DEKALB - Mendota native Haliegh Eller is traveling this week to North Dakota’s Mandaree School District, located within the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
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Haliegh Eller
DEKALB - Mendota native Haliegh Eller is traveling this week to North Dakota’s Mandaree School District, located within the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
Eller, a senior elementary education major at Northern Illinois University, is one of four NIU College of Education students chosen for the hands-on Educate U.S. experience.
“What the dean’s office wants to give our teacher-licensure candidates is exposure to, and experience in, a truly rural setting,” says Jenny Johnson, director of teacher preparation for the college.
“Our past Educate U.S. experiences have been in urban settings, significantly larger than their traditional field placements,” Johnson adds. “The Mandaree experience expands the range of opportunities for our candidates to take engaged learning to the next level.”
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.
Dianne Zalesky, an instructor in the NIU Department of Curriculum and Instruction, will supervise Eller and the three others while they work side-by-side with mentor teachers observing in classrooms, preparing lessons and engaging in co-teaching strategies.
“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,” Zalesky says. “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.”
The college pays all travel expenses for Educate U.S. participants. 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 NIU’s “Engage PLUS” transcript notation.
Follow the trip online at https://twitter.com/niueducate.
