Sixth grade students in Christine Bayard’s classroom at Johnston-Hopkins Elementary School (JHOP) explore math concepts far beyond the pages of their textbooks. Collaboration is encouraged as students work through Bayard’s engaging units, seeing how math plays a pivotal role in daily life. Donning a full space suit for class, Bayard transforms lessons on decimals and rate reasoning into experiences that are truly “out of this world.” Students calculate how much food, water and oxygen is needed to live on Mars for two years, how long a Mars text message would take to send to Earth, and how many days it would take to ride a horse to the moon. Bayard’s classroom also becomes a construction site — where students use cubes to build habitats after calculating the cost, revenue and profit or loss for their projects. Then, stepping foot into the racing world, students explore fractions by virtually building racecars, working through weight’s effect on speed and velocity. Games are no stranger to Bayard’s classroom — students are eager to review what they have learned by competing in “mathketball” teams. Bayard’s students show consistent value-added achievement growth thanks in large part to her “astronomical” instructional and professional leadership.
Bayard serves on JHOP’s instructional leadership team (ILT) as a mentor teacher, where she supports schoolwide instructional and curriculum strategy through a partnership with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET). Working alongside the 3-6th grade math and science master teacher, Bayard helps lead collaborative professional development meetings, teacher observations and coaching efforts — where her data-driven mindset is essential to facilitating evaluations and providing meaningful feedback. Beyond JHOP, Bayard has contributed her skillset at both state and national levels, serving as a certified Louisiana mentor teacher and presenting at the 2023 national NIET conference with her master teacher on effective coaching strategies.
Working to provide a student-centered educational experience, Bayard strives to build positive and motivating environments both in and out of the classroom. JHOP’s math club was established by Bayard and has consistently achieved gold level status as a national math club through MATHCOUNTS. She also co-sponsors JHOP’s Jr. Beta Club, co-founded the reading mentor program, and assists in planning “Fun Day” at the end of the year. Bayard is known for being one of JHOP’s biggest “Dress-up Day” participants and makes Pi Day memorable by transforming into “Superhero Pi” to hand out Moon Pies to students. In the community, Bayard coaches youth t-ball and soccer, and volunteers as a stagehand.
Bayard is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology with a minor in child and family studies in 2009 and completed the alternative teacher education program in 2017 in the area of 4-8 middle school math.
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