In 2000, the English Language Learner (ELL) population at Fargo High School barely hit 3%; 15 years later, refugees and immigrants make up 10% of the student population. Leah Juelke, ELL specialist, makes it her mission to welcome and educate these teenagers and, so do their peers native to North Dakota, thanks to the school’s Partnership for New Americans.

The initiative mirrors the Sheltered English Instruction model, a strategy Leah researched on a Fund for Teachers fellowship. To better reach her students, largely emigrating from in and around Tanzania, Leah attended a Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol Workshop there to learn from Tanzanian, Kenyan and American secondary teachers about ways to simultaneously teach language, content and academic skills.

Leah (center) taking part in the Sheltered Instruction workshop in Arusha, Tanzania.

“When I set out to complete my fellowship in Tanzania and South Africa, I knew that I would learn something more about my students, but what I didn’t know was that my experience would completely change the way that I teach,” said Leah. “My eyes were opened to the rugged ways of life that many of my students come from. I couldn’t help but to make connections between the refugees in South Africa and those in North Dakota. South Africa’s current xenophobia movement mirrored what is happening in North Dakota.”

“It’s really opened my eyes to all the different cultures that are here in the Fargo area,” said one native Fargo student speaking of the Partnership. “And it’s helped me see that there are a lot of different ways of living life.”

As part of the Green Card Voices initiative, last year Leah and her English Language Learners published their personal narratives in a book called Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from a Fargo High School (for purchase here). This compilation now serves as a vehicle to generate awareness about the immigrant experience and includes links to the students’ video narrative, a study guide, and glossary to help teachers use the book as an educational resource when teaching about immigration.

Watch a trailer for the book and meet the authors.

“The Journey to America project helped me share my story and understand my classmates more,” said Aline, a junior from Congo. “Before, I didn’t talk about my life in Africa because it was so sad, but now my family and I talk about it and we have come to peace.”

This year, Leah was named North Dakota’s 2018 Teacher of the Year and received her honor from the governor and in front of her students and school community at a surprise ceremony in the Fargo High School gymnasium. Afterwards, her mission continued to be her clarion call.

“I’d like to encourage people to be open-minded, and to know that diversity is a wonderful thing,” she said. “By being educated more about other cultures, it just opens a lot of doors. And getting to know our neighbors is very important.”

Three exceptional FFT Fellows made time amidst grading tests and hosting classroom parties to share with us their year in review.

• Sydney Chaffee spent 2017 on sabbatical from Boston’s Codman Academy Charter Public School to represent the Council of Chief State School Officers as the National Teacher of the Year. In 2011, she used her Fund for Teachers grant to witness post apartheid-era restorative justice efforts in South Africa to inform her school’s Fairness Committee and justice-centered curriculum. Watch her interviews on ABC News and CBS This Morning.
• This year, the state of Oklahoma recognized Donna Gradel as its Teacher of the Year. Donna teaches high school environmental science in Broken Arrow, OK, and is a two-time FFT Fellow. Watch her talk about her students’ work that garnered the attention of MIT and took them to Kenya to build an aquaponics system for an orphanage.
• Ashli Dreher, a 2016 FFT Fellow, was one of five inductees into the National Teachers Hall of Fame this year. With her grant, Ashli attended the International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs in Linz, Austria, to investigate assistive technology solutions implemented with differently-abled students in school, community and transitional work experiences, to learn strategies for integrating these devices locally.

Goals Accomplished

Sydney: One goal I accomplished this year was being brave enough to take a stand by speaking and writing publicly on issues that matter to me–like the role of social justice in education or  the importance of white teachers talking about race–even when I knew some people would strongly disagree with me.

 

Donna: One of my goals for the year came to fruition in the form of a new class I was able to design and teach at our high school. The name of the class is Innovative Research. Student groups research an area of interest and try to help solve a local, national or international problem.  Some of the projects include mentoring and buddy reading programs utilizing high school bilingual students paired with elementary English Language Learners to increase proficiency scores, designing a motor room for autistic students to increase student engagement, sustainable chicken farming and feed for developing countries, bio-decomposition of Styrofoam, and sustainable non-conventional energy sources.

 

Ashli: What a busy year! I completed the work in a second certificate area of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the Exceptional Needs Specialist area, and I also successfully defended my dissertation proposal. Inside the Classroom, a television show I produce and host weekly, was selected for national Hometown Media Awards in 2017 for excellence in public broadcasting and has expanded to an audience of 12.5 million on local cable. Episodes focus on individual teachers, their teaching careers, and the creative ways in which they engage their students in the classroom.

A student joins Ashli on the set of her program Inside the Classroom

2018 Goals

Sydney: Next year, I hope to increase my students’ engagement with people beyond our school, both within the local community and globally.

 

Sydney (right) was the keynote speaker at the University of Central Oklahoma’s annual Honoring a Noble Profession event, where Donna Gradel caught up with her for a photo.

Donna: A personal goal I have accomplished was to give more of my time to volunteer to help those with special needs. In the classroom, I hope my students will be engaged in successful learning and the research projects they have undertaken. We have also begun a collaboration between the city of Broken Arrow and our school district to help test, monitor and improve water quality in all the Broken Arrow streams and ponds throughout our city and parks. I hope to see my students working with city engineers, architects and storm water specialists to help improve our local environment.

 

Ashli: Next year I want to continue to develop innovative, student-centered thematic units that expand the world view of our students. As a FFT fellow, I had the opportunity to visit the Manor School in London, and I am working on preparing grants to implement the flexible seating arrangements we experienced while visiting their classrooms. After observing students with autism using flexible seating at the Manor School, I think my students with special needs would benefit from having flexible seating arrangements.

 

Bonus Question – What are you reading?

Sidney: I read a lot of good books this year, but one that stuck with me was Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. Next on my list is Ayiti, by Roxane Gay.

 

Donna: For enjoyment, Dust Bowl Girls about the history of women’s basketball in Oklahoma was my favorite. In Order to Live, the journey of North Korean Yeonmi Park is on my list for next month.

Fund for Teachers wishes all of our grant recipients and those whom they impact a happy holiday and year full of learning adventures.

I teach high school Spanish, serve as chairman of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) and am an FFT Fellow. All three of these roles converged in December when I co-led a group of 50 Connecticut FFT Fellows in a one-day workshop asking the post-fellowship question, “What’s Next?”

NNSTOY is a professional association of teachers leading in policy, practice and advocacy. Our national organization’s primary membership consists of State and National Teachers of the Year, as well as finalists. NNSTOY’s mission is to engage ALL educators in leadership opportunities that promote relevant policies and best practices. One way we accomplish this goal is by providing workshops designed to train and grow teacher leaders. The sessions are rooted in the Seven Domains of the Teacher Leader Model Standards. It was my privilege to host this opportunity for my FFT peers and guide them in developing  the skills and dispositions that will allow us to extend our impact beyond the classroom.

As FFT Fellows, we are committed to integrating into our classroom practice the learning that results from our fellowships. We learn, return and can’t help to reflect on the question: “What’s next?” It is easy to create lessons as a result of our fellowship experiences. NNSTOY’s Teachers Leading workshop is special because it allows Fellows to explore how to scale the impact of those lessons beyond individual classrooms. During the session, we spent the day discussing our current and potential roles as teacher leaders and agents of change and considered how we could shift teaching in a way that ultimately impacts more students.

In my presentation, I elaborated on the shift from teaching students to collaborating with adults. The goal was for Fellows to consider how they could expand their impact post-fellowship and promote positive, sustainable change in their schools, districts and beyond. Practically, this meant demonstrating how to facilitate highly effective teams, navigate the change process, and create and implement action plans – new skills for most teachers. In the weeks ahead, NNSTOY will virtually reconvene the Fellows on a webinar to assess how they’re doing and how we can further help them scale their fellowship impact.

As a Fellow I am extremely grateful for the professional learning experience that FFT made possible for me, and through my sharing of NNSTOY’s work on teacher leadership, I felt that I could pay it forward. And so, while our Teachers Leading workshops are normally fee-based, I asked the executive director of NNSTOY if we could provide this training to FFT Fellows at no cost in order to extend their summer learning. She enthusiastically agreed and shared that only by empowering great teachers to lead will we be able to effect real change in education. With teachers leading, I firmly believe that we can improve outcomes for all children and help them to live the lives they dream.

A previous Connecticut Teacher of the Year, Chris Poulos (Joel Barrow High School – Redding, CT) is National Board Certified and teaches all levels of Spanish, while also serving as an adjunct professor at Fairfield University. He previously served for two years in a hybrid role, splitting his time between teaching in his district and working alongside policymakers as a Teacher Leader-in-Residence at the Connecticut State Department of Education.