A Classroom with a Door to the World
Spanish teacher goes above and beyond to give students real-life experience as teachers
Written By Monica Royer, OEA Communications Staff
Photos by AJ Stegall
When someone looks at Darcy Pippins’ career history, they might think, “Wow, she’s really got it figured out.”
Pippins is a veteran teacher with 28 years of experience teaching Spanish at Norman High School, a National Board Certified Teacher, a former World Language Teacher of the Year for the state and southwest region and a past finalist for National World Language Teacher of the Year. Most recently, she was awarded the Medal for Excellence from the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence (OFE).
With a successful career and a passion for teaching, one might be surprised to find out that Pippins is not a traditional teacher. In fact, she is alternatively certified.
Much like many others, Pippins did not know what she wanted to be when she started at the University of Oklahoma. She was an art major and then she was inspired by her father to become a pharmacist. All the while, she was pursuing a minor in Spanish. It turns out there was one big problem.
“Organic chemistry sort of drew me to become a Spanish major because I was not good at it,” Pippins joked.” “I was already close to graduating, so I took the easy way out, which now I don’t think was actually easy.”
In a surprising turn of events, she became a Spanish teacher at her alma mater, despite having no prior interest in education.
While other teachers might groan about professional development, Pippins was grateful for it. Her friends even say she is a conference addict.
“I kind of got thrown in and the only background I knew about teaching was my experience as a student,” Pippins shared. “So, I was like, ‘I really need to be better. I need to find good, quality professional development so I can improve my practice.’”
There was one conference that really changed her perspective.
“My friend dragged me to a national Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) conference in 1999,” Pippins began. “It was a different shift in how we taught. Instead of using textbooks, we used storytelling to teach a language.’”
Though Pippins thought she mastered Spanish by learning it the traditional way, she realized her own weaknesses.
“I had this lightbulb moment: you go to Spain and no one is going to stop you on the street and go, ‘What is the subjunctive form of this verb in first-person?’ It’s more important to learn things like how to order food and how to go to a museum, and how to interact with somebody in a store. We just have to shift our thinking on that,” Pippins said.
“Kids don’t want to conjugate; they want to communicate.”
Pippins found herself working at the right place at the right time. She was initially hired as a traveling teacher, so she did not have a classroom but had time to observe other teachers and gain knowledge that way.
In 2010, Pippins decided to pursue a Masters in Education in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum. Then, another opportunity fell into her lap.
When her oldest child was in second grade, Norman Public Schools had to end a program that allowed college students to teach Spanish at the elementary schools.
“I still wanted kids to still have that opportunity, so I thought, ‘I’ll just walk with her to school and teach one day a week,’” Pippins said.
Pippins was able to teach one 30-minute lesson a week before her school day began. This inspired her to write her thesis on this situation.
“I wanted to see how much language these kids could acquire in this time frame,” Pippins said. “It was amazing and the results were great.”
Pippins then created a grow-your-own program that would allow high school students to do what she did.
“In 2014 I decided that my Advanced Placement (AP) kids could do this,” Pippins explained. “I would come up with curriculum and train them to do what I do in the classroom but on a novice level. The kids really enjoyed it, and the elementary teachers loved it too.”
The growth of the program is a testament to Pippins’ impact because the incentives to participate were low.
“This year we had 61 students that volunteered for this program, which is about 50% of my own kids,” Pippins said. “They taught at 6 different schools and 27 classrooms. For a lot of them, this is their third year doing the program.”
For some, it even launched them into their future careers.
“Shane Zumwalt, a district teacher of the year finalist for Norman last year, was one of my former students that participated in the program. Now he’s a Spanish teacher at Longfellow Middle School, so it’s working,” Pippins said.
By doing this, Pippins gave students what she did not have when she was younger: real life experience.
“Teaching it is an entirely different thing,” Pippins began. “You can sit in my classroom and nod your head at the right time but going in and having to teach is different,” Pippins said.
Remember all those subjects she studied at university? Well, they came in handy after all.
“I’m a math teacher, a geography teacher, art teacher, science teacher, and language teacher,” Pippins said. “I teach all of that in the language. To me, that is the best thing. We are not just learning how to conjugate verbs in here, we are learning culture but we’re doing it in comprehensible language.”
Pippins does not just want students to learn a language, but to appreciate it.
“One day these kids may have the opportunity to vote to keep world language in schools, and I hope that their experience fuels them to vote positively,” Pippins shared.
In her classroom in Norman, Pippins is making a world of difference. Language programs are being cut from schools, and teachers are leaving the profession, yet Pippins is helping to defy all odds and keep hope alive, all by just opening the door to new experiences.
This article appears in the Summer 2026 Education Focus
*This story originally listed the OFE Medal for Excellence as “a Medal of Excellence”. It has been revised to reflect the correct name on 8/6/26. The printed copy contains the typo. We apologize for this mistake.