Inside the teaching philosophies of TMU’s 2025 Provost Award recipients

TMU’s 2025 Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence winners highlight how hands-on, innovative and inclusive teaching turns classrooms into spaces for critical thought, connection and meaningful change.

This year’s award winners, Jennifer Poole, Janelle Brady and Angela Misri, each empower students to challenge assumptions and shape the world beyond the classroom.

“Education goes beyond sharing knowledge – it is a transformative force that shapes how students see and engage with the world,” says Provost and Vice-President, Academic, Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano. “These educators embody TMU’s commitment to providing education that extends beyond academia—one that prepares students to think, question and contribute meaningfully to the world.” 

The 2025 Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence is part of the TMU employee recognition program coordinated by Human Resources. These awards are among many employee, research and teaching awards to be presented at the Toronto Met Awards Gala on May 8. 

Janelle Brady

Janelle Brady builds education on real-life experience. Teaching in the School of Early Childhood Studies’ BA and MA programs, she grounds her teaching in Black feminism, anti-racist education and decolonial pedagogies. She believes strongly in using both her own and her students’ lived experience as the foundation for learning and change.

“I see myself as a facilitator who is supporting students on their journeys,” she says. “Everyone comes to the classroom from a different starting point. As educators, we need to bring this out through inclusive and experiential learning opportunities.”

Brady puts this approach into practice through courses like Black Childhoods in Canada — the first of its kind in the country. Created with Rachel Berman, Brady describes the course as “a pivotal moment” in her career that combines her research and teaching foundations. The course deconstructs anti-Black racism through theory and practice and encourages students to think critically about childhood, care and education in inclusive and community-driven ways.

“I think grounding ourselves in community is very significant, because it pushes back against this idea that education is an individual journey,” she says.
Brady creates inclusive classrooms by using diverse learning methods — from text analysis and music, to guest speakers and real-world engagement — where all students feel seen and supported. “The classroom can be a space of further marginalization for many students,” she says. “Many Black students over the years have told me that this is the first class where they felt comfortable raising their hand… and that means we have a lot of work to do.”

Brady says she likes the idea of learning and unlearning. “I push back against the idea that educators are experts,” she says. "I come to this process of education through vulnerability, and also model my own vulnerability as an educator… that’s allowed me to open up and to learn a lot more from my students.”

She hopes to develop critical thinkers who create change. "I hope students will question everything and be curious," she says. 

Beyond teaching, Brady supervises award-winning graduate research, advises across disciplines and founded the Janelle Brady Empowerment Circle, a cross-mentorship network with over 100 members. In 2022, she received the Viola Desmond Faculty Award for her mentorship, research and work with Black communities and students.

Angela Misri

For assistant professor Angela Misri of TMU’s School of Journalism, teaching creates confident, critical thinkers who can improve the industry. Her decade in journalism education bridges theory and practice, preparing students to make informed, ethical decisions. 

After the pandemic, she launched Newsroom Notes, a weekly forum connecting students with working journalists. “People were having a lot of undefinable issues—they weren’t sure what they didn’t know, but they knew they didn’t know something,” she says.

The forum addresses gaps in journalism education, like trauma-informed interviewing and ethical crime reporting. “I try to bring real-world situations into our conversations to arm students with the ability to take the theoretical stuff we're teaching them and make practical decisions based on it.” 

Beyond teaching the skills of the trade, Misri develops critical thinkers. “The goal is to develop students who are creative, critically thinking and powerfully able to communicate.” 

She emphasizes belonging, especially for underrepresented students. “I want them to feel like they represent journalism, that they don't feel out of place, and they feel confident about what they're doing.”

As a curriculum committee member, Misri has helped to reshape the program and reimagine newsrooms as collaborative spaces. She embraces classroom experimentation, recognizing that innovation requires failure.

Her dedication to continuous learning is reflected in her completion of the Excellence in Teaching Certificate from the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. She also credits her students with pushing her to question long-standing industry norms. “The beauty about students is they ask ‘why?’ And by going through that process of breaking it down—something you probably haven’t done for at least two decades—it’s a great process to make sure this is still true… They make me better as a journalist and as an educator.”

Ultimately, Misri aims not to change her students but to “change the industry, to make it better with all these different voices.”

Jennifer Poole

Jennifer Poole, professor in the School of Social Work, is reshaping teaching by challenging norms. 

For over two decades, Poole has focused on critical grief, health and mad studies, decolonial methodologies and accessibility in social work. Her TEDx talk, Sanism, and other pieces on sanism have become foundational resources worldwide, influencing how institutions approach care. At TMU, she has developed courses, supervised graduate-directed reading seminars, and led curriculum interventions that ensure social work education remains responsive to emerging scholarship and the realities of practice.

In the classroom, Poole encourages students to examine biases and following Naty Tremblay (2025), ‘make kin of their mistakes’ – interrupting perfectionism and modelling this reflection in real time. "I cannot ask learners to critically reflect unless I am doing it myself, showing them how, at every opportunity."

Her teaching centres on circle work, an approach she learned from Anishnaabe scholar Dr. Kathy Absolon, where every voice is heard. “Circle learning work asks us to take our time, to listen deeply, to make room and space for everyone and the multiplicity of knowledges that we all carry.”

Poole has also led efforts to enhance classroom accessibility, believing Kathy Absolon’s words that “how we come to know is as important as what we come to know.” She prioritizes empathy and acknowledges students’ challenges: “Learners are dealing with unimaginable pain, loss and fear, but still showing up to class,” she says. “A simple, ‘hello, I am glad you are here’ goes a long way.” 

This deep care for students extends beyond the classroom. From supporting student-led curriculum change and co-authoring research to supervising graduate students and advocating for systemic reform, Poole creates space for students to feel seen, supported and empowered. Ultimately, what she hopes students take from their time with her goes far beyond any single course:

"I want students to feel encouraged to take their place ‘in the circle’ of learning," she says. "To stretch (not tear), to be epistemically humble and curious, and to know that community and connection are always more important than ego."

Reflecting on her time at TMU, she adds, “I want to say thank you to each and every student I have had the honour to accompany at TMU. You have often been my reason to keep going.”

The Toronto Met Awards is part of the TMU employee recognition program coordinated by Human Resources and celebrates the achievements of TMU faculty and staff in teaching, research, administration, service and leadership, and employees who have reached a significant service milestone. Congratulations to all nominees and recipients. To learn more about all the award winners, visit Recognition and Awards. Learn more about milestones on the Service Milestones page.

Awards will be presented at the Toronto Met Awards Gala on May 8, 2025.