Dawn Clevenger

Beebe teacher makes classroom one to remember

Beebe Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Dawn Clevenger keeps students’ energy up by creating a gamelike, collaborative atmosphere full of “mystery Skypes” and classroom bonding.
Beebe Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Dawn Clevenger keeps students’ energy up by creating a gamelike, collaborative atmosphere full of “mystery Skypes” and classroom bonding.

At 9 a.m. on a Monday, Beebe Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Dawn Clevenger can be found encouraging her students to abandon their chairs and gather around on the floor for a “mystery Skype.”

Fixated on the large Smart Board in front of them, about 19 homeroom students excitedly braced themselves for virtually meeting a group of second-graders from a yet-to-be-known location. Each class took turns investigating which state the other was from.

“Do y’all border Mexico?”

“Does your state have an NFL team?”

“Are you in Texas?” her students guessed, being able to eventually learn about the small town of Merkel, Texas, and mark it on the classroom map with a shiny star-shaped sticker.

While students consulted their individual U.S. maps during the mystery Skype, Clevenger let them take the reins. As a math, science and social studies teacher, Clevenger helps students grasp geography by letting them meet people from around the world — and have fun with deductive reasoning while they’re at it. But virtual field trips are just part of the reason students enjoy their relationship with Clevenger. Almost every aspect of Clevenger’s class is gamelike and experimental.

“When I look back to when I was in school, [I think], how do we learn best? We learn the best by talking and collaborating, not just me standing up in the classroom,” she said. “There’s a total disconnect when you do that. I like the kids to do more and me to sit back and let them talk and discuss.”

A North Little Rock native, Clevenger taught in North Little Rock schools for 13 years before moving her career to Beebe. Her husband, Richard, is a teacher and coach for Beebe High School, and her children, Cole and Cailey, also attend Beebe schools.

“When I left North Little Rock, I was super, super sad because I thought, ‘You know, those kids knew me; their parents knew me; I had a reputation there. What if I go here and nobody knows me?’” she said. “But it didn’t take long because that light should shine out of you no matter what, wherever you are, that kids can see that you’re there for them.”

Just this school year, Clevenger discovered Skype in the Classroom, a program that allows teachers to conduct virtual field trips with sites and classrooms from around the world. Clevenger is only one of a few Beebe Elementary School teachers who have implemented the program into their classrooms, and she aims to conduct a session each week. Some of her students had never heard of Skype until taking her class.

“The first two times I did it, they were like, ‘When are we having our next one?’ They come to school excited that morning,” she said. “Hey, if they’re jumping out of the car asking me that, that means they want to be at school.”

Through Skype in the Classroom, students have toured Yellowstone National Park with the help of a ranger, visited a penguin rescue hospital in South Africa, seen an owl rescue hospital in North Carolina and met a nonfiction author. Students have also been able to better understand the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres by meeting students from New Zealand and Australia as they were about to take a summer break during Beebe’s wintertime.

Some classes have even sat in on Clevenger’s Skype sessions to see how the program works.

Along with using the program, Clevenger teaches geography and life lessons by employing connections of her own.

“I had one student that we Skyped, and she goes to Harding, and she does mission work, so she called us from the Greek islands where they were bringing the refugees, and she was right there on that island where she would bring in those refugees,” she said. “I thought it was kind of neat to see her, but also for them to see it’s not just about school; it’s about life and what you want to be when you grow up.”

After once viewing a video in class that explained what coding is, students Carlee Felty and Brooklyn Harris, both 10, said they’d consider moving to California as adults for a coding career.

Clevenger teaches geography and current events simultaneously by showing students CNN News videos and giving students maps to locate where events are taking place around the world.

Her deskless classroom, an idea borrowed from another teacher at the school, helps create a more open, collaborative space where students can sit at the front and review work together. Students are welcome to spend their lunchtime with her to hang out, and she’ll play YouTube videos of the video game Just Dance to keep them energized at the end of the day.

“I feed off the kids, and hopefully, they feed off me,” she said.

As someone who comes from a long line of teachers — Clevenger’s grandparents and parents all worked in education — Clevenger grew up with examples of how to embrace a child’s passion. Her mother knew that Clevenger’s brother would be an actor and one of her sisters would be a hairdresser just by the activities they picked up as children.

“My mom thinks that if you find a kid’s passion early in age, it changes everything about their outlook on school,” Clevenger said. “It’s about, ‘I’m looking forward to my future here.’”

Clevenger stresses that relationship building must be done with both the student and the parent, something she learned growing up in a house of educators. Her dad was a basketball coach at North Little Rock High School, and her mother was an English teacher and a drill-team sponsor.

“Those kids were at my house on Friday afternoons. My mom would make a thing of spaghetti or chili, and those kids were there watching cartoons, eating before the game,” she said. “Those guys would jump through hoops of fire for my dad. They would do whatever he asked them. He was hard on them, and they knew that he cared for them.”

Now that Clevenger is an established teacher, she has no problem giving out her cellphone number to students and parents. When in need of help, students said, Clevenger is just a text or email away. To build relationships with parents, she always calls them the first week of school and when their child is making behavioral or academic progress, not just when the student is in trouble.

“What I think of as a teacher is, ‘What would I want my kids to have?’” she said.

She also said she keeps in contact with several former students, many of whom have gone on to become Razorback baseball players, NFL players, actors and musicians.

“I tell them, ‘I don’t care about you today. I care about you today and I care about you in life,’” she said.

Games, rhymes and stories help students relate to and remember the content reviewed in class. Students said aspects of Clevenger’s teaching stay with them even when they go home for the day.

“Long fractions — she makes that fun,” said Katelyn Manning, 9. “At night, whenever I’m not tired [and] I try to go to sleep, I look at my clock, and I try to make that clock fraction into a decimal.”

Carlee, whose father has a management position and often travels, sometimes reviews lessons learned in class to make her feel better.

“It just calms me because I go home, and I do these math problems in my head, and it just makes me forget about why he’s not here,” Carlee said.

Clevenger has also been known to be there for students when needed.

“She also changed me because when my dad had to go to out of state, and he had to miss stuff, important stuff that matters to me, like the talent show, … I got very upset, but Mrs. Clevenger made it OK, and she came to watch the talent show with us,” Carlee said.

Maddi Mosler, who is now a teacher, even wrote about Clevenger for a college essay, praising her spirit by writing, “From the way she treated the other teachers to even those troublesome students, it was nothing short of unconditional love.”

Though Clevenger’s classroom can be loud and messy at times, she figures it’s the best way her students will learn.

“I try to get their curiosity up because that’s when they learn,” she said. “When curiosity comes in and they wonder, then they’re going to learn.”

Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.

Upcoming Events