Laurelthehistorian

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Canada
Toronto, ON
Laurelthehistorian

I am a high school history and social studies teacher who focuses on teaching students to think deeply and critically.

10/17/2025

I found out my 10-year-old daughter was skipping school to go to an abandoned building — so I followed her.
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I (30F) never thought I'd write this, but what happened two weeks ago changed everything I knew about my late husband — and my daughter.

Mark, my husband, died last year from what doctors said was a sudden heart attack. He was 36.

One morning, he kissed me goodbye, said he'd be home early, and never returned.

Our daughter, Lily (10F), was devastated. They were inseparable. He'd hum her to sleep, tell her stories about courage, carve little wooden birds for her birthdays.

After he died, Lily withdrew. She started drawing strange things — an old building, a man by a river, a bird with a broken wing. I thought it was grief.

Then last week, her teacher called:

"Mrs. Carter, is Lily okay? She has missed three days this week."

Lily never missed school. MY STOMACH SANK.

The next morning, I followed her. She walked toward school — then veered to the outskirts of town, to the old Fairview Textile Factory.

Abandoned for 20 years, everyone said it was haunted.

I watched her slip through a fence gap. My heart STOPPED. I ran after her. Inside, the air was damp and smelled of rust and dust.

Every sound echoed — my footsteps, the wind… her humming. That tune. Mark's tune.

I turned a corner and FROZE.

Lily sat cross-legged on the cracked floor, facing an older man with a gray beard and gentle eyes.

"LILY!" I shouted, rushing to her.

The man jumped.

I grabbed Lily, pulling her behind me. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" ⬇️⬇️⬇️

09/07/2022

First day of year 11 in the 📚

I’m ready for a nap 💤

My first period is adorable, and my third period is pretty chill (so far), but my 4th period has two-three students throwing off the whole vibe with their chaos

This is the first year of destreamed for me so that will be an interesting challenge

Overall - I give it a solid 7.5/10

I’m grateful for my department and for work besties even though I’m sad that we’ve lost our co-planning time 🥲

How would you grade your day today - or your first day back if you prefer (using any grading system of your choosing)?

06/11/2022

It’s a hard knock life 😫

Who else is still teaching?

05/25/2022

My heart is heavy this morning and while thinking about how to support my students I thought I would put this together for anyone else that’s looking for support.

I hope it’s helpful and if you have other suggestions please share.

I didn’t explicitly say it in the slides but some students may not be ready or want to talk about this - and that’s okay.

05/06/2022

Ready for a hot tip?

Big paper is a really good strategy to get students making connections to texts and with each other, especially if they don’t know or don’t feel comfortable with each other yet! It’s anonymous and all they need is a colored marker or even a pen!

I find this works best for my classes that aren’t big talkers (see what I did there? 😄) and whole group discussions can feel like a conversation dominated by one or two voices.

It’s a really flexible strategy and can be adapted in so many ways! I’ve included a few examples for history as well as some tips for putting it into action.

If you’ve used it or another strategy like it, tell me about it below 💬!

And make sure to save this for when you’re ready for it 😀.

08/17/2021

This post digs into identity work and includes tools I have found really helpful. I have linked them at the bottom for you!

These identity activities are amazing for the beginning of the school year to get students critically thinking about who they are, their values, their positions of power and oppression, and so much more.

I need to give an enormous thanks to the labor and teachings from Britt Hawthorne (who has a 6-week program currently to dig into applying ABAR practices in elementary and secondary settings as well as other valuable information in her Collective Liberation membership) and (who did a seminar on identity and power) and facing history (where I did a three day workshop titled Holocaust end Human behavior which was incredibly well done and valuable). And of course, this identity work is based in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s body of work on intersectionality.

I have pulled the activities from Facing History as well as the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, although there are many different versions available on the interwebs.

Have you used any of these or something else to go deep into identity?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wKkZeAVND0OcuzgnGno8owqSzbFY_yWi

05/15/2021

Is anyone else struggling to get students talking in class? (🙋‍♀️) I have an idea for you!

I have NOT been great about showing what we’ve been doing in class this year in part because I’ve been overwhelmed (anyone else?) and in part because a lot of what I’m doing feels... less than stellar.

However I felt pretty proud of how I got around their reluctance to talk online.

Students found a group of 3-6 to hold a seminar in a breakout room that would only be viewed by me.

I wasn’t sure how this would go... but it worked!

All groups did their seminar and while some took a little time to warm up to each other it was pretty successful - especially considering many haven’t been talking (at allllll) this year.

The best part is that you could do a variation of this with almost any course!

02/09/2021

To my students on zoom - a love note.

01/20/2021

What will your students remember about today 20 years from now?

With another historic inauguration today I am taking time with my political science class to watch the inauguration and consider the messages from inaugural addresses in the past.

If you are looking for a lesson - see my link in bio for the resources from C-SPAN (https://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?17519)! I like it because it analyzes past inaugural addresses and gives prompts for the inauguration today.

Share below your thoughts about today, or your favorite inaugural address of all time!

Image IDs:
1st image: President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris
2nd image: President Abraham Lincoln's 2nd inaugural address in 1865
3rd image: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first address in 1933
4th image: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's inaugural address in 1961
5th image: President Barack Obama's first address in 2008

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Toronto, ON

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