Her Story
Connie Bagley is a fifth-generation Texan and the first in her family to graduate from college. She began her teaching journey in 1972 as a student teacher at Crockett Elementary School in San Marcos, and she has spent 31 years there teaching the children of her hometown. She taught second grade for ten years, and in 1992 became the district’s first dyslexia reading specialist.
She says she “always wanted to be a teacher,” and recalls a first-grade teacher who took pictures of a field trip she was going to miss, and whose class wrote stories to send her. “Even the smallest of gestures can have an impact on a child.” As a specialist she studied the Orton-Gillingham approach and Alphabetic Phonics, multisensory methods that combine sight, sound and touch.
Her classroom projects have included an indoor rain forest built from shower curtains and humidifiers, a Valentine Store where students earned money for a field trip to Sea World, and costume readings on Presidents’ Day. She has dressed in costume to teach dictionary skills and once hiked a whole class to a student’s neighborhood home for an Easter celebration and an egg-drop experiment. Her principal says her colleagues told him that if a student worked with Connie Bagley, “they were going to be successful.”
Beyond the Classroom
Bagley was the first reading specialist in her district’s program in 1992, and the district now has a trained specialist at all nine campuses, kindergarten through 12th grade. She helped write its curriculum. She is a past winner of Crockett Elementary Teacher of the Year, San Marcos CISD Elementary Teacher of the Year, Region XIII Elementary Teacher of the Year (and a state finalist) and the H-E-B Texas Teacher of the Year award.
She is a founding member of the Junior Service League, which built a large wooden PlayScape in a city park with volunteer help from her students and her own children, and she helped start a local parents’ advisory group that grew into a support network. She serves on her campus’s Response to Intervention team and the district’s 504 committee, speaks each semester to education majors at Texas State University, and has advised scholarship students in the university’s Chi Omega chapter. She has also served in the Heritage Association, the Cemetery Commission and the American Heart Association.
Philosophy Into Practice
Bagley believes that “all children CAN learn” and “WANT to learn,” though not in the same way or at the same pace. She measures her success by whether she has helped a child see his or her own strengths and potential, and she quotes the saying about judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. She says that “excellent instruction is the best intervention.”
She sees child poverty as a major education issue and describes the district’s responses: free breakfast for all students, a mobile summer meals bus, a weekend backpack program that grew from 31 to 671 children, a counselor on every campus and a mobile vision clinic. She also sponsors after-school clubs, including Spanish, book, and robotics clubs, for students who would otherwise go home to an empty house.
“What I do MATTERS. What all educators do MATTERS.”Connie Bagley
In Her Own Words
“Teaching is not a sprint by any means; it is a marathon that I run daily for the hearts, souls, and minds of a generation.”Connie Bagley
“Great educators must be creative and make learning fun.”Connie Bagley
“Reading is the key to life-long learning and I thrive on helping children unlock the code to becoming good readers.”Connie Bagley
What Others Said
“I know Connie is a great leader and educator.”Susan Seaton, nominator, colleague and parent of a former student
“Quite simply, Ms. Bagley is the epitome of what it means to be an educator in the most noble sense of the word.”Keith Cunningham, Ph.D., principal, Crockett Elementary
“More important than awards, of course, is Ms. Bagley’s ability to turn students who are struggling readers to a love for reading.”Lolly Guerra, Ed.D., former principal
“Connie not only touches the lives of her students, but also those of every child attending Crockett Elementary and SMCISD.”Katherine Hansen, trustee, San Marcos CISD School Board
“Mrs. Bagley continues to be the shining example in San Marcos.”Michael A. Cardona, superintendent, San Marcos CISD