Long before Jenna Corbett, BEd ’26, stood at the front of a classroom, she was already a teacher. A competitive gymnast from a young age, she coached gymnastics throughout high school and university, and picked up volleyball along the way. Helping people understand things, she says, is something she’s always gravitated toward.
“Whether it was coaching or even just helping my friends in school,” she says, “I’ve always really enjoyed helping people get to where they want to go.”
Following her high-school graduation, Jenna attended the University of Victoria for her undergraduate degree in Geography with a minor in English. After completing her degree and before attending UBCO for her BEd, she took a year off to travel Europe, and Asia. The experience left its mark.
“I really like learning about the world and the people in it,” she says. “It’s what makes me excited to teach social studies.”
Her passion for people and their stories is what inspired Jenna to create an unforgettable project for her students. During her practicum, Jenna was teaching a unit on missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada — a topic she had largely taught herself in order to teach it well. As the unit progressed, she found herself pondering how she can move her students’ perspectives from seeing the large numbers, to humanizing the individual people within them.
Her response was a project that asked students to do exactly that. Drawing on a database of hundreds of cases, students each chose one woman to research her story, her relationships, and her life. Jenna left the final form deliberately open.
“I really wanted them to look into what inspired these people in their lives, what they enjoyed doing,” she says. “I feel like it’s a lot more powerful when you can read all these individual stories, and it compiles into such a big story, but you’re seeing each person.”
The finished stories exceeded her expectations. Some students went far beyond what was expected, producing work of depth and artistry that reflected their genuine engagement with the women behind the cases. A gallery walk gave the whole class a chance to move through their classmates’ work together, pausing and reflecting as they went.
“It was really meaningful to watch the students provide their questions or comments on each other’s project,” Jenna says.
Inspired by watching her students walk through the gallery, she decided the work shouldn’t end with the unit. She contacted the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna — her first time arranging any kind of public exhibition — and arranged to have the red dresses displayed publicly in May, during Red Dress awareness events. Her mentor teacher decided to continue the project with her own class the following semester. By the time the exhibit opened, two classes’ worth of dresses hung at the Rotary Centre.
“It’s really meaningful that she decided to keep the project going,” says Jenna. “I hope they’re able to continue building the collection.”
That instinct to connect learning with community is something Jenna hopes to carry forward. Now as a substitute teacher in Revelstoke, she’s already thinking about what community partnerships might look like there. It’s also a lesson she hopes to share with future teacher candidates.
“Get as involved as you can. It’s one of the only times you’ll have an opportunity to get outside of your comfort zone, and experience different classrooms and communities.”
In recognition of her work, Jenna was named one of this year’s recipients of the Maxwell Cameron Award. The recognition, she says, felt especially meaningful because of what she’d had to put into the work.
“I am really grateful to receive the award,” she says. “I wasn’t aware of the award until near the end of my practicum. I was just trying to do a project that did justice to the topic, so to be recognized for that feels really special.”
About the Maxwell Cameron Award
The Maxwell A. Cameron Award is given annually by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) to students completing the final year of the Bachelor of Education degree in elementary and secondary school teaching. The recipients of the award are those students who are considered to be outstanding students in the graduating class who have initiated, worked, or participated in a project that created positive change globally or in their local community, and or, been actively involved in issues related to poverty, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, antiracism, peace, global or environmental issues.
The award is named after Maxwell Cameron who headed the Department of Education at UBC in the mid-1940s. Prior to that, he was on staff as an associate professor and director of UBC’s summer school.