An Unending Journey

By Alex Chumak

One is hard pressed to find the calibre of a person such as Valentina Kuryliw.

After retiring from teaching, and most notably as the Head of a History Department in a Toronto school in 2001, she never left the responsibility of educating our youth. In particular, Valentina has dedicated her time, effort, and stamina to espouse and to promote the Ukrainian cause to both Canadian-Ukrainians as well as to Canadians themselves.

Her involvement in our community is beyond reproach. From the Canadian Ukrainian Opera Association to the Civil Liberties Association to the Canadian Ukrainian Immigrant Aid Society to the Scythian Gold and the Trypillian Exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum, Valentina left an indelible mark through her involvement.

In 1993, along with other educators from the GTA, she was invited to Ukraine and  developed a program for instructing Ukrainian history teachers how to utilize and implement critical teaching skills using the most innovative methodology. This activity was an overwhelming success and consequently resulted in her producing a textbook on the methodology of teaching history. The book “Metodyka Vykladannya Istorii” [Methods for Teaching History, 2003] received rave reviews from professionals, professors as well as Ministry staff. In fact, Valentina’s book was recommended and received the official endorsement of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine and has gone through a second printing, 2008.

This highly useful publication takes into account two fundamental questions – how are students taught and how do they learn? In an interview, Valentina stated that the archaic method of lecturing in a didactic way is both “outlived and in most cases unacceptable to students of the Twenty-First Century”.

As a result, her approach is “to ask questions, provide activities and have open ended discussions, thus giving the student the opportunity to draw his/her own conclusions”.  She further stated that “teachers must take into account the way in which students learn and take this into account when students are taught, as each student is unique and has various intelligences which need to be activated. Accordingly, she emphasizes in her book that students “work in pairs, complete group assignments, hold debates, brainstorm the topics before them and analyze original documents, thus acquiring excellent research skills”. All this is dependant on having accurate and historically sound textbooks for reference - something that Valentina plans to pursue in the future.

But Valentina did not stop here. As co-chair of the Holodomor Education Committee at the Ukrainian Canadian Congress – Toronto Branch, she asked a simple question: “Why is the Holodomor Famine Genocide not being taught in Toronto District School Board schools?”

She was dismayed to discover that there was no interest in the Holodomor despite the fact that the TDSB had prepared an entire locally approved history course on Genocide in September 2008. This course was to include the Holocaust, the Armenian and the Rwandan genocides. She could not, and would not let the matter go and with the assistance of the Holodomor Education Committee at the UCC, they mounted a careful, well thought out and professional strategy to have the Holodomor taught in our schools in spite of initial opposition and seemingly lack of interest. The Committee prevailed and succeeded in persuading the Board to include the Holodomor in some of its curriculum.

A teaching unit on the Holodomor will be prepared this summer and will be made available to teachers in September 2009. As an historian and an expert on the Holodomor, Valentina will be a consultant to the process.

Valentina was the first professional educator to conduct a workshop on the Holodomor last November. At the largest gathering of history and social studies teachers in Ontario, at the Ontario History and Social Studies Teachers’ Association (OHASSTA) Conference, she prepared an outstanding teaching kit on the Holodomor offering background material in addition to sample lessons. For this event, she prepared a workbook on the teaching of the Holodomor, using the reference materials within the Teaching Kit. The session was extremely successful and presently the Hamilton-Wentworth District Board of Education has invited her to present a workshop on a Board wide basis. There is no question that other Boards will follow suit.

As stated earlier, Valentina never retired from education but took on new challenges to promote the teaching of the Holodomor in the school systems across the country.