Alaa Abdeldaiem is NWIndianaLife.com's #1StudentNWI representative at Crown Point High School. This month, she wrote a heartwarming feature story on social studies teacher Don Bernacky and the struggles he overcame to eventually be named the Indiana High School Educator of the Year.
In his wildest dreams, Don Bernacky never imagined himself as a teacher.
He never enjoyed school. As a young child in elementary school, Bernacky could barely get around, relying on his crutches because of his cerebral palsy. He was sick, and, because of his condition, Bernacky’s attendance badly suffered, keeping him from advancing to fifth grade.
He had a terrible stutter, one that often times left him misunderstood.
“If someone had told me ‘We're going to have you talk for a living,’ I would’ve laughed,” Bernacky said. "It was just something that would've been so out of reach.”
The reality was not as far as Bernacky originally imagined it to be. Today, Bernacky is a social studies teacher at Crown Point High School.
And an award winning one, at that.
Bernacky was named the District 1 and Indiana High School Educator of the Year at The American Legion, Department of Indiana 96th Annual State Convention, in Indianapolis this past July. After being nominated by families in the Crown Point school district, Bernacky submitted a 25-page binder describing his teaching philosophy, teaching background, classes he has taught, clubs he has sponsored and a list of community service projects.
A committee of judges then examined each binder submitted by various teachers from around the congressional district, calling Bernacky to notify him that his had won him the award.
“I was stunned, humbled, and had just so many emotions when they announced it,” Bernacky said. “There were so many different dedicated and amazing teachers at that American Legion convention, and I was humbled to have won it from amongst them.”
Bernacky believes his personal experiences and struggles have helped get him where he is today. After failing the fourth grade, Bernacky was misplaced, assigned to a special education class by his school’s teachers.
“Back then, teachers just assumed that I was mentally challenged,” Bernacky said. “They penciled in an IQ score they thought I was around without ever testing me.”
That did not stop him from excelling. From the moment he was deemed challenged, Bernacky started reading on his own, studying novels by Jules Verne and Mark Twain.
"People saw me reading those books and thought, 'You're not supposed to be able to read that,'" Bernacky said. "A teacher finally realized they had me in the wrong spot, but by then I had become disenchanted with school. It was the place where I went to feel bad about myself, and it stayed that way almost all the way through high school."
After spending some time working in manual labor, Bernacky realized how hard it was for him. He began to put more time into his schoolwork, enough to work his way up to a partial scholarship.
His cerebral palsy, however, was getting worse. Bernacky recalls passing out from the pain, unable to function from the severity of the side effects.
Thanks to finances provided by members of Indiana rehabilitation, Bernacky was eventually able to undergo two and a half years of surgery on his legs, a procedure Bernacky is thankful for till this day.
"It was like the world suddenly had added color to it," Bernacky said. "All of the pain was gone. The background noise that had added pain just vanished. I went from a C-D student to straight A's. I realized: this was the world with focus."
After graduating high school, Bernacky spent time tutoring history in college. History was his passion, and he was glad to provide any help that was needed within the subject.
A student within a study group he tutored specifically appreciated Bernacky's help, claiming that he picked up on matters much quicker when Bernacky explained them.
That was when it hit him.
"When he said that, it just hit me like, 'Oh no. Son of a gun. I'm a teacher,'" Bernacky said. "That's the last thing I wanted to hear."
Bernacky's realization that he was meant to teach history came easily for him. Actually being hired was not as easy.
"I didn't participate in anything much in high school, so I didn't realize that, if I wanted to be a history teacher, I should really be a coach too," Bernacky said. "No one even gave me a sniff, a second look to hire me as a history teacher."
No one in the United States, at least.
After being notified of teaching openings in South Korea and being interviewed at the NBC towers in Chicago, Bernacky and his wife were hired to teach in a school district overseas, an experience Bernacky never could have imagined.
"It was nothing like I ever expected. It was fantastic," Bernacky said. "I never knew what it was like to be an adult, to live on my own, until I was living in a different economy. The feeling was amazing."
Bernacky and his wife had significantly boosted their school's test scores. Because of a failing economy, however, Bernacky passed on the opportunity to sign a contract extension and prepared to return to the United States.
Before leaving, Bernacky videotaped himself teaching at his school, highlighting his philosophy and then mailing the tapes to various districts in the United States. Members of the Crown Point Community Schools Corporation came across the videos, and before Bernacky knew it, he had a teaching job at Crown Point High School.
Since then, Bernacky has involved himself in several school activities. He sponsored the school's ultimate Frisbee club, chess club, and, most notably, the improv club.
"I was really hesitant at first to teach students standup comedy," Bernacky said. "After some insisting, I agreed. I thought only a few kids would show up, but 88 came out that first night. That's when I said to my kids, 'This is a really, really great opportunity to raise some serious funds for charity.'"
Home foreclosure in 2007 forced several families to give away their pets to animal shelters. When members of the improv club came across a newspaper article featuring stray pets, they decided to raise funds for the animal shelter, naming their group the Stray Dogs Improv Club after their cause.
"It just hit," Bernacky said. "We didn't really fit with any other part of the school. The kids that come out to improv are sometimes the kids who are challenging to have in class. But we gave them a place to belong, and the Stray Dogs helping stray dogs just took off."
The club was not just a means to raise funds for charity. Several students viewed Stray Dogs as an opportunity to be themselves without great restrictions.
"The educational part about this is that you're taking the kids who have been tough in class, kids who've been challenging the system, and you give them the opportunity to do what they're doing naturally and use it for the forces of good," Bernacky said. "They become so invested, and they discover something new within themselves."
These students have moved from a big stage to one even bigger.
Because of his connections to various movie directors and his own involvement in several films, Bernacky has been able to help students in Stray Dogs be featured in movies such as "Contagion" in 2011 and "Man of Steel" in 2013.
"I have cast directors calling me asking for some of my kids all the time," Bernacky said. "It's amazing that the things they've learned from performing in front of the audiences here in Crown Point have given them opportunities like this."
Nothing came easily for Bernacky. His trials and tribulations have brought him where he currently stands.
Yet, after years of teaching in Crown Point, Bernacky knows one thing for sure: anyone could have been named High School Educator of the Year, with or without any of his struggles.
"As I've gone through here and become a teacher at Crown Point, the one thing I've come to realize is that you can open a huge percentage of this school's doors, easily take my trophy, replace the name and have just as strong as a candidate," Bernacky said. "We've had some really powerful figures, and that just adds to how humbled I am. I feel really lucky that I was the door they opened and that I was able to win it."