Prime Minister’s Award winner for Teaching Excellence; Rachel Luke

BY JONELL PANTLITZ

We here at Toronto Caribbean Newspaper are invested in our community, and we are here to help in building it. This is why we must shed light on magnificent people such as Rachel Luke who has been awarded the highest honour of Teaching Excellence.

The Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence is awarded annually to elementary and secondary school teachers in all disciplines. It is the most prestigious prize awarded to a teacher in Canada. Over 1,600 educators to date have received this award since its inception in 1994.

We are proud to announce that this year’s winner of the prestigious award is Rachel Luke; she has been teaching at the Peel District School Board for eighteen years and has now recently received Canada’s highest honour for Teaching Excellence.

According to Ms Luke, she is honoured to be selected as a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2020. She said, “I am also grateful to God for this blessing and to my colleagues and students for nominating me.”

During Ms Luke’s eighteen years of her teaching career, she has helped her students accomplish a lot. She mentioned, “In our world of ever-advancing social, economic and technological changes, my goal is to empower students with the skills and knowledge they require to achieve success.”

Rachel Luke is a role model for many students and empowers at-risk students; she co-chaired boys-at-risk committee; created clubs for marginalized youth; helps at-risk students with financial literacy, and also partnered with Raptors 905 Team to provide opportunities for students to earn their forty hours that is required to graduate high school.

This excellent teacher fosters leadership skills and sense of responsibility among student participants in multiple extracurricular activities some being: newspaper, talent shows, theatrical productions, drama club, ambassadors for change club, Black History Month assemblies, Remembrance Day assemblies and more. She has also created and developed engaging multimedia-infused online learning courses for international students, which are accessible anywhere in the world.

Ms Luke’s endeavours to give a voice to the voices that have too long been silenced and implement a culturally responsive program that ensures her students see themselves and their experiences reflected in the material in which they engage.

According to Ms Luke, “I teach culturally responsive pedagogy; holocaust, Indigenous, and anti-black racist education, encourage my students to come to the realization that each one of us has a responsibility to not only stand for social justice, but to also confront injustice. They engage in their learning and become more empathetic and compassionate because they not only connect what they learn to their own lives and experiences; they also relate their learning to other tragic events happening in our local and global communities today. Most importantly, my students feel empowered to be the change they want to see.”

Her students have learned the importance of having a positive racial identity and how to recognize and dismantle racist beliefs and attitudes in themselves, in others and in societal institutions. She mentioned, “Through the medium of theatre, my students have gained a deeper understanding and have spread awareness about the horrors of war, the Holocaust and other genocides, residential schools and the history of blacks and the Indigenous peoples in Canada as well as mental health and illness.”

Rachel Luke is also an advocate for culturally responsive and anti-black racist education; she supervises the Black Student Association, organizes activities and assemblies for Black History Month. She invites black leaders to school as guest speakers and takes students to community events hosted by black organizations.

She is also currently collaborating with Indigenous residential school survivor, Theordore Fontaine, to write a play based on his memoir Broken Circle.

Rachel Luke believes a good education is about more than academics; it also involves developing a strong character, self-respect, respect for others, and engagement in the world beyond the classroom.