For the past four months, Grade 4 and 5 students from Henderson Annex have been producing a podcast project aimed at exploring their diversity and answering the question of "how did we get here?"

The project tasked students to use iPads to interview their parents and grandparents, take photos of their family, produce their own background music, edit their interviews, write scripts and compile it all into a unique and professional podcast.

Henderson Annex teacher Nick Marino says part of the beauty of the project comes from the amazing diversity of his classroom.

"It has been the most rewarding project in my teaching career," he said. "I now feel like I know the parents so much more because we have shared our histories. I feel like we've grown closer."

Seerit Boparai is a Grade 4 student at Henderson Annex. She says her interview with her father was a fascinating experience because it opened her eyes to just how different the life of her family was before they left India to come to Canada.

"I learned that it was a whole different world back then. You would go to someone's house and play in afternoon and everyone lived in little villages where you knew everyone," says Boparai. "Other people's parents would take care of you."

Boparai, along with every other student in the class, developed a graph to track where everyone's families came from. She also had a personalized booklet with pictures of her grandmother, a poem, a family tree and other information about her genealogy.

Linda Weston, a district vision resource teacher at Henderson Annex, says the opportunity to create the podcast was an incredible experience. 

Weston and Marino both say they wouldn't have been able to do the project without the generous support of SET BC, who provided them with half a dozen iPads to use in their podcast production.

To download a copy of the podcast, click here. 

To listen to Nick Marino's interview on CBC: On the Coast, click here.