Educator

Phoenix teacher Peter Ubriaco vividly remembers what it was like growing up in an environment that maybe wasn’t the most conducive to efficient intellectual development.

“I guess one of the advantages I’ve always thought I have – if you can call it an advantage – is that I had lots of different abuses going on in my house when I was growing up,” he says. “So I feel like I can kinda relate to some of the kids that maybe some other teachers can’t relate to when it comes to the things that are happening outside the school.”

For him, teaching isn’t about transferring information, it’s about building relationships, which is why the nominations that came in all had statements like “I’ve never seen my child so engaged” in them.

“What I try to do is get down to their level and try to remember what it’s like to be a Grade 8 student with a Grade 8 brain and just remember that I have to teach in a way that they buy into what I’m selling,” he says. “They have to believe that what I’m selling has value. I can act like a kid – if there was a camera in this room you’d see me being extremely silly sometimes – but it’s a very delicate balance between being their friend and being their educator and being a counsellor sometimes when you need to, and that’s what I have to do: blend all of that together.”

It may not have been the first question she asked when she got her new job at Georgia Park Elementary School two years ago, but it was maybe the second.

“What’s going on with that wooded area over there?” she asked on the first day she was supervising recess.

The area was across the school field, and it wasn’t looking great, but she saw its potential.

“I’ve always been about bringing the kids outside, and when I found out it was owned by the city, I called them and asked them if we could play back there. They said yes, so I asked if we could make it better.”

That began the process that has been the reparations of that parkland.

“We’ve been taking out blackberries, and we made this little bridge, and we got in touch with Greenways and they said they’d help us plant some new trees.”

Because kids, she says, need to get outside a little more often, and they need a safe, ecologically sound place to do that.

“Kids need to connect with nature,” she says. “They’re not going to care about it if we don’t help them learn to love it. We spend time out here every week and the kids get to see the same place through the seasonal changes and it’s amazing the things that they notice that they wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

“And sometimes, they just need to go play. The playground is great, but this, I think, is better.”