Superb teacher recognized
Holy Trinity Elementary’s Kim Keating earns Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence
Teachers work hard every day to make the lives of their students better.
Amassing knowledge and critical thinking is firmly on the minds of those classroom guardians. But every once in a while, one emerges who goes above and beyond the work they signed up for.
Meeting Holy Trinity Elementary School’s Kim Keating quickly cements she is one of those teachers. Her achievements in the classroom and the school community are vast.
Keating’s commitment to education and the use of technology to achieve those goals have earned her, a Grade 4 teacher at Holy Trinity Elementary in Torbay, the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence, which honours outstanding and innovative elementary and secondary school teachers in all disciplines.
Recipients are recognized for their leadership and exemplary teaching practices as well as for their commitment to help the next generation of Canadians gain the knowledge and skills they need for future success in a world inspired by ideas and driven by innovation.
Keating said lessons she learned teaching adults in the early stages of her career have made her the teacher she is today.
“I got a perspective from the adults I was teaching early in my career why school wasn’t successful for them. That’s always in the back of my mind” Keating said. “School wasn’t a good fit for them and they’re always in the back of my mind when I am doing projects, because the things that they talked about are the things I incorporate in my class now.”
Keating said some of the adults didn’t have all the math skills they required, but they just kept going on and couldn’t find a way to catch up. This left them facing an uphill battle.
“That resonates, so I’m constantly assessing my kids. Who’s got what, who doesn’t, and I’ve got this group doing this and I’m pulling into this group because they need more support. It’s constantly on my mind that if I don’t do that, they could end up being one of those kids. They need that. We all learn at different paces. We need to slow down for some and speed up or others,” she said.
“I work with (my current students) every day, while others do independent work, so that when they go to the next grade they have that skill.
Humbled by nomination
The Prime Minister’s Award, offered at the Certificate of Excellence (national) and Certificate of Achievement (regional) levels, carry cash prizes of $5,000 and $1,000, respectively. Each recipient receives a pin, as well as a letter and a certificate signed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Keating knew about the award for a while, but wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. What she was able to do was see the nomination made on her behalf. She was overwhelmed with what she read.
“It is nice to see. It’s very humbling to see how others see you,” she said.
“When you read this, it really kind of makes you feel really proud of what you’ve done. Even if you don’t win the award, it’s nice to read what other people see in you, things that you don’t see in yourself.”
Keating is a leader in the incorporation of digital literacy into the overall school program, including creating a pamphlet for families that introduced the initiative, adding digital literacy to the school’s behaviour matrix and code of conduct, and presenting the changes to the school council.
Her leadership has seen her involved as the convener of numerous in-school and school district professional development sessions and has been featured in videos shown during in-service training, including a presentation on new robot-based (Ozobots) coding activities to STEM teachers from across the province. In addition, she has worked on a provincial pilot project to employ ipads in science classes, so students can use them to investigate, record data and present their findings.
She is proudest of the technology base she has brought to the school, her colleagues and the students. “We’ve Incorporated it and I have been one of the driving forces of bringing technology to our little ones,” she said.
“Often times people don’t think our little ones can take on the technology piece of it. We have technology tools at all of our grade levels. There are ipads, Chrome books, we’ve got robots for them. We have ozobots for them. We have alphabet things for them.”
Sharing knowledge
Keating says she does a lot of research to figure out what is the best that can be employed for the students, and then incorporates it.
To get it to the students, she uses a teacher-to-teacher model of bringing any kind of technology into the building. That means the teachers teach the teachers. She takes a small group and teaches that group and then that group will take it back to the next group, so at each grade level there is usually one person who will work with her on a new technology being brought in.
“We are in the middle of doing Google classrooms, Google docs and how we incorporate that. One person from each grade level will come and work with me and then I will go to the grade levels and they get to choose the topics and then we work through the technology with them based on a project they would like to do for the classroom,” she said.
Technology is used at all grade levels — one to four — things being a bit different at each level. The use of ipads in some, other technology in others, is all based on the needs of the children.
“Kim has always been a leader in our school, spearheading a lot of the projects that go on here, especially when it comes to technology, the STEM projects and things like that,” Holy Trinity principal Debbie Peddle said. “She is a fantastic leader. We are always scared she might go do other things, but she has promised she would stay here. She’s been a fantastic addition here. She keeps our school going. Every teacher looks up to Kim. Kim’s the go-to person for everything.”