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Governing Ourselves informs members of legal and regulatory matters affecting the profession. This section provides updates on licensing and qualification requirements, notification of Council resolutions and reports from various Council committees, including reports on accreditation and discipline matters.
By Helen Dolik
The Ontario College of Teachers awards three scholarships annually to recognize individuals with a deep desire to teach. Teacher candidates must study at a faculty of education in Ontario and achieve outstanding academic success in their undergraduate studies while demonstrating a high level of preparedness for teacher education.
Each scholarship winner receives $2,000. These are the 2013–14 scholarship recipients:
Jennifer Cook is an artist and future teacher who’s worked with a wide diversity of people, including some of society’s most vulnerable individuals.
Cook, 29, is the 11th recipient of the Joseph W. Atkinson Scholarship for Excellence in Teacher Education, which is named in honour of the College’s second registrar. She is a teacher candidate at Queen’s University in the Artist in Community Education program, designed for practising artists. She will complete her B.Ed. this year.
Cook has received numerous awards and distinctions at the University of Ottawa, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008.
Before applying to Queen’s, Cook worked as an art outreach educator, offering art programming in social housing communities, family shelters, group homes and community centres through the Ottawa School of Art and City of Ottawa. She also coordinated a drop-in art studio for artists living with mental illness through Family Services Ottawa. At Operation Come Home, she worked with homeless, street-involved and at-risk youth aged 16 to 30.
She is interested in community art and working collaboratively with people. For example, she coordinated a community mural project that helped transform a tractor-trailer into a youth centre. She creates artwork using natural or reclaimed materials, such as a spherical sculpture made of orange peels and a series of nests created from branches.
As a teacher, Cook aspires “to honour the hearts, minds and hands of every student, to awaken a sense of wonder inside them, and ultimately to cultivate a profound love of learning.”
At the Wally Elmer Youth Centre in Kingston, Shyla Pogany assists in running a drop-in program for high-risk youth aged six to 17. She helps with homework, plans active games, promotes healthy living, enforces anti-bullying campaigns and fosters strong relationships between the children and their peers.
It’s just one more stepping stone on her path to a teaching career.
“I would like to be a future teacher because I am so passionate about all children and their well-being,” says Pogany, 23, the inaugural recipient of the Ontario College of Teachers Scholarship awarded to an individual in the Primary/Junior or Junior/Intermediate division. “I have a deep desire to work in an academic setting with at-risk children and youth.”
Pogany always knew she wanted to be a teacher, and her various volunteer, academic, personal and work-related experiences are evidence of that. She is a teacher candidate in the consecutive education program at Queen’s University and will complete her B.Ed. (Primary/Junior program) in June. She earned her Master of Arts in history in August 2013, and was a teaching assistant for two full-year history courses during her graduate studies.
“I intend to create a learning environment that is accommodating, inclusive, safe and welcoming for my students,” Pogany says. “I believe every child has a growth mindset and the capability and ability to learn with proper support, encouragement and tools.”
“Sharing my love for drama and literature that I acquired through my high school teachers, and passing that love along to the next generation of students is what I find rewarding about a teaching career,” says Emma Dunn.
Dunn, 22, is the inaugural recipient of the Ontario College of Teachers Scholarship awarded to a teacher candidate in the Intermediate/Senior division. She is a concurrent education program student at Brock University and will complete her BEd in June 2014.
At age 13, she began to seriously pursue her goal of becoming a teacher as a teaching assistant at Moving Art, a company offering drama and dance workshops in elementary schools in Simcoe County.
Dunn has an impressive academic and community service record, including a wide range of volunteer and work experiences while at Brock. She volunteered at two elementary schools as a “Go Girls!” mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Niagara and volunteered weekly at Anna’s Daycare Centre in Thorold. She participated in a volunteer trip with Free the Children to Kenya where she helped build accommodation for local high school teachers. She is a member of the Brock Leaders Citizenship Society, a group of exceptional students recognized for high academic achievement and leadership abilities.
Dunn works as a campus experience coordinator with Brock’s Recruitment and Liaison Services, helping Grade 12 students and their families choose a university and program.