Mary Jane Logan McCallum
Winnipeg, July 2025
“STEM,” the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, is a field of targeted youth education that emphasizes hands-on applications of scientific skills and knowledge. It intentionally promotes biology, chemistry, physics, earth and computer sciences to shape positive attitudes towards STEM academic and career fields and, in the long run, diversify STEM fields and professions.
At the University of Winnipeg, the Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre offers Indigenous educational and cultural programming to create pathways for Indigenous students to university. Along with Language and Cultural Education and Community Supports, STEM programs, funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, are a major pillar of its activities. Wii Chii annually runs “Indigenous STEAM Summer Camps” (the A is for Art!) for youth in grades 1-8, and “STEM Explorers and Code Club,” a Drop-In program for students in Grades 3-6. For three years, Wii Chii has also organized “STEM Days,” two full days during which close to 1000 Grade 3-8 students from area schools come to our campus to attend sessions that range from fish filleting and dissection, Lego robotics, a Chemistry Magic Show, 3D scanning, and rock identification to learning about tree rings, prairie wildlife, and mushrooms.
Running a session on Archives felt a bit like cheating at first – I am not an archivist or an information scientist, but rather a user of the science. Moreover, how would I translate concepts like metadata, description, interpretation and historical analysis to young people? With Anne Lindsay, Kathryn Boschman and Krystal Payne, I developed a 45-minute-long program on archives for approximately eighty students in grades 5 to 8.
1) Organizing Data
The goal of the first exercise was two-fold. First, it was to connect the concept of records collection and organization to what students already knew about collecting and organizing. The goal was also to show that there are many ways to organize – and that individuals, communities, and groups organize things according to what makes sense to them. In the activity, I gave out a collection of 9 candies to each student and asked them to arrange them in categories. We found that even though there were only 9 candies, there were many ways to do this: style of wrapper, hardness/softness of candy, colour, shape, size.
2) Images
In the second activity, I showed students some old photos on a PowerPoint presentation and asked them to talk about what is in them and what they thought about them. This activity turned out to be more difficult and less interesting for them. It might be more helpful to connect these photos to some of the curriculum the students are covering so that they are more familiar with the content.
One of the photos I showed to during the Archives session: Red Cross worker feeding cat in flooded area of St. Vital during 1950 flood. City of Winnipeg Archives Reference Code i05163. Photo: David Portigal.
3) Searching
In this activity, I hid copies of five different historical records in the classroom and students needed to follow a “Finding Aid” to find the records they were most interested in. The records were: Eaton’s Store newspaper advertising from 100 years ago, a Salsbury House restaurant menu from the 1960s, a Manitoba Tourism brochure from the 1950s, a program from a show by the Winnipeg Ballet from the 1950s, and Manitoba amateur hockey trading cards from the 1920s.
4) Reading
Accompanying the records were questions for students. Students were asked to provide: Title of the Record, Creator of the Record, Description of the Record, and Physical Condition of the Record. Then they were asked, “If a historian came to an archive to look at this record, what do you think they could learn from it? Does it tell us something about a person or a group? If it does, which person or group? Does it tell us something about what life was like for people in the past?” About ten students worked independently on this sheet, many needed help from teachers, and some others were distracted, bored, or otherwise disengaged. These students could choose to work on an Archive Word Search and a maze instead.
I’m pretty sure that the Archives session wasn’t anyone’s favorite part of the day. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. According to Angeline Nelson, director of Community Learning and Engagement at the University of Winnipeg, the most valuable aspect of STEM days is that future first generation students get a sense of belonging on a university campus from a young age. And if it got a few kids interested in archives, that’s a bonus.