Educate U.S. program to offer unique glimpse of rural teaching inside North Dakota reservation

mandareeNorth Dakota’s Mandaree School District is a three-hour drive from the nearest airport in Bismarck.

The closest hotel is at least 20 miles away, if not 30. Shopping for groceries – beyond those for sale at the tiny convenience store in town, that is – requires a a two-hour roundtrip.

Life outside the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is so far from, well, almost anything, that most teachers in the Mandaree schools live in the duplex apartments right across the street.

“Once you’re there, you’re pretty much there,” says Dianne Zalesky, an instructor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. “It is definitely a community in that everyone lives in the same neighborhood.”

And that is exactly where a small group of NIU College of Education Educate U.S. travelers will find themselves the week of May 14.

“Our past Educate U.S. experiences have been in urban settings, significantly larger than their traditional field placements,” says Jenny Johnson, director of teacher preparation for the college. “Our leadership team really wanted to give our teacher-licensure candidates is exposure to, and experience in, a truly rural setting. The Mandaree experience expands the range of opportunities for our candidates to take engaged learning to the next level.”

Caleb Purcell, Haleigh Eller, Andrew Finch and Delaney Nauman
North Dakota-bound: Caleb Purcell, Haleigh Eller, Andrew Finch and Delaney Nauman

 

Ninety-eight percent of Mandaree’s fewer than 200 students come from Native American tribes. Some of the two dozen teachers grew up in the Fort Berthold reservation or nearby; others grew up in other reservations.

One building serves the entire K-12 population, which is overseen by a superintendent, an elementary school principal and a high school principal. The district itself falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Education of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Zalesky made the initial contact with the Mandaree School District when she visited in the summer of 2017 as a certified consultant for WIDA (World-class Instructional Design and Assessment).

Dianne Zalesky
Dianne Zalesky

The WIDA consortium advances academic language development and academic achievement for children and youth who are culturally and linguistically diverse. Zalesky presented professional development on working with diverse learners and the English Language Development Standards.

While Zalesky could not personally observe student-teacher interaction during the summer, the time she spent living among and working with teachers spoke volumes.

“I was having a conversation with Superintendent Ann Longie, just talking about what a great experience I had meeting the teachers there,” Zalesky says, “and I told her about some of the opportunities that NIU College of Education students have, one being Educate U.S.”

Both believed that five days in Mandaree would provide a unique perspective to future teachers, one beyond the already diverse array of clinical experience the college offers. Dean Laurie Elish-Piper, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs David Walker and Johnson agreed.

“What I would like to think is that they will see some different methods, simply because it’s a different population – or maybe not. Maybe it’s not that different,” says Zalesky, who will return to Mandaree to supervise the Educate U.S. students. “I would hope they’ll see the cultural and community aspects that influence instruction. I would hope they would see that there aren’t too many fluent speakers of indigenous languages.”

educate-us-logo-2She knows they observe “a strong sense of commitment” to students from teachers and, most of all, flexibility.

Much of that flexibility comes in response to the hiring and retention of teachers in a region of the country with brutal winters, she adds.

“I met teachers who the previous year taught fourth- or fifth-grade, and this year they’re teaching kindergarten or first. Last year, they were teaching social studies and science, and this year English or math,” Zalesky says. “They just say, ‘This is what I’m teaching. I might have four or five preps at multiple grade levels and multiple content areas from one year to the next.”

Administrators are part of that equation as well.

“If they need a bus driver, the superintendent will drive the bus. A building principal will drive the bus,” she says. “People just pitch in to do what they need to do, without question, without complaint and without a second thought.”

NIU’s select students will taste a bit of that flexibility, Johnson says.

“There is nothing like this in our service region, so participating in this experience is an added value. It’s a rich opportunity to see teaching and learning through a completely different lens,” she says. “The more they know and experience, the more highly qualified they will be upon graduation, and the more tools they will have to plan and design instruction for the students they’ll serve.”

Mandaree classrooms will bring to life what NIU College of Education students learn in their courses about diverse instruction, demonstrating how those theories and methods are implemented in different spaces to support student growth.

Jennifer Johnson
Jennifer Johnson

Licensure candidates also will learn about professional development in rural schools, Johnson adds, as well as “the culture of teachers and students living in the same small space during the education cycle.”

As with the semiannual trips to the Houston Independent School District, the NIU College of Education pays for all travel expenses. Housing accommodations are provided by the partner districts, allowing Educate U.S. participants the opportunity to experience community, culture and authentic home-school connections.

Educate U.S. travelers are eligible for the university’s Engage PLUS transcript notation.

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