedicated to sharing the diverse stories of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Andrea McArthur has worked with the Canadian Red Cross for many years as a public speaker, workshop facilitator, and program coordinator. She has developed and facilitated several workshops about youth engagement and leadership, social justice and diversity, humanitarian issues, and International Humanitarian Law. Andrea holds an Honours BA in Psychology from Brock University and an MSW from Wilfrid Laurier University. In her current line of work training teachers in Humanitarian Education, Andrea values success stories from students and teachers discussing the impact of International Humanitarian Law education in the classroom.

Melissa Chan is an Ontario Certified Teacher based in Markham and a Regional Education Coordinator at Elections Canada. Melissa is pursuing her MEd in Social Justice Education at OISE and serves as a director at OHASSTA, supporting inclusive history education across Ontario. She is passionate about empowering youth to become engaged, informed change-makers in their communities.

Elliot Carter is Outreach Officer and Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He runs the Ontario Ethics Bowl and leads other projects involving extending ethics education beyond the philosophy classroom. He has a PhD in philosophy and has published on issues at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science.

Mira Goldberg-Poch is the manager of programs and education at Historica Canada. A historian by training, she specializes in making Canadian history accessible to the public. Her favourite part about public history is seeing how individual stories and experiences fit into the bigger picture, and how those stories bring history to life.

Walter Cassidy has been an Educator in Windsor for the past 25 years. He just finished a two-year educational residence with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and currently works for the GECDSB. He also teaches an AQ course for University of Windsor: How to Teach LGBTQ Students for the last six years. He is a local Windsor Queer historian, and activist. He is the Chair of WERA (Windsor/Essex Rainbow Alliance) which preserves 2SLGBTQAI history in the Windsor/Essex County area as well as partnering with the city on creating permanent spaces and monuments for future generations to enjoy. He has recently been published on various local 2SLGBTQAI historical moments. Last year, he had an exhibit at the Chimczuk Museum and one at the Amherstburg Freedom. He also contributed to the Love in a Dangerous Time Exhibit, currently at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is the largest queer exhibit in Canadian history. As part of his contribution, he created a national educational resource to be taught in schools around the country.

Elaine Law is an educator specializing in history, peace education, and interdisciplinary learning. With over a decade of experience teaching in both New York City and Toronto, she has developed project-based, inquiry-driven curricula that engage students in critical thinking and historical literacy. Elaine holds a Master of Education in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts in Teaching Social Studies from Columbia University. She has worked extensively in secondary and post-secondary education, including as a professor at George Brown College. Her work emphasizes the role of museums as dynamic learning spaces that foster active engagement with history. Through research, mentorship, and community-building initiatives, Elaine is committed to integrating experiential learning into social sciences and humanities education.

Hafiz Printer is the Sr. Coordinator for Educational Programming at the Archives of Ontario. He received his B.Sc and B.Ed from the University of Toronto before completing a double
Masters at the Institute of Education at University College London. Hafiz has been an educator for over 16 years with experience teaching in Canada and Internationally. He is a recipient of the
Prime Minster’s Award for Teaching Excellence and a former Jackman Humanities Teaching Fellow. Prior to joining the Archives, he was the Education Specialist at the Aga Khan Museum. Hafiz has a great interest in experiential and game-based learning.