Janel Bargar always wanted to be a teacher, but her mother tweaked that dream a little.
“Honestly, I always wanted to be a teacher ever since I was little; I just knew. I thought I wanted to be an elementary teacher, but my mom convinced me that there was an overabundance of elementary teachers for every opening.”
She took her mother’s advice.
“I decided on special ed,” Bargar said, in middle school.
Bargar said she didn’t have much personal experience with children with developmental disabilities when she made that decision.
“In high school, teachers would ask me to help other students who had special needs; that was really the only experience I had,” she said.
Now she has plenty. Bargar is starting her 23rd year in the Mayflower School District as the reigning Mayflower Middle School Teacher of the Year. She was chosen in May by her peers, which made the honor even sweeter, she said.
“It was definitely a great honor; it surprised me,” she said.
It didn’t surprise her principal, Kimberly Koch.
“Janel Bargar is a teacher who puts kids first,” Koch said. “She is willing to find a way for students to be successful, engaged in the learning and creates an opportunity for them to put their own interest in the learning.”
The principal added that Bargar continues to grow as a teacher-learner and shares her knowledge with her fellow teachers “in an effort for everyone to be successful. Her peers can always count on her for a variety of teaching strategies and support.”
Mayflower Superintendent John Gray said Bargar “has great success with students who have been identified as needing additional support in the classroom.”
Bargar, who lives in Springhill, grew up in Conway and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a Bachelor of Science degree in special education. She did her student teaching in Mayflower under former district teacher Dan Barrington. Bargar said he decided to leave special education for a general-education classroom, and he called her.
“He said, ‘Hey, my job’s open,’” Bargar said.
She was hired and has been at Mayflower ever since.
Bargar teaches resource/inclusion to grades five through eight.
“Resource [students] are pulled out of regular classrooms and taught in a special-education class in a smaller group. In inclusion, kids go in the gen-ed class, and I go in there to provide support to them while they stay in the regular classroom.
“When I go into those general-education classes, I don’t just help special-education
students. I help every kid who is in there so other kids don’t know who is special ed,” she said. Middle school students are “so self-conscious; they don’t want to be seen as different.”
The students who are pulled out of class, because it’s a busy seven-period class day, “you don’t notice where kids are going,” she said. Classes usually focus on one subject at a time, she said.
Her favorite subject to teach? “Wow; wow, that’s hard. Part of me really likes teaching math because there’s like a structure to it,” she said, laughing. “At the same time, I enjoy teaching some of the literature because you can get into such great conversations with kids. They might be able to answer questions … [that aren’t] put on worksheets. They pick up on things that you yourself may have missed; it’s great.”
Special-education has changed through the years.
“When I was in elementary school, the special-ed kids were in their own class all day and didn’t interact with the gen-ed regular class,” she said. “It’s so different now; they interact.”
Self-contained classes have more severely disabled students who don’t leave the classroom as much as other special-education students, she said.
“We’re having some of the self-contained kids in our classes this year. That’s going to be a challenge, just making sure I’m meeting the needs of all the kids,” she said.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the past few years is the paperwork required in special education.
“We do our own paperwork, and there is still tons of it,” she said.
This year, reading instruction will change at the middle school, Bargar said.
“We’re working on R.I.S.E., Reading Initiative for Student Excellence, at the middle school this year,” she said.
R.I.S.E, launched by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the state Department of Education in 2017, “is basically going back and teaching basic phonic skills that kids — you would think by the time they get to middle school should know these things — but it’s basically trying to go back and hit the things we’re missing to try to help these kids become better readers,” Bargar said.
“I’m really interested in incorporating R.I.S.E. into my classroom, and incorporating that with what I already do, to help these kids become stronger readers,” she said. “Everything in life, you have to know how to read to do it.”
Bargar said she looks forward to this school year, and a cherished part of her job is making connections with her students.
“I have these kids for four years in a row, usually, unless they’ve moved in or moved out [of the district],” she said. “I get to know these kids really, really well, and it’s hard for me to see them go to high school. I become emotionally attached.”
She said the high school and middle school are adjacent to each other, so her former students often “come to revisit, and I get hugs. They want to get hugs and know you’re still down there [at the middle school]. That’s always a good thing for me.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.