OTIP TEACHING AWARDS
`Money is where it's at in business, but there are no kids'
October 1, 2009
Nicole Baute
At age 33, Eyal Levine went back to kindergarten.
It's his fourth year there and he has clearly loved every minute of it.
"Sometimes, when I'm at home, I just start giggling," says the Ashton Meadows Public School teacher. "My wife, she knows that I giggle now. She says, `okay, which one were you thinking of?'"
It could be the shy student who raised his hand during a lesson Levine had put great care into preparing.
"I thought, `how amazing, wonderful – I'm connecting with everybody!'" he recalls.
"There's a spider on the wall," the little boy said.
"I lost the group," Levine says, smiling. "We talked about spiders."
Or maybe he was thinking about the girl who came to him with an icicle and said, "Look, Mr. Levine, this is so scientifical!"
Levine, winner of the OTIP Award in the Beginning Teacher category, sees such distractions and interruptions as opportunities to teach.
When they had a problem with ants in their Markham classroom last year, he incorporated it into the curriculum. The kindergarteners discussed the ethics of killing ants, and read books like Hey, Little Ant and The Ant Bully.
When Levine is wearing a pink shirt, or even hair clips, he isn't making a fashion statement so much as trying to prove a point. He does it "to make sure it's safe for them" to be different.
Levine is a latecomer to teaching. Before rolling up his sleeves with the youngsters, he was working in the family business, in hydraulic equipment sales and service. He was working around the clock, chasing dollars, but felt like he didn't have enough time for his family life.
"Money is where it's at in business, but there are no kids," he says.
So he went back to school to finish his undergraduate degree at Ryerson University, then to teacher's college at Trent University before arriving at Ashton Meadows.
His energy and enthusiasm are practically contagious, and it is clear he believes strongly in what he does. He says his favourite thing to teach is "citizenship."
"The biggest thing is for the kids to be people. To be citizens of the world." If a child learns to take care of a pencil or a backpack, he will slowly learn to also take care of himself, and to treat others like he would want to be treated.
"He's amazing, he's amazing, he's amazing," gushes parent Leanne Tan. "You would never guess that he's a new teacher. It seems like he's been doing this all his life."
Tan's son Lucas, 5, thinks Levine is the coolest thing going.
"If Mr. Levine says something, that's the law, that's the rule," Tan says. "He really values what he says."
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