TORONTO STAR TEACHER AWARD
Maria Campodonico is the Toronto Star Teacher Award winner
October 1, 2009
Kristin Rushowy
EDUCATION REPORTER
A student is in trouble with the police. Teacher Maria Campodonico tracks him down, finds a lawyer willing to work free of charge and then convinces the teen to turn himself in.
Another boy is socially awkward and obese, ostracized by other students. She persuades the popular kids to talk to him and he finally makes some friends.
A local family can't afford food; she buys them groceries.
For Campodonico, being a teacher goes well beyond her classroom walls, into the lives of her students as well as the Parkdale community that surrounds West Toronto Collegiate.
The 40-year-old is a mentor, social worker, mother and friend to the 130 teens at the school, and was chosen as the winner of the Toronto Star's first-ever Teacher Award after a nomination from a colleague who cited the countless ways she makes a difference.
"She just gives her whole self," says Nicole Pepper, who teaches drama and English as a second language. "Everyone I meet who knows Maria says `isn't she the most compassionate person?'"
"Maria is so much about what happens outside the class," which inevitably affects what goes on in class, adds principal Cynthia Abernethy. "It's the human element, the difference between just teaching a subject and teaching students."
Campodonico came to Canada from Ecuador when she was 13. She later graduated from York and the University of Western Ontario's faculty of education, and is now president of the board of directors of the Spanish-Speaking Education Network. Although she's qualified to work as a vice-principal or principal, she prefers being in the classroom.
"It has been the story of my life," she says in a recent interview in her social studies classroom at West Toronto. "When I was 5 or 6, I used to play with my friends and I had to be the teacher ... I always wanted to learn, to share, to teach."
Campodonico, a married mother of two teenage sons, has worked for the Toronto District School Board for 10 years, and at West Toronto for four.
When she arrived, she immediately got to work on implementing what would become an award-winning breakfast program after seeing the number of kids who went hungry. She knocked on the doors of local businesses, including the local Peter's No Frills grocery store, soliciting food and donations. It also became a vehicle for teens to start collecting perishable items to send to impoverished nations.
Her office door is always open and, on any given day, five to 10 students hang out there and eat lunch, listen to music and talk. And because of the relationship she's developed with the kids, she hears everything – good and bad. Students have disclosed unplanned pregnancies or the abuse they've suffered at the hands of alcoholic parents.
Is it overwhelming? "All the time," she says.
One student, who lived in a group home, was beaten up in a park last year and came to school one day with his two front teeth knocked out.
"He came for breakfast, and I asked him what happened," she recalls. "I took him to a walk-in clinic because he'd told me he'd fainted" after the beating, and had no one to take him to the doctor.
The missing teeth bothered her. "How can he not have teeth? ... I called a good friend, who is also a dentist (Luis Esqueda), and took him to Mississauga" and he got a bridge, free of charge.
Const. Scott Mills, the community youth officer for Toronto Crime Stoppers, has worked with Campodonico for several years. When he was an officer with 14 Division, he would visit the breakfast program and also enlisted her help on a graffiti murals project.
"We need more people like Maria," he says.
Research shows that having just one caring adult at a school can make all the difference during the teenage years; for many at West Toronto, Campodonico is that person.
Melani Madeira, now in her first year at York University, said the school was plagued with violence before the breakfast program.
"Every time she could come there, she would sit with each and every student and make sure everyone felt comfortable," says the 19-year-old.
"We had a lot of (trouble) at the school, but then it became like a family setting, we'd come together and share stories. The violence dropped, and grades improved."
Michele Farrugia arrived at West Toronto in 2006 and said he was singled out as a "kid with disabilities and eating disorders."
Campodonico helped him get his health on track, find friends and even a job working in law clinics through York's Osgoode Hall.
She also got him involved with the breakfast program and other activities, and now he's involved with a political youth organization.
But she's no pushover.
"We have had times where my behaviour hasn't been great," Farrugia admits. "When I do bad stuff, she sets me straight ...
"If Miss C. was not here, I would not be here today."
As for Campodonico "spending time with adolescents has been the most rewarding experience in my entire life," she says.
"What I do when I look at a child, I don't look at what they are wearing, I don't look at their do-rag, or that their pants are down below their waist ... I look at their eyes. When you look at them and talk to them on a human level, you let them know that you respect them."
More on World Teachers' Day.
Toronto Star