Maize teachers inspire change to better community and environment
After their time in the Peace Corps, Stan Bergkamp, Janelle Birkner, and Shelly Walston continue to find new ways to make Maize a better place.
Stan Bergkamp is the head of the Maize Solar Initiative. He has impacted many teachers and students with his heart for change. “I love it that Mr. Bergkamp’s made an effort to make the school more sustainable and make people more aware of other sources of energy and reducing carbon footprints and stuff like that. It’s really cool,” Janelle Birkner said.
January 28, 2022
Stan Bergkamp knows that physics isn’t the only thing he wants his students to take away from class. He wants them to learn how to be a good person too, just like he learned during his time in the Peace Corps.
The Peace Corps is an organization that sends volunteers all over the world to help make a difference in struggling communities. Three USD 266 teachers, all from different schools, served in the Peace Corps before they became teachers here.
Maize High School Physics teacher, Stan Bergkamp, joined the Peace Corps after he graduated from Kansas State University in May 1990.
He spent two and a half years in Botswana, Africa teaching science. He really enjoyed his time there and the close-knit feeling of community.
Since his time in the Peace Corps, he has been teaching at Maize High. Bergkamp loves to bring his experiences from the Peace Corps into his teaching. He has a tradition every year on the last day of school before Thanksgiving that he calls “Africa Day,” where he teaches his students about his time in Africa and shows them all the things they have to be thankful for here in the U.S.
“I’ve done this long enough, I know a lot of kids are going to forget how to solve necessarily the equations in physics or chemistry,” Bergkamp said, “but they’ll remember what it’s like to give of yourself, what it’s like to be a decent human being, what it’s like to see beyond yourself and try and change your little corner of the world.”
Changing his little corner of the world is exactly what inspired Bergkamp to start the Maize Solar Initiative in November 2017.
He proposed the $400,000 project to superintendent, Dr. Chad Higgins, and by the Summer of 2018, he had raised enough money to begin installing the Maize High system.
He is very grateful for Higgins’s support over the years and his help in getting the next systems up and running before he retires.
“This happened because he took a leap of faith on me,” Bergkamp said.
Shelly Walston, a Maize South High School English teacher and Maize High School graduate, was a student of Bergkamp’s when she went to Maize. Walston says that Bergkamp had a major impact on her decision to join the Peace Corps after she graduated from Kansas University in May 2000.
Walston began teaching English in Krasny Yar, Kazakhstan in June 2000.
During her time in Kazakhstan, Walston felt very welcomed and close with the people there. She still keeps in touch with her host family, whom she thinks of as her second family.
“I really really hope that I’m able to go back this Summer because it will be 20 years and I miss them,” Walston said.
Maize Career Academy Engineering teacher, Janelle Birkner, joined the Peace Corps in 2008 after she had graduated from college with an engineering degree.
She wanted to join the Peace Corps so that she could give back to society and help others before she pursued a career.
Birkner was stationed in Runaway Bay, Jamaica, where she served as an engineer in the sanitation department. After her time in the Peace Corps, she decided that she wanted to be a teacher, rather than an engineer, so she could continue to have an impact on people.
“When I was in the peace corps, I realized you don’t have to have an amazing paying job to be happy in life. You need to do what fills your heart,” Birkner said.
