ST. PAUL – Learning at Ginette Plante’s classroom goes beyond marks and metrics.
She has been a Grade 1 French Immersion teacher at École St. Paul Elementary School for seven years and is the most recent recipient of St. Paul Education’s 2025 Excellence in Catholic Education Award.
She teaches all subjects at school, aside from physical education, and believes that through teaching she is helping young people understand themselves and their place in the world.
It's an understanding that begins with how to be kind and how to be a good neighbour.
“Your neighbour is whoever you cross paths with, [and] not just the person that lives next door to your house. It's whoever you meet on the street,” she said. “That's a neighbour in that moment, that's a neighbour to you.”
She encourages her students to slow down and notice the world around them. Gratitude, she tells them, does not have to be grand.
“I always tell my kids - my students - [to] take time to pray, even just saying thanks for a simple thing like the sun,” she said. “It can be any moment. It doesn't have to be anything long.”
“It's just being thankful for what we have. Being grateful and taking time to just appreciate what you have.”
In their earlier years of life, children are still forming ideas about values like humanity, empathy, and responsibilities, and Plante believes learning how to treat others is just as foundational as learning how to read.
She helps impart these lessons through prayers and tales from the Bible.
Her students, she said, often even grow quieter and more attentive during these conversations, which she finds wonderful.
When asked how she felt when she received the 2025 Excellence in Catholic Education Award, Plante said, “It was a beautiful surprise.”
She sees the award as an inspiration to keep moving forward and growing as a better person and a better teacher.
Being a teacher allows her to see children grow and learn – and that is what inspired her to become a teacher in the first place. She loves to witness children’s sense of wonder come alive.
“Just the smiles when they finally get something . . . the wonder and the sparkle in their eyes . . . that’s what drew me to being a teacher,” she said.
