Celebrating Excellence: Garth Nichols Receives the 2025-2026 Award for Excellence in Continuing & Professional Learning

Some people bring expertise to professional learning. Others bring energy.
A rare few bring both, along with curiosity, generosity, and a sense of joy that stays with you long after the session ends.

Garth Nichols is firmly in that last category.

We are delighted to celebrate Garth as the recipient of the 2025-2026 Award for Excellence in Continuing & Professional Learning at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a recognition that feels both well-earned and entirely unsurprising to anyone who has worked with him.

 

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A Facilitator You Don’t Forget

Since 2019, Garth has been a constant and valued presence across OISE CPL, facilitating custom IB programs, contributing to international faculty development initiatives, and hosting global education leaders through our EduTours.

He has worked with us in classrooms, boardrooms, and across continents — including time spent in Norway supporting faculty development initiatives (and, in true Garth fashion, embracing the full experience… including cold water swimming in a fjord).

Wherever he is, the impact is the same.

Participants don’t just learn from Garth, they feel invited into the work. “His sessions were carefully designed to move us from awareness to application. We felt challenged and supported in equal measure.”

Leadership That Feels Human

Now serving as Head of School at Kingsway College School, Garth brings a level of authenticity to leadership that is both grounded and inspiring.

He doesn’t present leadership as a fixed set of strategies. Instead, he models it as something lived, through thoughtful questions, collaborative inquiry, and a genuine interest in the people in the room.

His sessions are structured and purposeful, but never rigid. There is always space for reflection, for connection, and for new ideas to emerge.

A “Lead Learner” (With a Ted Lasso Twist)

Garth often describes himself as a “lead learner”, and it shows. He approaches every session with openness, humility, and a willingness to learn alongside participants.

That mindset extends beyond CPL.

Alongside colleague Jason Rogers, Garth co-hosts Lassoing Leadership, a podcast inspired by Ted Lasso. The series explores what it means to lead with kindness, curiosity, and purpose — values that anyone who has worked with Garth will immediately recognize in practice.

It’s a fitting extension of his approach: leadership that is thoughtful, human, and grounded in relationships.

Generous, Creative, and Deeply Committed

Across every project he touches, Garth brings a creative, future-focused lens to learning design, an open-source mindset, freely sharing tools, frameworks, and ideas, and a genuine investment in the growth of others. He creates environments where people feel safe to contribute, challenged to think differently, and motivated to take what they’ve learned back into their own contexts.

A Well-Deserved Recognition

Garth’s recent appointment as Head of School is a testament to the leadership he brings to his work, and to the credibility of the learning experiences he helps design and facilitate.

This award recognizes more than excellence in teaching. It recognizes the kind of presence and impact that shapes how people think, lead, and act long after the learning experience ends.

We are incredibly proud to celebrate Garth Nichols and grateful for the many ways he continues to contribute to OISE CPL and the broader education community.

In addition to this honour, Garth was also recognized at the 2025 CPL Fall Facilitator Forum with the OISE CPL Award of Excellence, selected by his peers in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the CPL community.

Please join us in congratulating Garth on this well-deserved recognition and thanking him for his continued impact on teaching and learning at OISE.

Read the full announcement from OISE:
https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/about/news/03-26-26-care-creativity-commitment-our-2026-oise-teaching-excellence-award-winners