Recipient: Brenda Hawkins

Brenda Hawkins has been teaching grade 3’s at Woodland Park Public School for seven years.

Brenda loves seeing her students develop into confident, whole people. She feels very lucky to have them in her life as they bring out the joy in every little thing in life.

She finds it easy to give of herself to her students and can’t refuse an invitation to watch her students in sporting events or recitals. Being shown off in the hockey dressing room shows that her presence instills pride and confidence in her students. This also makes the Monday morning connection easier because they know I truly care about them beyond the walls of the classroom.

“They won’t remember what I taught them but how I cared for them.”

A group of parents got together and wrote this of Brenda:

Mrs. Hawkins taught a class of 27 children this year, 20 boys and 7 girls. In putting this letter together, our parents found a common thread in that our children wanted to go to school, and wanted to do the work with Mrs. Hawkins. A repeated comment was that “My child had a great year with her.” That did not mean “As” across the board, but meant our children thrived in Grade 3 and we were impressed with their learning and development.

We feel we need to impress upon you the level of caring that Mrs. H. exhibited to our children. She shows her concern for the child beyond the student. She takes the time to attend their events, to meet extended family members and take an interest in the child’s life outside of the classroom. The look on the child’s face to see that she cared enough to come to something important in their life is priceless.

When we asked our kids what they did with Mrs. Hawkins today—we were not told “nothing”…but were met with a child who wanted to share what they had done, what they were working on next and what was fun about the day.