Recipient's Name: Jason Bracey

School: Southwood Secondary

Grade: Grade 12 Geography

Number of Years Teaching: 11

Teaching students about things he is interested in is one of the highlights of teaching for Jason. An avid outdoorsman and environmentalist, he smiles when he says, I get paid to go hiking with students! A joy for Jason is reconnecting his students with nature and helping them understand their role and place in it. Field trips that take students into nature are a key part of his curriculum. Jason would like to be able to bottle the pure joy he sees in his students as they wade through a creek for a stream study, catching crayfish just like when they were six years old. Jason believes that if his students take an interest in and appreciate nature then they will protect it, invest in it and become good stewards. By providing many hands-on, in nature experiences Jason, along with his students, continue to be blown away by the beauty and vastness of the outdoors.

Jason finds teens fascinating. He loves their positive energy and sees that they still have hopes and dreams that adults tend to lose. His students laughter, engagement and enthusiasm for learning make Jason very hopeful about the future.

Emily, one of Jason's students wrote this in her letter of nomination:

In every student's educational journey there are teachers who stand out for their commitment to excellence. They are the educators who impact you, not just as an academic, but as a person. To me, Mr. Bracey is this teacher. Sitting in the front row of his class, listening to him talk about the World Bank and foreign debt, I thought to myself, Someone needs to fix this. What makes Mr. Bracey such an amazing teacher is that he identifies problems that need fixing, provides the knowledge needed to address them and inspires students to take steps in an effort to solve them. He is not just a teacher; he is a motivator, and an agent of change within our school and beyond.

A few days after my someone needs to fix this moment, I asked Mr. Bracey what one teenager in Cambridge could do to make a difference on the other side of the world. He took the time to help me make a plan and it was there in his geography room that the idea of Coffee House for Kenya was born. To date, almost $4,000.00 has been sent to Kenya for various causes.

All who walk through Mr. Bracey's classroom door walk in with excitement and walk out empowered and inspired to make a change. Sometimes I am astounded by the amount of change that can take place in only 75 minutes. But it happens almost every day.