“Once you empower children you enable them and from enabling them you are able to educate them and I think that is so important,” said Elaine Magennis-Hill, special education teacher at Toronto’s St. Malachy Catholic School. “I’ve always been interested in bringing people together. Young people are very very keen to step up and make a difference and I think all we have to do is give them a chance.”
This mentality has the veteran teacher, with more than 20 years experience, arriving at school slightly after 8 a.m. and sticking around most days until 5:30 p.m. — if not later.
It’s not just her school community who recognize the level of dedication she brings to St. Malachy’s. Recently Magennis- Hill, along with five other teachers, was honoured by Famous People Players as teachers who make a powerful difference in the lives of students. (Also recognized from the Toronto Catholic board were Kelly Martin from Holy Name School and Lesley Alvares from St. Richard School.)
To Magennis-Hill school is as much about instilling confidence as teaching the curriculum.
“It’s all about self confidence,” she said. “Once students have that ability to feel good about themselves and feel safe in their environment they can do anything.”
For special needs students Magennis-Hill said instilling this mentality is the first, and often most challenging, hurdle to overcome. Too often the emphasis is put on the students coping with their learning disability rather than working on correcting the problem — a method that keeps them feeling different.
“Teachers are challenged to meet the needs of so many students so that’s why our special education programs are so important,” she said. “You want to try to meet the needs of every student so that they can reach success. For so many of them they are coming already with a wall built up and there is a lot of anxiety around learning.”
That’s why Magennis-Hill developed an intensive support program at St. Malachy which focuses on an individual’s weakness by tailoring the lesson to specific interests of the student. Weaknesses are determined by formal and informal assessments.
But sometimes a student’s lack of confidence has them so resistant to learning that they’ll try to avoid school — something Magennis- Hill doesn’t let happen.
When one of her special needs students was reluctant to come to school in the past, Magennis-Hill personally escorted the young boy to and from school. Now he rarely misses a day.
“I wanted to try to make a difference that way,” she said. “I was always interested in helping students who were challenged to learn.”
But it isn’t just special needs students who receive this kind of attention. Through St. Malachy’s Me to We Team, which at Magennis-Hill’s encouragement many special needs students became involved in, she has spread this sense of empowerment throughout the school.
“She’s always open to any of our ideas and sort of helps us, the kids, and leads us and helps us lead with our ideas,” said Grade 8 student Katrina Paras. “She doesn’t treat us like kids, she treats us as equals and speaks to us like that.”
Earlier in the year when Paras and some of her peers expressed an interest in learning to knit, Magennis-Hill not only embraced the idea but integrated it into the social justice club.
“We had already asked other teachers. They shot it down and then we asked her and … she personally took my idea and made it bigger,” said Paras. “We are very lucky to have Mrs. Magennis-Hill and have her put all this time and hard work into letting us help other people.”
Why the teacher, wife and mother does all of this is simple: it’s what a teacher did for her when she was a student.
“I had an incredible teacher when I came from Ireland in Grade 2, it goes right back to that,” said Magennis-Hill. “Mrs. Roach just inspired me in every way, the way that she talked to children, the way she encouraged children and the way she empowered children. I decided then and there that that’s what I wanted to do.”
While everyone who knows her seems to be singing her praise, Magennis-Hill remains humble.
“I’m the same as all teachers.”