It has been an emotional week for Nepean High School teacher Jeannie Walker, after winning the 2025 MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award during the 2025 Juno Awards in Vancouver Sunday night.
The award recognized her commitment to inspire and empower students through music.
Now, Hunter is back in Ottawa doing what she loves most, teaching music.
“What I keep saying to people is I’m the same person I was last week, there’s still things we need to work on, we still have goals, we’re still reaching for excellence, still working on musicality,” Hunter said.
“There’s just the normal life part of it, and then there’s the fact that less than 24-hours after I walked out of a jam session with Jim Cuddy, I was standing in front of this band.”
Once her name was called by Canadian music legend Michael Bublé, Hunter said it was an out of body experience, being on stage in front of thousands of her favourite composers and millions of fans watching across the country.
When she got back to her seat, she said her phone was flooded with messages from friends, family, and students from her 30 years of teaching.
“It’s given me a gift of my entire career showing up at the same time,” she said.
“I have so many students past, present and future actually, I’ve had a lot of people reach out, we’re a family, we’re in it together every day, we’re making music, we’re being creative, we’re trying to do good things in the world.”
Hunter says when she returned to the school the following day, the sign out front which usually reads “Love Purple, Live Gold”, the school’s motto, now says “Congrats on the Juno Jeannie!”
She was also flooded with cards and artwork from students and staff.
Grade 10 student Nairi Adjemian says she watched the Junos at home and was happy to see her teacher win the award.
“She pays so much attention to people like individually, everyone can kind of improve at their own pace, but also with the whole band,” Adjemian said.
“I’m super happy for her that she wanted to. You know, I think it’s definitely deserved. She’s a great teacher.”
Ethan Eversley is a student teacher from the University of Ottawa. He says being in Hunter’s class is like nothing he’s experienced before.
“She has a way of building a community with the class, everyone is friends, everybody works together, everybody knows each other,” he said. “She knows how to get people working together, she knows how to make a group look more like a family than anything else.”
He also adds the day after Hunter won the award, everyone was coming to the music room to congratulate her.
“Everybody was coming trying to find her, it was just so cool, the whole school was exploded with energy, it was awesome.”
Hunter said it’s an experience she will not soon forget, but being back with her students in her classroom has made the accomplishment feel even more surreal.
“I had a very short night’s sleep and was here to do band, but that was the exact right place to be, right here with the kids, as long as I’m with the kids, I’m always good.”
