On Tuesday, April 28, 56 Camosun instructors received awards recognizing their contributions to teaching and learning at the college. The Teacher Recognition Awards began five years ago and are organized by Camosun’s Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). The awards have been growing every year as more and more teachers are recognized for their contributions to students.
Martha McAlister, a member of Camosun’s Teaching and Learning Council and CETL, has been helping with this event since it started. She believes it’s important to have a celebration for the Camosun teachers that make a positive impact on their students’ lives.
“I think, particularly right now as we are going through difficult times in post-secondary education with cutbacks and other challenges for teachers, that it’s important for them to get recognition for the work they do,” says McAlister. “And I think that students really appreciate the opportunity to give positive feedback to their teachers; it’s just amazing what students have to say. They don’t have to do this, they do this because they want to and I’m just so heartwarmed by the response from students who really want to take the time to appreciate the contribution that their teachers make for them in their lives. So I think that it’s good for them, for both teachers and for students. We need chances to celebrate and have something positive, because things have been really challenging in post-secondary these past couple years.”
The teachers who received awards at the event—held at Sherri Bell Hall in the Wilna Thomas Building at the Lansdowne campus—were nominated primarily by students, as well as some faculty. The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) helped with the event by providing snacks for attendees.
“Everyone who gets a nomination gets recognized,” says McAlister. “It’s not a competition, it’s a celebration. Nominations mostly come from students, but also colleagues like other teachers, but it’s almost always from students. The students will send in their words describing how a teacher made a difference for them in their education, and, yeah, everyone who gets a nomination gets recognized. [At the event] we read out the quotes that students have submitted and you can hear in the students’ own words the impact that a teacher has had on them and it’s just beautiful. Like, it’s just so heartwarming.”
Thuy Nevado, an instructor in the School of Arts and Science, was a recipient of one of these awards. She has been teaching biology courses at Camosun since 1999 and uses interactive demonstrations in her classes to help students understand how complex biological concepts like DNA replication come together in a tangible way.
“Official recognition is a big thing. Whether it’s unofficial or official, any kind of recognition just validates what we’re doing. I think I’ve always wanted to do work that’s meaningful, that makes a positive difference in the world, that makes the world a little bit of a better place. And when you’re teaching you don’t really know what kind of an effect you have,” says Nevado. “You don’t really know what kind of an effect you have on a student, or how they’re doing overall. Not just in that course but just overall in that day, how are they doing. For a student to be able to say that, ‘Yeah, you made a difference for me,’ that’s really important and that means a lot to me.”
Nevado hopes that more instructors being recognized for helping students will make students more inclined to reach out for the help they need. She wants students to be able to ask for whatever they need to succeed in their courses and in their lives.
“One thing that’s really great about having this information out there, for people to know that somebody else found me helpful, is I hope that other students will step forward and ask for help too. I think that one of the things I’m always working more towards and a challenge I always find is how to help a student,” says Nevado. “If it just helps one other student go, ‘Hey, I saw… that all these other students like Thuy so maybe she’s not so bad and I can ask her for some help, too,’ that would be great because that’s what I’m here for. I just want to help make someone else’s journey a little bit easier; that’s what I’m here for.”
Visit camosun.libguides.com/celebratingteachingandlearning for more information and a complete list of all the instructors recognized this year.