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Uintah Basin Regional Campus News

Retaining Secondary Education Students Beyond the Classroom

Feb 12, 2009

The path to professional competency can be a lonely journey. Students who complete a supportive and challenging teacher education program, such as the program offered by USU’s School of Teacher Education and Leadership can feel isolated and overwhelmed as new teachers in their own classrooms. Multiple studies have confirmed that about 30 percent of teachers leave the classroom after three years. Education professor Dr. Virginia Norris Exton had an idea about how to encourage some of her former secondary education students to stay in education careers.

Exton had kept in touch with students from the Ute Teacher Training Program (UTTP, 2002-2005 at USU Uintah Basin), whom she had interviewed for a qualitative case study and followed closely through their first years of teaching. She believed that sharing teaching expertise and networking with other Native American teachers from across the country would help energize her former students in the critical third year of classroom teaching. Exton submitted a proposal to the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) to present a panel on improving American Indian teacher education. The proposal was accepted for the annual NIEA conference, held October 24-26, 2008 in Seattle.

Assembling panel members was not an easy task, because Exton’s former UTTP students were not all working in Utah. Norm Cambridge chose to teach Spanish on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Sharee Secakuku taught math at the Uintah River charter school on the Ute reservation in Utah. Durinda Gouley taught English for two years with Secakuku at Uintah River High School, but moved to the Skokomish reservation in Washington to administrate a mentor/tutor program. A fourth Native American teacher was unable to attend the NIEA conference, so Ramalda Guzman, chair of the Ute Tribe Education Committee and former UTTP grant administrator, became the final panel member, in addition to Professor Exton.

Once Exton’s proposal was accepted and the panel had been assembled, the next challenge was find financial support enabling the new teachers to attend the conference. Exton and Guzman contacted the Ute Tribe to request funding to pay for conference registration and travel expenses. Exton asked USU to cover hotel expenses. The new teachers were able to participate in a professional presentation at a major national conference because of mentoring and support from both the tribe and the university.

The NIEA panel was moderated by Dr. Exton. Guzman provided historical and administrative background from the UTTP, Exton’s PowerPoint and handouts gave an overall focus for how teacher education programs can better serve Native Americans, and each of the Native American teachers contributed advice and anecdotes, not only from his or her experiences in the UTTP, but also from three years of teaching in reservation schools.

How did this experience affect the panel members? Cambridge networked with the many university recruiters at NIEA and has applied to a graduate program in educational administration. Secakuku decided to take a leave of absence from Uintah River High School to pursue a degree in counseling. Gouley, who gave birth to her second daughter only two weeks before the panel presentation, has reapplied to her local school district for a secondary teaching position. Dr. Exton is still working for the school of TEAL and is currently collaborating with other USU professors and several tribes across Utah to pursue a federal grant for American Indian teacher education. For more information, contact Dr. Virginia Norris Exton, vini.exton@usu.edu, (435) 722-1762.
This story originally appeared in the Spring 2009 Retention Newsletter.