BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Her original plan wasn’t to teach science or to teach at all at the elementary level, but Bradford Elementary’s Bobbie Douglas is doing both and doing them quite well, as evidenced by her being named the Bradford County School District’s Teacher of the Year.
“It’s a huge honor,” Douglas said. “I feel like I am still getting started in education. This is my third year, and I’m in the middle of getting my master’s, and I’m in the middle of doing so many new teacher things. It doesn’t feel real.”
Bradford Elementary Principal Cassie Melvin said if one was to walk into Douglas’ classroom, they wouldn’t believe she was only in her third year of teaching.
“She very quickly proved she was going to be a great teacher,” Melvin said. “We thought she was going to be good, but she started proving she was going to be great.”
Becoming a teacher…eventually
Douglas, who grew up in Union County (she’s a 2012 Union County High School graduate), said she always wanted to become an educator. She took teacher-prep courses while in high school and was also a member of Future Business Leaders of America, which had her thinking of going into business education.
College, though, was put on hold for a while as she and her husband, Colby, began their family.
“I was 19 when I had my son, so I stopped going to college,” Douglas said, adding, “I went back to college, and then I had another kid. Then, 2020 happened, and everything kind of shut down. My kids were at home. I started doing homeschool with them.”
Douglas, who now has four children (Elijah, Brilynn, Eleanor, Callum), said teaching her first two children at home was such a joy that she was determined to “buckle down” and finish college so she could become a teacher.
It was difficult to find a college program that would allow her to be a mother and a student, but Douglas eventually found what she was looking for in Western Governors University, an online university based in Millcreek, Utah.
“Finally, I did it,” Douglas said. “I just pushed through. I graduated. I started teaching.”
The goal was to teach at the high-school level, but Douglas applied to all the schools in Bradford County. The first one she interviewed at was Bradford Elementary when it was still known as Southside Elementary.
It was the only interview she participated in.
“I just had a really great feeling after that interview,” Douglas said. “I called and canceled my other interviews.”
Douglas admitted she pictured teaching in elementary school would involve “a lot of hand holding,” but as a someone who began teaching in fourth grade and is now teaching fifth-graders, she found that to not be the case. In the older elementary grades, she can have the type of academic discussions with students she was envisioning having as a teacher. She can also ask a lot of her students.
“I can push these 10- to 11-year-olds, and I can challenge them academically,” Douglas said. “That was always the goal. I wanted that academic discourse.”
Douglas not only wants to continue teaching in elementary school; she wants to continue doing it at Bradford Elementary.
“I think the leadership here is phenomenal,” Douglas said.
Science and fun
Douglas got her degree in Secondary Biology, even though she didn’t love science growing up. In fact, when she told her husband what she was going to major in, he replied, “You hate science.”
Yet Douglas saw an area in which she thought she could make a difference.
“I think that science gets a bad rap because of how it’s taught,” she said.
How Douglas teaches it isn’t simply having students copy notes. It’s creating hands-on activities and sometimes catering those activities to students’ interests. For example, Douglas said a lot of her students this year play baseball and softball. Thus, a recent science activity had students going outside and throwing balls to each other to understand the relationship between force and mass.
“I think that is the key to making science stick for kids,” Douglas said. “Putting it in their hands and seeing what happens.”
Douglas wants her students to have fun. That’s why she’s often referred to on campus as “the fun teacher.”
“We have a great time in science,” Douglas said. “I fully own the fact that I am labeled ‘the fun teacher.’”
The fun extends beyond teaching science.
“I also make time for us to play games,” Douglas said. “At recess, I play four square with these kids every single day. Every day, I get out there, and I hit that ball with them. It keeps us close as a class. We’re here with each other 180 days. I don’t want that to be 180 miserable days.”
Still, the overriding emphasis is also learning. Douglas said in state testing, fifth-grade science is a “low area” throughout Florida. As she prepared to start the 2024-25 year as a fifth-grade science teacher, she said she “dove into the standards” to better prepare her students for when they’re tested.
“I kind of built the curriculum from the ground up to match the state standards,” Douglas said, adding, “I am strictly standards-based. I take the standards the state of Florida gives us, and I break them down. I teach the standards to a letter. Everything ties back into some standard of some sort. I really look at how the state assesses those concepts. Everything ties into those concepts.”
Melvin said Douglas has had a tremendous impact with the way she’s teaching science.
“We went from a 45-percent proficiency in science to a 61-percent proficiency,” Melvin said, noting that it was the school’s best performance in 15 years.
The Bradford Elementary principal thinks so much of Douglas that she said she’s a teacher Bradford County must keep.
Of course, Melvin hopes she can keep Douglas at her school.
“Any (administrator) would be extremely lucky and blessed to have her teaching science on their campus,” Melvin said. “I know that. I am very well aware of how good she is, especially being a new teacher. I just try to express my gratitude for her choosing Bradford Elementary.”
The ‘total package’
Douglas may be getting students to excel in the classroom, but she’s so much more than the person who’s teaching them science. Melvin said Douglas is the “total package,” adding, “She is empathetic to the students. She’s very tuned in to their needs. She’s very tuned in to their mental state. She cares about those kids. She loves them.”
Douglas admitted she’s not good at recognizing her own strengths as a teacher, but she’s been told by several of her colleagues that she is good at building relationships with her students and really getting to know them. Douglas said a teacher recently told her, “Once you have that relationship with that child, they will do anything that you ask them to do in your room. That’s so obvious when we come into your room. We can see that.”
Perhaps the relationships are created through playing four square during recess. Or maybe they come about through the book club Douglas started. Douglas, an avid reader, is willing to give up her lunch time for club meetings.
Out of her 63-65 students, 50 applied to be in the club.
“Now, I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to buy 50 copies of whatever book we choose,” Douglas said, “but that is something that I’m going to do out of my own pocket. I want these kids to love to read like I love to read.”
Reading, of course, will pay dividends in school performance, and Douglas said it’s certainly a plus when it comes to the subject she teaches.
“Literacy plays a huge part in science,” she said. “If they can’t comprehend these questions and be able to break them down, they’re not going to be able to find success.”
Success is the teacher’s goal, and when Douglas has a student experience it, it’s a moment for everyone in her classroom to observe.
“We celebrate that moment,” Douglas said. “I feel overjoyed. I want the kids to feel overjoyed. I want them to hold onto that feeling. We, as a class, celebrate that. We clap. We cheer.”
Don’t be surprised if Douglas sheds some tears during such celebrations. She admitted she’s emotional and that her students are used to the fact they may see her cry.
“It’s the best feeling,” Douglas said of seeing a student succeed. “It makes you feel like you’re doing what you wanted to do. You’re meeting the goal.”
Douglas is right where she belongs
It would seem Douglas was meant to be in a classroom. Melvin said she has a natural ability to teach and is driven to succeed.
“We started to learn that she was that teacher who had a lot of internal motivation to be great,” Melvin said. “We laugh because she never feels like what she’s doing is good enough.”
Douglas admitted that she’s “very hard” on herself.
“A lot of times I struggle with impostor syndrome,” she said. “Am I actually good enough to do this? Am I actually doing what needs to be done? I do struggle with that.”
Classroom results prove she’s good enough. The joy students get from learning in “the fun teacher’s” class proves she’s good enough. Being named the school district’s Teacher of the Year proves she’s good enough.
“I guess I did OK,” Douglas said about the impression she made in getting the district-wide honor.
As someone who didn’t plan to be a science teacher or even plan to teach at the elementary level, it seems as if Douglas is doing more than OK.
“I definitely think she’s found her niche,” Melvin said.
