Rogers: Certificate 'changed my life'

Christine Rogers

   Christine Rogers entered the UW College of Education's new Graduate Program for Teachers of American Indian Children anticipating that she would gain knowledge and tools to enhance her effectiveness as an educator and in instructional facilitator.
   After completing the program, she realized that she gained much more. 
      "To put it simply, it has changed my life my perspective and my viewpoint -- completely," she says of the experience.
   Rogers and Marty Conrad, both instructional facilitators for Fremont County School District 1, are the first two graduates of the new program.
   A study abroad semester in South America prompted a change in major (to secondary English education); work at the Moline, Ill., Boys and Girls Club, where she interacted with children of migrant and illegal workers; and a graduate program at the University of Iowa. Those experiences affirmed and fueled a commitment to multicultural and social justice education
   That commitment led Rogers to Lander Valley High School, where she accepted a position teaching English.
   One early experience at LVHS increased Rogers' commitment to better serving the learning needs of Native American students. Christine developed and taught a Native American literature course in response to student requests, based in part on a class she had taken at Iowa. One of her star pupils also was enrolled in a more traditional English course, where he seldom participated and barely earned a D.
   "In the Native American Lit class, he sat in the front, it was almost hard to keep him quiet, and he got an A," she says, noting that that class was based on a college-level course.
   The critical difference for Rogers' student was the opportunity to study works by Native American writers.
   "Relevant curriculum, meaningful connections, really do make a difference for students," she says.
    Helping other educators overcome common fears about accidentally offending students or community members, and providing them with effective classroom strategies, was a primary motivator for enrolling in the UW certificate program.
   "I thought, if I could become a teacher educator, I can start planting that seed in the minds of people early in their career, rather than having them get stuck five years down the road," Rogers says. "It's easier to keep going in the direction they're going, instead of trying something new."
   She has direct opportunity to prepare pre-service teachers for that opportunity as an instructor in the Wyoming Teacher Education Program.
   While Christine emerged from the certificate program with a bulging toolbox of strategies and resources to improve classroom practice her own and others she also came away with a vastly expanded understanding of how she could have handled her own professional actions differently in years past.
   If she had her earlier teaching experiences to do over again, with knowledge gained from her certificate experience, Christine says she would have made one critical change.
   "I would have gone and talked to people at the cultural centers on the reservation," she says. "I would have talked to people in the schools, elders and people on the business council, and other community leaders. I would have told them I want to do a good job. Do you think it is appropriate for me to be doing this and, if so, how can I do it responsibly? How can I do it respectfully?"
   At the same time, "The program has helped me become less cynical," she says. "I am still extremely motivated to be involved and to get things done and to take action, but in a more positive way."
    One of the more important benefits of participating in the certificate program has been the evolution of a ready peer support network unlike any experienced in either her UI master's degree program or her UW doctoral program.
   "The difference is that the cohort for the Teachers of American Indian Children Program is very focused on improving education for Native children," she says. While there may be more focused areas of discussion within that intellectual community, "they are all very much focused on that topic."

  
 

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009