The National Film Board – a hidden gem

erohlicek

For the Pro-D day on February 13th, I attended the talk NFB K-12: More than Just Great Canadian Films! We dove into the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada, and the resources it has for education. From diverse films, to mini lessons, NFB has a wide variety of resources that I think will be extremely useful in my classrooms. Some really interesting topics include:

  • Ocean science
  • Indigenous knowledge
  • Cultural diversity
  • French language learning
  • History and politics
  • Society

The NFB site in general is laid out to be very familiar – just like any other video streaming platform. It’s easy to navigate, has tags for different topics, film are also tagged for age ranges, and your account allows you to add films to lists. And then the resource we all need: an education tab. In there you can find specific school subject playlists, filter by ages, see mini lessons, and more. I started off by going into Biology as a subject area, and seeing what I could find in there. What I found really interesting is since NFB has been around for 80 years, they have media from the last 80 years. As we live in a constantly changing environment, what a fantastic way to transport students back in time and see the environmental changes that animals have faced?

Some films are animated, which is another great feature of NFB. A film I’ve added to my list is Inkwo: for when the starving returns, an Indigenous film from last year. Featuring films from diverse people is without a doubt important, but the vast amount of Indigenous work on NFB is quite impressive. Films like Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again where Indigenous rights are intertwined with social, political and environmental will be a tool that can be used across so many subject areas. What I have found through exploring the website is that NFB resources are diverse, but all encompassing.

I attended this Pro-D day with Shae, and after the session ended we had a fantastic conversation about how we will be able to use this resource in our classrooms. As a biology/science teacher, and her as a social studies teacher, we realized a lot of films can be cross curricular. We chatted about how this is an important part of education: demonstrating to students that your classrooms and subjects are not siloed; but they are all linked. We also discussed how we cannot continue to reinvent the wheel when it comes to lesson planning. Sometimes resources and mini-lessons from organizations such as NFB are well researched and created, so why not use them?