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Recipient: Janet Cox
School: St. Benedict Catholic High School
Number of Years Teaching: 21
Grade: 10, 11, 12
Janet Cox has been teaching for 21 years, 17 of those at St. Benedict's where she currently teaches grade 10, 11 and 12 Cosmetology and ACE, Alternative Credit Education. ACE is a program for students who have had multiple failures and need one year of guidance and support before they return to the mainstream.
Janet seeks to see and speak to the good in each child. She believes that her role is to put a pathway before her students and hope they choose to walk on it. A key element of the pathway is making sure the students know that esthetics is not a lesser profession than others and that it can lead to a rich future.
The student population that Janet works with is often looked down on. She sees her role as giving them a voice of their importance. She teaches them to love themselves from the inside out. As the year progresses, her students begin to smile more and more. Janet believes they can smile because she loves them, faults and all, and shows them that to her they are people, very special people.
Janet was also honoured this year as Mrs. Cambridge, an award that celebrates women who honour marriage, family, community and career.
Patsy, a colleague of Janet's, wrote this:
Janet Cox is well respected, greatly admired and universally liked by colleagues, students and parents. She has taught and will continue to teach students with all levels of academic ability. Janet believes each student is full of potential and has talent and ability that they can realize with the proper motivation and instruction. Often students who may be thought of by others to be difficult or unable to be taught are the very ones who have been very successful in her course because of the fact that Janet truly believes in them and treats them as she would want her own child to be treated.
Janet provides a great deal of information and has gone on several field trips to help the students make informed choices about their future education and career paths they can take. She is constantly exploring and learning new things in her field and in turn, inspires her students to do the same.
This past year Janet organized a special "spa night" for the Big and Little Sisters. She also helped to organize "Wigs for Kids" with her students. She arranged for the students and staff who were willing to donate their "locks" to the cancer society which then makes them into wigs for children with cancer.
Janet Cox is one of the unsung heroes of our school.
