Best teacher inspires the youngest of students to learn and move

Published 8:30 am Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Katie Bergerson, early childhood teacher at IGNITE Dance and Yoga, is already working at her dream job, she says, so being voted the Best Teacher by Valley Record readers in the 2016 Best of the Valley survey was “a little overwhelming.”

“I’ve only been teaching for four years… I’m honored, but I also feel that, with all these other wonderful teachers in the Valley, it’s a team that teaches.”

Bergerson, an experienced fitness and yoga trainer, has been encouraging students, inspiring parents and earning the lasting affection of families through the SPARK program, which she developed four years ago at Ignite.

Although she is now just months away from an official teaching certificate from the online Western Governors University, she has always been a teacher.

“When I was growing up, I remember pretending to teach,” she said. “I remember wishing I had a photo copier, so I could pass out (assignments) to my stuffed animals.”

In high school, she loved science, played sports, and was already an aerobics instructor, so after high school, she pursued a career in fitness training, but “everything kept taking this turn to teaching,” she remembered.

Today, she says, Spark is “my dream job, I don’t ever want to do anything else.”

Spark is the dance studio’s early childhood program, incorporating dance, gymnastics and yoga with science experiments, art, math and more. Whatever she’s teaching, she says, should involve movement.

“One of the most important things is the movement that I incorporate into the program,” Bergerson said. Every day, almost every activity, involves active bodies, as well as active minds.

“I think children learn better when they’re moving,” she said.

It helps that she’s used to moving a lot herself.

“I’m on my knees a lot at work, that’s how I communicate with the kids,” she said.

Another bonus is that her Spark classroom gives her 26 students, all between the ages of 2 and 5, the room to move. “Our classroom is huge,” she said.

It’s also a shared space, so Bergerson has to set up for each two-and-a-half-hour class and then clean up from it every day. She’d love to have a space of her own in the future, and that could be a possibility as she and Ignite owner Katie Black discuss expanding the program.

There’s already a waiting list for families who want to catch the Spark.

Learning is, of course, the end goal of the program Bergerson says, but she also works to build relationships and communication with each students’ families, too. “If there’s any reason that (people) voted for me, that might be part of it,” she said.

“I work really hard to provide a really great program for the kids,” she said. “I want the kids to love coming to school because they love coming to school.”

Bergerson has lived in North Bend for nine years. She has two children, attending Opstad Elementary School.

Learn more about Spark and Ignite at http://ignitedanceandyoga.com.