Zachary Plainsman-Advocate 08-13-2025

State teacher of the year takes unlikely journey to the classroom

BY CHARLES LUSSIER Staff writer

When Regena Beard was recently named Louisiana Teacher of the Year, her mother was the most surprised.

“If you had told me that you were not only going to be a teacher, but state teacher of the year,” she recalls her saying, “I would have swore you were lying.”

In a career that has spanned 21 years, Beard has taught science to thousands of fifth- and sixth-graders in Zachary It was not how she imagined her future.

“I was not one of those kids who played class,” Beard said.

Despite good grades, she was not energized by school, particularly science, the subject she later came to love so much

“It’s not that I didn’t have great teachers,” Beard recalls. “It just wasn’t my thing.”

ä See TEACHER, page 3G

New Zachary High coach moves up after admiring

program from afar

From the bayou to Bronco Stadium — Scott Pellegrin joins the Broncos.

Warren Brady ZACHARY SPORTS

The Zachary High defense has a new coach handling “the back half” this year with the addition 14-year coaching veteran Scott Pellegrin Pellegrin starts his first season with the Broncos after slowly moving up in elevation from his time playing defensive backs in the swamps at South Terrebonne High (Bourg elevation 60 feet above sea level) to the high plains of Zachary (elevation 110 feet above sea level) After high school Pellegrin earned an undergraduate degree at Nicholls State University (Harvard on the Bayou) in Thibodaux (elevation 13 feet above sea level), where he also was a coach at E.D. White High School.

“I was an accounting major to start. Changed my major to education, and a friend in class working at E.D. White got me my first coaching job,” Pellegrin said. He worked with the eighth-grade team. He received a M.S. in educational leadership from LSU in 2017 and was a coach at South Lafourche High School (Cut Off

ä See BRADY, page 3G

First day smiles

ZACHARY BALLOON FESTIVAL HEATS UP FOR THIRD YEAR

The third annual Zachary Really Hot Air Balloon Festival was held Friday and Saturday at BREC’s Zachary Community Park.

In addition to balloons, food trucks, face painting, a car show on Saturday only, a splash pad and live music were available at the free event.

ä More photos from the festival. PAGE 4G

Donations sought for Must Luv Dogs Rescue

AROUND BAKER

Community news report Happenings at Recreation Center

The Baker Recreation Center, 1420 Alabama St., has new hours. The facility is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., walking groups, low impact fitness and open recreation is available From 6 to 8 p.m., Zumba will meet on Monday and Thursday, swing class on Tuesday and yoga on Wednesday Registration is online or in person. Visit @CityofBakerRecreation on Facebook.

The center will host free dropin pickleball from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday and Thursday and from 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday The center is also looking for volunteers to help with sports, dance or arts and crafts activities. Contact (225) 278-9117 or (225) 205-4652. Executive Inn & Suites unveils renovated rooms Executive Inn & Suites, 430 Main St., Baker, just minutes from Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport and Southern University, has 255 fully renovated rooms, each outfitted with flat-screen TVs, free Wi-Fi, refrigerators, microwaves and handicap-accessible accommodations.

General Manager Vimal Desai said, “We’ve worked hard to create a welcoming, refreshed space that offers the kind of comfort and value today’s travelers expect. With updated rooms and exceptional service, Executive Inn & Suites is ready to be your home away from home.” The hotel features an outdoor pool open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., onsite guest laundry, and a 24-hour front desk to ensure service is always available. For bookings, call (225) 771-1123 or visit www.executivebakerla.com.

Get walking

Regena

had no immediate family members who’d graduated from college, much less any teachers in the family Her plan was to get married and become a stay-at-home mom like Renee, her own mom.

“Absolutely not,” she recalled her mother telling her “You are not going to do that.’”

Enrolled at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, young Regena tried to sort out her future. She recalled taking career quizzes and the results kept pointing toward teaching.

She decided to give the profession a try, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education She immediately continued her studies, earning a master’s degree in education from LSU Shreveport.

For her student teaching, Beard was assigned to work with a science teacher at Southside Junior High in Denham Springs. Not expecting much, she soon found herself entranced by how her mentor made science come alive. She felt like a student all over again.

“It was so much fun,” Beard said. “I grew to love (science) through her.”

In her classroom at Copper Mill Elementary in Zachary, Beard makes it her mission to inspire skeptical children in the same way

“If a kid comes in not loving science,” she said, “I’m like, ‘I got you, dude.’”

Professional recognition

As a mentor teacher, Beard helps other young educators in the way she was helped. She serves on both district and state-level teacher advisory councils. She also served on the state’s Let Teachers Teach workgroup established in 2023 by state Superintendent Cade Brumley Beard’s skill in the classroom has led to many accolades.

In 2023, she was one of five teachers named Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year by the Louisiana Science Teachers Association.

In January, she earned one of the nation’s most prestigious teaching honors: the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. She had first

BRADY

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— elevation 2 feet above sea level). With the Tarpons he worked with three different head coaches over a five-year period where he worked as an offensive line coach, was the special teams coordinator and finished as the defensive coordinator He journeyed to the Baton Rouge area to help revive the Liberty Magnet football program where they played a junior varsity schedule as brand-new program. He saw an opportunity to go to East Ascension High School (Gonzales — elevation 10 feet mean sea level) and went to work as a defensive backs coach for Darnell Lee, or so he thought. The defensive coordinator left in July, and he was quickly promoted to run the defense as the coordinator Lee is known in the Baton Rouge area as strong defensive coach that Pellegrin indicated was not overbearing but always there to “provide a plan B.” Pellegrin noted Lee “could dissect things on the field very quickly, which allowed me to make adjustments on the fly.”

sought the award in 2022. By the time that it was announced in January that she’d won she’d forgotten about it.

“When I got it, it was just an email,” she recalled.

The Teacher of the Year honor was much different It was announced at a July 26 gala held at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans in front of a large crowd

“It has been a whirlwind,” Beard said. “I’m even kind of losing my voice at this point It has been fantastic to say the least.”

Beard’s first job was teaching science at Northwestern Middle School, part of the relatively new Zachary community school district. The year was rough, so rough it made her think twice about her career choice.

“There were many late nights up until midnight, just trying to figure out what I would do,” she said.

Each year since has gotten better “I don’t have any year where I am going to do the exact same thing. I wish I did,” she laughed.

When Lee was replaced, Pellegrin was prepared to stay at East Ascension, but had the desire to run a program as the head coach.

“The athletic director at Woodlawn got my name from a coach at Denham Springs, who was also from down the bayou, and I got the job. I knew it was going to be a challenge,” Pellegrin said.

“At Woodlawn we had a lot of good players, we worked hard to provide organization and were trending in the right direction.” He put together a 5-5 record with a much-improved team that the Broncos faced in District 4-5A last year

Pellegrin comes to Zachary as new blood with coaching experience that was quickly put to work.

When he arrived Pellegrin indicated “Coach Brewerton said if you see anything let us know, bring it to the table, give us new ideas, we want to be better and we can’t get stagnant.”

Other early impressions

Pellegrin noted were “how organized everything is and how prepared the coaches and players are.”

Pellegrin commented on the work ethic of Brewerton and the staff. “The coaches bring it every day, are com-

Changing practice

When she started Beard stayed mostly at the front of the classroom in the traditional fashion: lecturing, going page by page through prepared presentations full of scientific facts.

These days, she spends much of her time sitting on the floor at the back of the room, brainstorming with her students. Their questions and curiosity shape what’s taught that day

“Now we have flipped that script We ask them to look around and wonder and notice things,” she said. “Every day is a mystery How did this happen?”

She credits Louisiana’s science standards, which were unveiled in 2017, for much of that shift. The new standards slashed the number of required concepts that she had to teach to just 12, but allow her to explore them more deeply And it pivoted away from memorization to inquiry-based instruction.

“(Students) get to unlock those secrets and figure it out, and it sticks so much better,” Beard said. “It’s

petitive and always working to make sure the kids are at that same level,” Pellegrin said.

Pellegrin will be in the press box during game days where he will be scanning the bigger picture for the Broncos.

Pellegrin has a deep group of safeties that includes two returning starters and upperclassmen who will compete for playing time.

“We have depth and we can rotate guys, which is great for competition and will be critical if we want to go deep in the playoff,” Pellegrin said.

“I always admired Zachary from afar based on what they did on and off the field and always said that was the program to model.”

Now he is up here in the higher altitudes to hopefully help the Broncos make it back to the Superdome (New Orleans — elevation 35 feet mean sea level).

Pellegrin will be teaching P.E. at Rollins Place this year when he is not coaching the Broncos safeties or spending time with his wife, Hailey

Warren Brady covers sports for The Plainsman. He can be contacted at zachary@ theadvocate.com.

such a different way of teaching.”

Robot time

A decade ago, Beard was asked on the eve of a new school year to take on a new challenge: robotics.

“I had never touched a robot in my life,” she said. “I was going to learn about it with the kids.”

In that initial robotics class, her students ended up doing the teaching as much as she did, as they figured out these strange things together

“It’s amazing what you can learn from a 10-year-old or an 11-yearold,” she said.

Against the wall of her classroom, the computer lab at Copper Mill, are two rows of kits filled with the makings of Lego’s EV robots.

Students will soon painstakingly turn these parts into robots. When they finish each day they leave their robots under a sign that says Robot Parking Garage At the end of each year, students deconstruct their creations and return them to the plastic box.

At their computer terminals, students learn how to code instruc-

tions to direct the robots. Beard leads a computer coding club at the school. One of the activities that Beard likes to do is an “Uber ride” where students have to figure out how to get their robot to pick up and transport a passenger

As her class has evolved, she’s branched beyond robotics. For instance, using 3D printers that she keeps in the back of the room, students construct trusses for bridges and then test them to see how they hold up when something heavy moves atop.

Beard said her biggest joy is when students take what they learn in the classroom and continue outside of school.

“When they’re going home and trying stuff on their own, and they figure something out on their own, that’s the jam,” she said. She said she hopes her students are inspired to pursue sciencerelated fields as adults, though she’s not aware to what extent her former students have. They have, however followed Beard’s lead in another way: “I’ve had several that have become teachers.”

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