Darcy Bakkegard is an English/theatre teacher and professional development coach who got tired of traditional sit-n-get PD and now creates the type of PD she always wanted with the Educators’ Lab. With 10 years of experience teaching English and theatre, Bakkegard specializes in interactive strategies for the classroom, meaningful tech integration, and building relationships with students. Bakkegard is an ISTE Certified Educator, an experienced international presenter, and empowerer of teachers. She co-wrote The Startup Teacher Playbook to help teachers rekindle their spark for teaching and make PD meaningful.
Trenches story: has been a disruptor. People are scared of the why. She asks ?’s. When she taught Engl with a team of 15 teachers & she asked a lot of why’s. Why curriculum designed for kids who are college-bound. Why couldn’t they provide choices aligned with strenghts/goals. They were trying to get elective credits approved for college credits. Was in a mtg where no one called out a teacher who didn’t want to disrupt status quo. Gave up that fight shortly after. PD back to school next year, in mandatory suicide prevention WS. They spoke about every child needing a connection. Knew she had to keep fighting for kids like him. 6 years later changes are starting to happen.
Co-Founder with Educators’ Lab: she is a change consultant for edu. She empowers t’s as change-makers to help them solve problems, it’s all about better PD. Co-founder w/ Michelle. Help t’s design lessons to support students. Darcy’s passion is focus on your purpose as t. Your why? True self-care is reconnecting to your purpose. Reignite what fuels you. Through that, reignite joy in the classroom. Laughter is powerful in the CR. Learning should be a joyful experience. All the other stuff gets in the way. It’s hard to find joy when you’re not connected to your purpose. Conduct book studies, workshops, etc. Teachers should get cont. ed. credit for this work. Admin can help alleviate some of these problems like tardy passes.
TB Blogs/Edutopia blogs: does some on tech integration- flip how to do speeches, interactive discussion strategies, interdisciplinary units, did some on gratitude and gifts admin can bring, making more effective book studies. Wrote 1 on problem-solving to reconnect to your joy. She has 3 y.o. triplets. She wanted to complete something that went well, purposeful problem-solving. It’s also true as a teacher. https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-steps-book-studies-teacher-professional-learning/
It all connects back to The Startup Teacher Playbook– think about what isn’t working in your CR right now. Go & seek answers. Structure and take time to implement structure. A lot of work she does is supporting teachers with inspiration. Take a little time to reflect. We’ll cultivate what we choose to see. Start a post-it stack with joy. where are areas in the day that don’t have as much joy as you’d like. A problem is a possibility waiting to happen.
Personalized PD challenge cont. ed course– free, step by step walks you through the design process. Some t’s do a lesson, others do outline for the year. Depending on someone’s capacity. She doubles down on purpose and joy, sees t’s get excited again. By implementing the ideas, t’s get cont. ed. credit for their work thru some of N.Dakota Univ’s. Their time is playing multiple roles. “First we vent, then we reinvent”- choose to focus.
Talk about becoming an ISTE Certified Educator, presenting at ISTE this summer: ISTE cert. process is pretty intense. Need artifacts, etc. She can share syllabus/course info w/ English teachers who’d like to see her portfolio. Right now she isn’t doing a lot of tech integration/support these days. It also connects back to her joy/purpose. To her, tech includes crayons, post-its, crayons, anything she can use to create. How are you ensuring kids are understanding content? How do we hear everyone? ISTE trainings are expensive & time consuming. Her ISTE ‘23 June 25-27 her presentation is “Turn ISTE inspiration into action”. It’s about having a system to capture ideas to take back to the CR. She’d love to do a qualitative study about how many ideas from conf. actually make it into CR. some isn’t immediately relevant.
Out of everything? It’s OK to ditch what isn’t joyful. Some things aren’t fun, but you have to do them. Suck it up then celebrate by doing something cool. Click To TweetHow can you find those connections to joy? Like having students be “joy spies”.
Where can ppl find you online? www.theeducatorslab.com Twitter @dbakkegard insert email: info@educatorslab.io.
View this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Vkx2LVSscmw
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