Nominations are open for Camosun College’s fourth annual Teacher Recognition Awards, a ceremony that celebrates teachers who go above and beyond to ensure their students have success.
Camosun’s Teaching and Learning Council created this award as a way to celebrate great teachers.
“A few years ago, we were trying to think of a way to acknowledge all the great work that our colleagues do,” says Camosun Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning education developer Martha McAlister. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we create an award and really focus it on having a chance for students to let us know and to acknowledge the great teachers that they have?’ So that was the idea. We wanted it to be very democratic. Everybody who’s nominated gets acknowledged, so it’s not competitive.”
Initially, McAlister didn’t know if the students would get behind the awards. However, the reaction surprised her.
“We’ve been so amazed,” she says. “We had no idea that students were going to be so keen to share beautiful, heartwarming, uplifting stories about their teachers… At first, we thought it might be more colleagues and fellow instructors that [would be] putting forward nominations. We didn’t realize that students, who are so busy right now, take time out of their busy lives to acknowledge their teachers; it really means a lot.”
Twenty-seven teachers were nominated the first year the event took place, 28 in the second year, and 40 last year. McAlister says it’s important to recognize great teaching.
“So many of the teachers I know are very hard-working and don’t often get to have that kind of positive feedback so directly,” she says. “I think, especially these days, there’s a lot of challenges going on in post-secondary. There’s a lot of stress and this is just an opportunity to focus on what’s good.”
McAlister sees this ceremony as a rare opportunity for students to directly give meaningful feedback to teachers who have made a difference in their lives. Also, the awards have evolved throughout the years, allowing the students to have more power. McAlister says the biggest change was to make the the previously staff-led nominations student-led. By allowing these changes, the Teacher Recognition Award is now more reflective of student experiences (for a nomination to be valid, at least two students have to submit it).
“At first, we made it so that it was for staff people to submit the nomination,” says McAlister. “But when we saw the response from students, we realized, let’s just open it up… So that was a big change we made to make it more accessible for students. We also made the word count, so they need to submit a testimonial about why they want to nominate their teacher [that’s] between 100 to 250 words.”
A great teacher could change a student’s life for the better. McAlister says some students have been close to quitting, but teachers have been able to help them get through their struggles.
“We’ve heard from students who have said that their teachers were life-changing for them,” she says. “Students may be going through a difficult time, and their teachers just going that extra mile, to reach out and provide extra support to the student, that made such a difference. Sometimes, students have said they were ready to quit, and the teacher really believed in them and helped them through a difficult time.”
Nominations will remain open until Friday, February 28. The date of the award ceremony has not yet been determined.