This is from the 2024-25 edition of the Knowledge Forum.
Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum (KSWRM) is the largest community museum in Ontario (Region of Waterloo Museums, 2025). Located on the traditional and current lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabe, and Neutral Peoples, in a place now called Kitchener, Ontario, KSWRM has a duty to share stories of cultural significance and build a cohesive community in Waterloo Region through mutual learning, discovery and exchange (Region of Waterloo Museums, 2025). To build a cohesive community, museum employees recognize that “the primary and central relationship of museology is between the museums and its visitors and other clients – not between the museum and its collection” (Weil, 1990, p. 56). KSWRM strives to share the collection with the public in inclusive and engaging ways that represent the diversity of Waterloo that represent the diversity of Waterloo Region’s past, present, and future.
One of the ways KSWRM shares the history of Waterloo Region is by offering Ontario curriculum-based education programs for students. Previously, the museum focused heavily on the Grade 3 curriculum. Two of its five school programs were dedicated to this grade level, covering interactions amongst Indigenous peoples, Black settlers, and Mennonite immigrants in Waterloo Region from 1780 to 1850. The activities in these school programs involved museum educators asking students to imagine themselves in various situations – as Indigenous peoples resisting colonization; as Black people fleeing slavery; as Mennonites travelling from Pennsylvania to Waterloo Region. Working as a museum educator at this time, I used this instructional strategy myself, believing I was helping students to develop historical empathy. Time, distance, self-reflection, and reading helped me realize this strategy prevented students from developing historical empathy (Marcus et al., 2012).
While this focus on imagination was done with good intentions, it trivialized the experience of the individual who lived through it. This is what Hartman refers to as “the difficulty and slipperiness of empathy” (1997, p. 18). By asking students to imagine themselves in a situation to instill empathy, the student is being taught to “feel for [themselves] rather than for those whom this exercise in imagination presumably is designed to reach” (Hartman, 1997, p. 19).
Historical empathy is not synonymous with sympathy or forgiveness. Instead, historical empathy encompasses two key concepts; perspective recognition and caring (Marcus et al., 2012, p. 25). Perspective recognition encourages students to consider how and why people in the past made decisions, by identifying contributing factors and influences. These could be societal, political, economic, religious, or military pressures. Caring instills in students that they can recognize emotional, physical, and mental experiences without having – or imagining - said lived experiences themselves. Indeed, it is “impossible for students to truly understand what [past] experiences would have been like” (Marcus et al., 2012, p. 25).
To help students develop historical empathy led me to not only rewrite the Grade 3 program, but to also create a new education program for Grade 6 students called Communities in Canada. Designed as a two-hour program, Communities in Canada explores the immigration stories of four people: Samuel Goings, Tom Lee, Ausma Lēvalds, and Ly Vang. These four people were chosen through consultation with my colleagues and community members. Our criteria was two-fold: a significant push or pull factor that brought them to the area; and their story connected to a larger issue within Canadian history.
Students learn about nineteenth-century racism in Canadian schools, by hearing about Samuel’s limited schooling options in Galt, Ontario, circa 1865. Tom Lee immigrated to Canada in 1897. By looking at his suitcase and a local advertisement, students understand the Chinese Exclusion Act and its harmful racial policies. The challenges of post-Second World War immigration are shown through Ausma Lēvalds’ filmed reunion with her father and brother after a year apart. Ly Vang came to Canada sponsored by a local Mennonite church during the Hmong refugee crisis of the 1970s. Each story is carefully shared, recognizing the individual’s experiences, challenges, and triumphs, while avoiding framing them as a victim or a success. They are what we all are: people who deserve to have their story told.
The program launched in September 2024, and feedback has been constructive. Teachers appreciate the diverse stories shared during the program and find they can easily draw connections to the classroom. Museum educators share previously untold stories, expanding their knowledge of local history. Both teachers and museum staff have identified the need for an Indigenous story to be included in the program, which is what I am working towards next. This will require robust external consultation, to ensure the story is shared with respect.
One of the most valuable lessons taught to me at the Faculty of Education was the importance of self-reflection. Self-reflection is not something you can accomplish; it is a life-long practice, an essential frame of mind to approach teaching and learning. I hope to continue being self-reflective as this program grows, to ensure we are building historical empathy in authentic and meaningful ways.
References
- Hartman, S.V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and selfmaking in nineteenth-century America. Oxford University Press.
- Marcus, A. S., Stoddard, J. D., & Woodward, W. W. (2012). Teaching history with museums: Strategies for K-12 social studies. Routledge.
- Region of Waterloo Museums. (2025). Vision and mission. https://regionofwaterloomuseums.ca/en/about-us/mission-statement.aspx
- Weil, Stephen A. (1990). Rethinking the museum and other meditations. Smithsonian Institution Press.
About the Author
Megan L. Crawford (BAH ‘12, MA ‘13, BEd ‘14, OCT) is of settler ancestry and gratefully lives on land granted to the Six Nations of the Grand River. She is a three-time graduate of Queen’s University, including from their Faculty of Education. Megan has worked as a classroom teacher and museum educator for over 10 years. She is the Education Coordinator at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum & Doon Heritage Village, where Megan works with a team of dedicated colleagues. Megan comes from a long line of strong and capable women, who she tries to honour in her words, actions, and deeds.