OTIP TEACHING AWARDS
Learning excites her beyond belief
October 1, 2009
Nicole Baute
STAFF REPORTER
Cindee Karnick-Davison's students have put their blue plastic chairs up on their tiny desks and gone home. But the Grades 4 and 5 classroom is still full of energy – in fact, it's practically bursting at the seams.
Karnick-Davison is talking about teaching. Her keys jangle on a butterfly lanyard around her neck as she waves her arms wildly and sometimes leaps from her chair to find a prop.
"Learning just excites me beyond belief, it really does," says the Regent Heights Public School teacher, recognized as one of Ontario's best as winner of the OTIP Teaching Award in the Elementary category.
Karnick-Davison – just Mrs. Davison to the kids – is a touchstone at this school near St. Clair E. and Victoria Park Ave., where she has taught for eight years and counting.
All smiles, with long brown ringlets, Karnick-Davison lives in the neighbourhood and can regularly be found running through the residential streets for exercise.
"I love living in the community because it's like the old pioneer teacher, you know?" she says. "The pioneer teacher, the one-room schoolhouse teacher, you knew every kid, every family knew you, every kid knew you and it was all about being part of the community and part of the bigger picture."
When Karnick-Davison was a Grade 10 student, she went to see the high school guidance counsellor and said she wanted to be either a teacher or a child psychologist. She knew she wanted to work with kids. The guidance counsellor convinced her that teaching would give her more flexibility.
So she became a teacher, "loved it beyond belief and never looked back." She also took more courses to become a guidance and counselling specialist, which allows her to give guidance to students, families and even other teachers.
"Interestingly enough, my first two passions ended up continuing to be the two passions all the way through, and somehow they managed to meet," she says.
It seems like Karnick-Davison could talk for hours about teaching – about how her students inspire her, how mistakes are wonderful learning opportunities and how she tries to create an inclusive environment that welcomes every student.
"I believe, more than anything, that we all need to feel that we have something to offer," she says. "(Children) each have their own strengths that you have to find and shine the light on for them. Because, most of the time, we don't see our own strengths, and we don't recognize what we have to offer, but we desperately want to be able to offer something."
French teacher Rita Del Cotto says students trust Mrs. Davison. "She really has great insight into them and understands them. She's willing to hear their truths."
Every morning in Karnick-Davison's classroom starts with "community circle": a chat about issues that are important to her students, like popularity, sibling dynamics, the demands for perfection, or anything else that comes up.
But student teacher Soraya Medeiros says it doesn't matter what Karnick-Davison teaches. "She could be doing any lesson – it could be the most boring thing, but the kids are engaged all the time."
When she isn't teaching or running laps through the neighbourhood, Karnick-Davison runs the school's student leadership program and the girls' club, which gives the girls a chance to talk about things that loom large in their world: relational, body and friendship issues.
Where in the world does she get all her energy?
Del Cotto knows:
"She gets it from people."
For videos on each of this year's OTIP honourees, go to teachingawards.ca.
More on World Teachers' Day.
Toronto Star