2024-2025 John Gaw Award recipients: Julie Haché and Linda Handiak
This year had two recipeints of the John Gaw award!
Julie Haché is an English Language Arts teacher in her 13th year of teaching at Heritage Elementary school in Huntingdon (NFSB). While she has previously taught in cycle 2 and cycle 3, for the past 5 years she has taught in a closed classroom (referred to as the Learning Centre). While working in this context can be challenging, Julie has found a true passion for and commitment to the students she teaches, all of whom present different academic, social, and/or behavioural challenges.
The ATEQ Board wishes to congratulate Julie for receiving the John Gaw award and for continuing to support the young learners in her room as they grow and change.
Linda Handiak is an English Language Arts and Social Sciences teacher at The Sacred Heart School of Montreal. Prior to joining the Sacred Heart team, Linda worked at Vanguard School, where she learned the importance of adaptability, scaffolding and differentiated instruction. She launched a leadership course at Vanguard, where she taught her students to write grant applications that secured them a greenhouse and a gazebo for outdoor classes. Linda also organized an annual writer in residence program that provided guided writing workshops for students. At her current school home, Linda runs a model United Nations club, which involves helping students research, make notes and prepare speeches for events run at various CEGEPS. She is also involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Club and helped organize a fair showcasing Indigenous crafts. In addition, Linda, along with her Department Head, Ms. Jones, helped one of her students launch an annual literary gala to celebrate creativity and the written word. Her ongoing project is to add diverse voices to the curriculum and summer reading list and to develop a unit on critical thinking and AI. During her downtime, Linda contributes articles about volunteer vacations to various publications
The ATEQ Board wishes to congratulate Linda for receiving the John Gaw award and for being such a valued member of her school community through a rich variety of inspiring outlets for students.
2023-2024 John Gaw Award recipient: Amanda McCulloch
This year’s recipient of the John Gaw Award is Amanda McCulloch, an English Language Arts teacher at Macdonald High School (LBPSB). Amanda has been teaching for 14 years and has had the opportunity to instruct young minds in many different settings ranging from students in enriched English classes to students dealing with complex backgrounds and needs. Each setting has given Amanda opportunities to witness immense creativity and to nurture fresh new perspectives. She works tirelessly to evolve the evaluations used in both her classroom and her department to challenge all students.
Over the past decade Amanda has guided new teachers with instructional and engaging strategies, programs, and resources. In addition, she has overseen the education of many student teachers by sharing expertise and resources. She believes that by working in conjunction and as closely as possible with student teachers, we set them up for success in their first few years as new teachers.
In the past year, Amanda has been working to secure several grants to grow Macdonald High School’s book-room choices. Notably, in addition to over 5 new class sets of novels, she secured a set of six different graphic novels for the junior cycle in order to do literature circles. Through this different form of literature, she hopes to foster an interest in reading and allow for intriguing group discussions in the younger grades.
In addition to this, Amanda has pioneered a creative short story contest at Macdonald High School that is going into its third year with over 100 entries written so far. Chosen as department coordinator by her peers, she also makes sure that the traditional public speaking contest runs smoothly every year. Amanda takes pride in her work and her department; she is always willing to go the extra mile for her colleagues and students to ensure everyone’s success.
The ATEQ Board wishes to congratulate Amanda for receiving the John Gaw Award and would like to honour her leadership and dedication to her colleagues and students alike.
2022-2023 John Gaw Award recipient: Jasmine St-Laurent
This year’s recipient of the John Gaw Award is Jasmine St-Laurent, an English Language Arts teacher in the English program at Bourget College in Rigaud. She teaches senior secondary school students where English may be their first, second, or third language. Thanks to her perseverance, and her differentiated teaching approach, she helps them to understand and love the English language, while developing an independent reading culture.
Jasmine was chosen as this year’s recipient because she embodies educational leadership in the teaching of English Language Arts. She is often the catalyst for projects, development, and reflection at her school. This past year, Jasmine led a committee that included teachers from all departments, from Grade 1 to Secondary 5, in both French and English, all of them eager to take action to bolster their students’ ability and desire to read. They created reference materials and visual aids to support and unite teachers in this mission.
In addition, Jasmine is an instructional coach to her colleagues both in the French and English sectors of the College. She has also been asked to provide training sessions to English teachers in other schools throughout the province. Jasmine has the ability to help teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses in a non-judgmental manner and helps colleagues set personal goals for development. She is always empathetic and has become a reliable and trustworthy resource to her colleagues.
2021-2022 John Gaw Award recipient: Colin Throness
This year’s recipient of the John Gaw Award is Colin Throness, who is an MA student at Concordia University, in Creative Writing, as well as a local writer, Project Manager & Drop-Out Prevention Facilitator and teaches at a number of EMSB Outreach schools. Colin was nominated for the John Gaw award because he has demonstrated leadership in the English Language Arts community in numerous ways. On top of being a basketball coach for Alternative United, Colin offers creative writing workshops, co-ordinates the annual Alternative United Writing Competition and he edits and publishes the annual EMSB Outreach Anthology. Through his work on the anthology, Colin:
*collaborates with ELA teachers to help motivate students to try their hand at writing;
*finds guest judges from the local literary community to judge student work based on the annual theme;
*provides prizes to honour student writing
*organizes the publication and launch of the book at the end of each school year
About the John Gaw Award:
John Gaw was the first English Language Arts Coordinator of Curriculum at the then Department of Education in Quebec City. John was a personable man with a great sense of community and an equally generous vision for the future. His leadership was vital in supporting the Association of Teachers of English of Quebec (ATEQ) through the 1960s and 1970s, and he played a key role in the founding of ATEQ’s annual conference, Springboards. John believed in the importance of collaboration and, to that end, involved classroom teachers, school boards and university administrators, as well as teachers’ unions, in the shaping of government policies for the teaching of English Language Arts. John’s leadership style was to lead by example. The JOHN GAW AWARD honours his vision and leadership within the ELA community as it is presented to an outstanding English Language Arts educator in Quebec who exhibits the following leadership qualities:
- A leadership which has shown collaboration and collegiality
- A leadership which has required planning, organization and perseverance
- A leadership which has shown openness, perception, flexibility and honesty