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A Teacher With Promise: Young Spanish teacher among five honored by Forsyth Education Partnership
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
Mary Barnhardt, who teaches Spanish I, talks with ninth-grader Danielle Gibbs during a class at Ronald Reagan High School.
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Published: June 8, 2009
Being a first-year teacher at Reagan High School could have consumed Mary Barnhardt's life.
She certainly put in hours and hours planning her classes, often staying for several hours after school and working more hours once she got home.
"It could be never-ending," she said.
And, with a total of 148 students -- freshmen, sophomores and a smattering of juniors -- in her five Spanish I classes, grading tests took some serious after-school time.
Even so, during her first semester, she found the time to act in a Little Theatre of Winston-Salem play, which proved to be a welcome mental break.
"It really made me take some time from school," she said.
This semester, Reagan benefited from her artistic talents when she choreographed the school's spring musical -- Babes in Arms.
All in all, the people with the nonprofit organization Forsyth Education Partnership think that Barnhardt has shown a lot of PROMISE -- as in Potential, Responsibility, Optimism, Motivation, Ingenuity, Sensitivity and Excellence -- and the organization has named her one of five Teachers of PROMISE.
Student Garrett Bell said, "I think she's a really good teacher. She's really nice."
Turning to Barnhardt, he added, "You make it a lot easier to learn."
‘Interesting and informative' classes
Deane Henson, the head of the foreign language department at Reagan, said, "Mary is a wonderful addition to our foreign-language department. Because of her strong organizational skills and her creative talents, her classes are interesting and informative for the students. With her kind and caring attitude, she creates an environment conducive to learning while maintaining firm discipline."
A panel of judges chose the winners from first-year teachers nominated by principals. The other winners were Rachel Kowalcheck at North Forsyth High School, James Allred at Kennedy Middle School, Diana Somers at Hanes Middle School and Ashley Penman at Diggs Elementary School.
This year, Barnhardt has also discovered how demanding the hours in the classroom are.
"It's high energy," she said. "You have to be on all the time and attentive to everything all the time."
The hardest aspect of the job, she said, has been trying to inspire students who seem to be uninterested in learning. "It makes it very challenging in some ways," she said.
Barnhardt, 25, didn't take the express route to becoming a teacher. Although Spanish is something that she has long enjoyed, she wasn't planning to become a teacher when she went to Salem College. The arts have long been an important part of her life as well.
"I've been dancing since I was 3," she said.
After singing, dancing and acting through high school, she moved on to participating in productions put on by such community groups as the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem, Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance and the Community Theatre of Greensboro.
She also regularly goes to dances put on by the Piedmont Swing Dance Society.
After graduating from Salem in 2005 with a degree in Spanish and arts management, she went to work with the N.C. Shakespeare Festival. When she heard that a Spanish teacher at Forsyth Country Day School was going on maternity leave in early 2006, she applied for and got the 3½-month job as substitute.
The experience was satisfying enough that she started thinking about becoming a teacher. She hadn't taken the necessary education courses as an undergraduate so she applied for the Master Teacher Fellows Program at Wake Forest University. A 14-month program, it gave her both the necessary credentials and a master's degree.
She finished that in August 2008. "A week after I finished, I started here," she said.
Teachers nurtured her love of language
Barnhardt's father, the Rev. Roland Barnhardt, is a Methodist minister, and the family moved to Winston-Salem about the time she started middle school at Wiley. She had been taking Spanish since elementary school, and good teachers here had an important role in nurturing her love of the language, she said. In particular, Barnhardt mentioned Emily MacMillan at Reynolds High School and John Boyst at the Career Center.
Religion is another important part of her life, and, while at Salem, she took trips to Bolivia, Mexico and Guatemala with church groups from Highland Presbyterian Church and from Centenary United Methodist Church, her home church. There, she plays hand bells and sings in the choir.
Barnhardt isn't much for sitting around doing nothing -- but she does plan to take some time this summer to catch up on sleep -- just as soon as she gets back from another church-group trip.
"I leave right after school end to go back to Guatemala for a week," she said.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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